Research Papers: A deep analysis into abstracts

Research Papers: A deep analysis into abstracts

Abstracts are often used in Research Papers (RP) to help the readers quickly ascertain the paper´s purpose. As Swales and Feak (1994) state “readers of academic journals employ a vast amount of skimming and scanning. If they like your abstract, they may read your paper, or at least part of it” (p. 210). Therefore, it seems important that abstracts attract the readers' attention so that they would be interested in it and continue reading it. The purpose of this paper is to compare four abstracts, two that belong to the educational field: Almerich, Suárez, Orellana, Belloch, Bo, & Gastaldo’s , 2005; King’s, 2002 and two pertaining to the medicine field: Beckett, Peters, Fletcher, Straessen, Liu, Dumitrascu, Stoyanovsky, Antikainen, Nikitin, Anderson, Belhani, Forette, Rajkumar, Tijs, Banya, & Bulpitt’s, 2008; Wijeysundera, Beattie, Elliot, Austin, Hux, & Laupacis’s, 2010, and analyse their characteristics following the principles set by APA (American Psychological Association).

When analyzing abstract types, Swales and Feak (1994) propose that “abstracts will be either informative or indicative (…) Most RP abstracts should aim to be informative (i.e., they should include the main findings)” (p. 211). A close reading of the aforementioned abstracts seems to indicate that the articles which belong to the field of medicine are informative. Wijeysundera et al.’s (2010) and Beckett et al.’s (2008) articles both show their main findings in the conclusions stated in their abstracts. Wijeysundera et al. (Ibid) conclude, “Preoperative non-invasive cardiac stress testing is associated with improved one year survival and length of hospital stay in patients undergoing elective intermediate to high risk non-cardiac surgery” (Abstract). Information about their main findings is also present in Beckett et al. (Ibid), “The results provide evidence that antihypertensive treatment with indapamide (…) in persons 80 years of age or older is beneficial” (Abstract). Conversely, King’s (2002) Research Paper (RP) seems to be an indicative abstract, since it does not provide the results of the research findings. However, it does not seem possible to generalise that all the articles that belong to the educational field are indicative, since Almerich et al.’s (2005) abstract appears to be informative as it states, “The results obtained by means of ANOVA model, indicate that the variable gender is the one that most influences in the knowledge of faculty’s technological resources, while age and type of educational institution present smaller influence” (Abstract).

Concerning structure, Swales (1990) states that articles can be either structured or unstructured depending on their organizational format. The abstracts on medicine show a structured organization as they contain subheadings and follow the IMRAD (Introduction – Methods – Results- And – Discussions) Formula. As far as the articles on education are concerned, their abstracts are unstructured, since they consist of one long, unbroken paragraph. Abstract length and organization vary according to discipline. Therefore, it seems that those articles which belong to the educational field tend to present unstructured abstracts whereas those papers that belong to the field of medicine tend to present structured abstracts. The main reason for this appears to be that scientific papers need to produce more specific information related to the experiments they have carried out.

Some similarities as well as differences have been found as regards the linguistics features of abstracts. Full sentences are used in the four selected abstracts. The researchers of the medicine field make use of past tenses in the methods and results subheadings and are used to refer to findings, variables and tests. Some examples of this include: “11.8 had a history of cardiovascular disease...” (Beckett et al., 2008, Abstract) “Of the 271082 patients in the entire cohort, 23999 (8.9%) underwent stress testing.” (Wijeysundera et al., 2010, Abstract). Present tenses are also used in the abstracts but to refer to conclusions: “The results provide evidence that .....” (Beckett et al., Ibid). According to Swales and Feak (1994), “Choosing the present tense (…) can produce an effect of liveliness and contemporary relevance” (p. 213). Moreover, the use of impersonal passive is a characteristic of the four abstracts since the researchers´ purpose is not to emphasize the doer of the action but the effects of it instead.

When writing RP abstracts, Swales and Feak (1994) claim that there are two approaches. On the one hand, they describe those abstracts that are “results-driven” and therefore, focus on the research findings, and on the other, they describe the “RP summary” abstract. The latter consists of “one- or two-sentence synopses of each of the four sections” (p. 211). Taking into account this classification, it could be contended that none of the abstracts which are being analysed in the present paper are “results-driven.” Nonetheless, the only abstracts which seem to provide a summary of each section of the RP and therefore, could be considered “RP summary” abstracts are those related to medicine and Almerich et al.’s (2005) paper. Even though King’s (2002) RP abstract summarises the characteristics of the research and the purpose of her paper and additionally, provides suggestions, there is no information neither related to the results obtained nor the conclusions reached. In consequence, King’s paper does not seem to have neither “results-driven” nor an “RP summary” abstract.

In conclusion, it seems that abstracts that belong to the medicine field tend to share certain characteristics such us the presentation of information about the participants, methods, results and conclusions reached. Therefore, the layout of medicine abstracts seems to be structured, i.e. organised under specific subheadings. On the other hand, educational abstracts do not seem to follow a special pattern. Whereas some abstracts are structured, such us Almerich et al.’s (2005), other abstracts are unstructured and consist of an unbroken paragraph, for instance, King’s (2002) abstract. Consequently, it appears that in the educational field, researchers have more freedom as regards what information to include.