Abstract

An abstract is a summary of a research or a review article and includes critical information, including a complete reference to the work, its purpose, methods used, conclusions reached, and implications. For example, here is one such abstract from the Journal of Black Psychology authored by Timo Wandert from the University of Mainz, published in 2009 and titled “Black German Identities: Validating the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity.”

All the above-mentioned elements are included in this abstract: the purpose, a brief review of important ideas to put the purpose into a context, the methods, the results, and the implications of the results.

Abstracts serve several purposes. First, they provide a quick summary of the complete publication that is easily accessible in the print form of the article or through electronic means. Second, they become the target for search tools and often provide an initial screening when a researcher is doing a literature review. It is for this reason that article titles and abstracts contain key words that one would look for when searching for such information. Third, they become the content of reviews or collections of abstracts such as Psy-cINFO, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Finally, abstracts sometimes are used as stand-ins for the actual papers when there are time or space limitations, such as at professional meetings. In this instance, abstracts are usually presented as posters in presentation sessions.

Most scholarly publications have very clear guidelines as to how abstracts are to be created, prepared, and used. For example, the APA, in the [Page 2]Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, provides information regarding the elements of a good abstract and suggestions for creating one. While guidelines for abstracts of scholarly publications (such as print and electronic journals) tend to differ in the specifics, the following four guidelines apply generally:

• 1.
  The abstract should be short. For example, APA limits abstracts to 250 words, and MEDLINE limits them to no more than 400 words. The abstract should be submitted as a separate page.
• 2.
  The abstract should appear as one unindented paragraph.
• 3.
  The abstract should begin with an introduction and then move to a very brief summary of the method, results, and discussion.
• 4.
  After the abstract, five related keywords should be listed. These keywords help make electronic searches efficient and successful.

With the advent of electronic means of creating and sharing abstracts, visual and graphical abstracts have become popular, especially in disciplines in which they contribute to greater understanding by the reader.

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