Writing an Effective Abstract: An Audience-Based Approach
A bad abstract won’t by itself cause
journal editors to reject a scholarly article, but it does incline them toward
an initial negative answer, write Faye Halpern and James Phelan.
Most
journals require authors to submit abstracts along with their articles, as do
both of the journals we edit, ARIEL
and Narrative.
This requirement has two main rationales: an abstract offers readers a helpful,
succinct summary of the longer argument developed in the essay, and it
identifies keywords that will make it easier for search engines to find the
essay.
Notice
that these rationales presuppose the publication of both abstract and essay
and, in so doing, assume that the main audience for the abstract is prospective
readers of the published essay. However, from the perspective of an author
submitting work to a journal, there is another important audience to consider:
the journal editor(s) and the external reviewers to whom the editor(s) send it.
This
audience looks at your abstract with their most pressing question in mind: is
this article publishable in this journal? A good abstract tilts them toward an
affirmative answer by leaving them well-disposed toward the longer argument in
the article. A bad abstract won’t by itself cause this audience to reject an
article, but it does incline the audience toward an initial negative answer. In
that way, an ineffective abstract becomes an obstacle that your article needs
to overcome.
How
do you produce a good abstract for this audience? In a process of reverse
engineering, we’ve identified a set of recurring questions that underlie the
strong abstracts that we have published over the years. You do not need to
answer these questions in the order in which we list them here, and you do not
need to give them equal time and space, but a good abstract will address all of
them.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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