Comparative Analysis of Abstracts in Specialized Journals

María E. Casinelli and Clarisa A. Dornes

Universidad CAECE

Abstracts are formal summaries of finished research papers (RPs) and research articles (RAs). They are descriptive, as they describe the main text of an RP or RA, and expository, as they tend to provide information clearly and concisely. According to Hubbuch (1996), abstracts are “brief summaries of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (p.126). Similarly, Swales and Feak (1994) claim that RP abstracts “consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences” (p. 210). The American Psychological Association (APA, 2008) states that abstracts “allow readers to survey the contents of an article quickly” (p. 12). Swales (1990) and Swales and Feak (1994) explain that there are different kinds of RP and RA abstracts: informative and indicative, structured and unstructured. As regards linguistic features, these authors specify that abstracts are characterized by the use of full sentences, past tense and impersonal passive, the absence of negatives, and the avoidance of abbreviation and jargon. Concerning tense usage, they state that conclusions tend to be written in present, opening sentences in present or present perfect, and sentences describing results usually show tense variation.

Hubbuch (1996) and Swales and Feak (1994) are among the most renowned researchers and scholars who have analysed the structure of abstracts in academic papers. However, it is doubtful whether many academic abstracts have been compared across fields. 

It is imperative for student writers to learn how to write abstracts properly, following academic conventions. A good abstract can enable them to effectively attract readers to continue reading their productions. The present paper aims at providing a comparative analysis of four different abstracts, two from the field of education and two from the field of medicine. It is expected that an analysis like this one will enhance students’ knowledge on the writing of academic abstracts.

The analysis of the abstracts from the two articles on education, one by Wang and Smith (2013) and another one by Winke, Gass and Sydorenko (2010), revealed that both abstracts are informative, as they describe what the researchers did, and unstructured; i.e., they consist of one long and unbroken paragraph. They follow the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussions) formula but, contrary to APA’s (2008) conventions, they were not published on a separate sheet between the title and the first page of the body of the paper. This deviation may be explained by the fact that these are RAs and not RPs and, as such, changes in format may be due to publishing restrictions. The APA (2008) also stipulates that the word “Abstract” be centred and unformatted; a convention which has not been respected in these two RAs since both abstracts lack a heading. Another inconsistency found is that none of the abstracts has been double-spaced. However, the linguistic specifications described by Swales (1990) and Swales and Feak (1994) can be clearly observed in the two abstracts of the education RAs: full sentences, past tenses, impersonal passive, absence of negatives and avoidance of abbreviations and jargon. Wang and Smith (2013) have followed the general trend on tense usage strictly as the results section of their abstract presents tense variation and the conclusion has been written in present, as it can be observed in the sample sentence “Our study also instructs us of the necessity to empower the students in some form of materials development, as students themselves are best placed for knowing their learning preferences” (p. 129). Winke, Gass and Sydorenko (2010), on their part, have decided to write the whole abstract in the past tense.

The analysis of the abstracts from the two articles on medicine, one by Cooper et al. (2011) and the other one by Deveraux et al. (2014), disclosed that both abstracts are informative, as the ones found in the articles on education, since they also depict what the researchers did. However, these ones are structured, i.e., they contain bolded headings, each one identifying the main sections in the RA. This is a deviation from APA’s (2008) rule that abstracts should be a single, double-spaced paragraph, but it should be noted that the field of medicine usually follows the conventions of the Vancouver manual. Cooper et al. and Deveraux et al. also seem to have respected the linguistic conventions mentioned by Swales (1990) and Swales and Feak (1994) as regards the use of full sentences, past tense, absence of negatives and avoidance of abbreviations. Nevertheless, some jargon is used, probably because in abstracts from the field of medicine the use of specific medical terms is necessary. An example of the use of jargon is a phrase such as “Cox regression models” (Cooper et al., 2011, p.1896). It was also noticed that although impersonal passive is sometimes used, there are several examples of sentences in active voice with the pronoun We as subject, as in “We identified serious cardiovascular events [...] from health-plan data and vital records, with end points validated by medical-record review” (Cooper et al., 2011, p.1896). Concerning tense usage, both the results and conclusion sections in the abstracts by Cooper et al. and Deveraux et al. have been written in past tenses, with only one exception in the conclusion of the former, in which the first conditional is used.

A clear difference observed between the education and the medicine abstracts is the fact that the latter are heavily loaded with data supporting the results reported by the authors. Abbreviations are also used in these abstracts but they are always explained the first time they are mentioned. Of note, a second observable difference between both fields is the position of the abstracts within the RA: whereas in the medicine RAs they have been typed on a separate page, in the education RAs they appear right below the title and are directly followed by the first heading.

All in all it could be stated that the four abstracts under analysis comply with the rules described by Swales (1990), Swales and Feak (1994) and the APA (2008). They are all informative, they look to the past, they follow the IMRAD formula and they respect the linguistic features usually found in abstracts. The main distinguishing characteristic is in terms of structure: the abstracts from the field of education are unstructured but the ones from the field of medicine display a clear structure with highlighted headings. As mentioned above, the abstracts on medicine appear on a separate page whereas the ones on education are embedded into the RA as any other section, probably due to publishing restrictions, and partially deviate from APA’s (2008) standards as regards format. Despite these minor differences, it might be safe to assert that the authors of the four abstracts mostly respect the conventions of the fields they belong to.

References

American Psychological Association. (2008). Publication Manual (5th ed.).Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Cooper, W. O., Habel, L.A., Sox, C. M., Chan, K. A., Arbogast, P. G., Cheetham, T. C.,… Ray, W. A. (2011). DHD drugs and serious cardiovascular events in children and young adults. New England Journal of Medicine. 365 (20), 1896-1904. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1110212

Devereaux, P.J., Mrkobrada, M., Sessler, D.I., Leslie, K., Alonso-Coello, P., Kurz, A.,… Yusuf, S. (2014). Aspirin in patients undergoing noncardiac surgery. The New England Journal of Medicine. [e-published ahead of print]. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1401105

Hubbuch, S. M. (1996). Writing research papers across the curriculum. (4th ed.). Harcourt Brace: Fort Worth, TX.

Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings (Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Harbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

Wang, S., & Smith, S. (2013). Reading and grammar learning through mobile phones. Language Learning & Technology, 17(3), 117–134. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2013/wangsmith.pdf

Winke, P., Gass, S. & Sydorenko, T. (2010). The effects of captioning videos used for foreign language listening activities. Language Learning & Technology,14(1), 65–86. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol14num1/winkegasssydorenko.pdf