Abstracts’ analysis in four research articles.

Abstracts are descriptive texts which tend to transmit information in a clear, concise, neat and objective way; they are the first part that you will find in any Research Article (RA), however, they are the last part that researchers write (Pintos and Crimi, 2010). Their objective is to compress the maximum amount of information into de minimum amount of space, typically between 150 and 250 words, and in a way that could attract as much readers as possible. (Pintos and Crimi, Ibid.).

Hubbuch (1996, as cited in Pintos & Crimi, 2010, p.11) defines abstracts as “brief summaries of major points made by the author in a book or article”. Swales and Feak (1994, as cited in Pintos & Crimi, Ibid.) agree with him in the fact that RP abstracts “consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences” and discussed an important issue, the idea that abstracts are more important for the readers than for the writer because, it is through its reading that the readers can choose the paper that better fits their purposes.

Swales and Feak (Ibid, as cited in Pintos & Crimi, Ibid., p. 11) state that there are at least two types of abstracts those which are included at the beginning of RPs and conference abstracts. The former type of abstracts consist of an informative paragraph about a text which has already been written and were thought to be read by any reader in the field while the latter are much longer and their primary audience are conference reviewers.

Swales (1990, as cited in Pintos & Crimi, 2010, p. 13) and Swales and Feak (1994, as cited in Pintos & Crimi, Ibid., p.13) state that there are two other types of abstracts: informative and indicative ones and that, according to their organizational format as main concern, can be described as structured or unstructured abstracts. Structured abstracts contain bolded
or italicized headings identifying the main sections of the RP whereas unstructured ones consist of one long, unbroken paragraph not longer than 150 words (Pintos and Crimi, 2010).

This paper will provide a deep analysis of the abstracts of four RPs in the field of medicine as well as a comparison between their structure, classification and linguistic characteristics. To do it in a comprehensively way, each feature related to abstract writing will be analyzed separately.
Considering the amount of words used, it could be said that Wijeysundera, Beattie, Elliot, Austin, Hux, & Laupacis, (2010) managed to solve their abstract in less than 260 words,
Martínez, Assimes, Mines, Dell’Aniello, & Suissa, (2010) did the same in 283 words, Beckett, Peters, Astrid, Staessen, Liu, & Dumitrascu, et al. (2008) solved theirs in more than 350 words and Jorgensen, Zahl, & Gotzsche, (2010) wrote the most extensive of the four abstracts.

Although all of them seem to be rather long it is very probable that these authors should have resigned some conciseness to achieve clarity which is another important requirement in abstracts writing.All the abstracts have been written in a structured fashion, they all have
bolded headings but there are slight differences between them in relation to this point. Beckert, et al. (2008) used only four coloured headings while the other authors used between 6 and 8 bolded headings to identify the main sections in their RPs. In addition, all of them appear to follow the Introduction-Methods-Results-And- Discussion (IMRAD) formula, despite not having exactly those headings.

Concerning linguistic specifications, Swales and Feak, (Ibid, cited in Pintos & Crimi, Ibid., p13) stated that abstracts should include, use of full sentences, past tenses and impersonal passive, absence of negatives and avoidance of abbreviations and jargon. Probably the use of specific vocabulary can not be avoided in medical researches and with the exception of Martinez, et al. (2010) all the other abstracts use at least an acronym and explain it to prevent misunderstanding in those readers which are not members of the medical community.

With reference to tense usage Swales and Feak, (Ibid, cited in Pintos & Crimi, Ibid., p13) suggested that each section should be written using certain tenses, opening sentences tend to be written in present or present perfect to show what the problem is or what is the researchers’ hypotheses, sentences describing results tend to show tense variation and conclusions tend to be written in present since they describe results.

Except for Beckert, et al. (2008) whose abstract follows tightly the suggested tenses for all sections, the other abstracts, for instance, use the infinitive to state their objectives and do not respect the use of present to state their conclusions. As they are all researches from the British Medical Journal (BNJ) the lack of coincidence related to tense usage could be due to internal conventions or to the researches’ necessities.

Taking into account all the items analysed we might conclude that as the abstracts are all related to the medicine field, they share most of the features and have only minor differences related to headings and use of tenses. Furthermore we should highlight that writing an abstract is not an easy task because they should reflect in a clear and concise way the paper’s aim apart from trying to attract the readers’ attention.


References

Beckett, N. S., Peters, R., Astrid, E. F., Staessen, J.A., Liu, L., Dumitrascu, D., et al.
Treatment of hypertension in patients 80 years of age or older. The New
England Journal of Medicine 358 (18), 1887/1898. Retrieved from
http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=5754
Jorgensen, K. J., Zahl, P.H., & Gotzsche, P.C. (2010). Breast cancer mortality in
organised mammography screening in Denmark: Comparative study. BMJ, 340
(c1241), 1-6. doi: 10.1136/bmj.c1241
Martínez, C., Assimes, T.L., Mines, D., Dell’Aniello, S., & Suissa, S. (2010). Use of
venlafaxine compared with other antidepressants and the risk of sudden
cardiac death or near death: A nested case-control study. BMJ, 340 (c249), 1-9.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.c249
Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 4: Research Articles: Abstracts
Universidad CAECE: Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Retrieved May 25, 2010, from
http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=4693
Wijeysundera, D.N., Beattie, W. S., Elliot, R.F., Austin, P. C., Hux, J.E., & Laupacis,
A. (2010).
Non-invasive cardiac stress testing before elective major non-cardiac surgery:
Population based cohort study. BMJ, 340 (b5526), 1-9. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b5526