LibParlor Contributor, Allison Hosier, discusses how writing an abstract first can help clarify what you are writing about essay writing service.
Allison Hosier is an given information Literacy Librarian in the University at Albany, SUNY. She has published and presented on research related to practical applications regarding the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy included in information literacy instruction. Her current research is focused on exploring the metaconcept that research is both an activity and a topic of study. Follow her on Twitter at @ahosier.
In 2012, I attended a series of workshops for brand new faculty about how to write your first article that is peer-reviewed step-by-step. These workshops were loosely predicated on Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher.
Our first assignment? Write the abstract for our article.
These tips was shocking in my experience in addition to other new scholars in the room at the time. Write the abstract first? Wasn’t that the right part that has been expected to come last? How do the abstract is written by you if you don’t even understand yet what your article will probably be about?
I have since come to regard this as the most piece that is useful of advice I have ever received. To such an extent that I meet, both new and experienced that I constantly try to spread the word to other scholars. However, whenever I share this piece of wisdom, I find that I am generally regarded with polite skepticism, especially by people who strongly feel that your introduction (notably less your abstract) is better written during the final end associated with the process rather than at the start. It is fair. That which works for one person won’t work for another necessarily. But I want to share why i believe beginning with the abstract is advantageous.
Structuring Your Abstract
“For me, beginning with the abstract during the very beginning has the added bonus of helping me establish early on precisely what question I’m trying to answer and exactly why it’s worth answering.”
For almost any piece of scholarly or professional writing I have ever written (including that one!), I started by writing the abstract. In performing this, a format is followed by me suggested by Philip Koopman of Carnegie Mellon University, that we happened upon through a Google search. His recommendation is that an abstract should include five parts, paraphrased below:
- The motivation: how come this research important?
- The difficulty statement: What problem are you wanting to solve?
- Approach: How do you go about solving the difficulty?
- Results: What was the main takeaway?
- Conclusions: which are the implications?
To be clear, whenever I say I mean the very beginning that I write the abstract at the beginning of the writing process. Generally, it’s first thing I do before I try to do a literature review after I have an idea I think might be worth pursuing, even. This differs from Belcher’s recommendation, that will be to write the abstract since the step that is first of revision as opposed to the first rung on the ladder of this writing process but i do believe the huge benefits that Belcher identifies (an opportunity to clarify and distill your opinions) are identical either way. Me establish early on exactly what question I’m trying to answer and why it’s worth answering for me, starting with the abstract at the very beginning has the added bonus of helping. I also think it is helpful to start thinking in what my approach may be, at the very least as a whole terms, before I start and so I have a sense of how I’m going to go about answering my big question.
So now you’re probably wondering: if this part comes at the very beginning of the writing process, how could you write on the outcome and conclusions? You can’t know what those is supposed to be and soon you’ve actually done the study.
“…writing the abstract commits that are first to nothing. It’s just a way to prepare and clarify your thinking.”
It’s true that the results while the conclusions you draw from their website will not actually be known and soon you involve some real data to work well with. But keep in mind that research should involve some kind of hypothesis or prediction. Stating everything you think the total results is supposed to be early on is an easy method of forming your hypothesis. Thinking by what the implications will likely be if for example the hypothesis is proven makes it possible to think about why your work will matter.
Exactly what if you’re wrong? Let’s say the total email address details are very different? Imagine if other components of your research change as you are going along? Imagine if you need to change focus or change your approach?
You could do all those things. In reality, We have done all of those plain things, even with writing the abstract first. Because writing the abstract first commits you to nothing. It’s just a way to arrange and clarify your thinking.
A Good Example
Here is an draft that is early of abstract for “Research is an action and a topic of Study: A Proposed Metaconcept and its own Practical Application,” an article I wrote which was recently accepted by College & Research Libraries:
Motivation: As librarians, the transferability of information literacy across one’s academic, professional, and private life is easy to grasp but students often neglect to observe how the skills and concepts they learn included in an information literacy lesson or course might apply to anything aside from the research assignment that is immediate.
Problem: a good reason for this may be that information literacy librarians give attention to teaching research as an activity, a strategy that has been well-supported because of the Standards. Further, the process librarians teach is the one associated primarily with only one genre of research—the college research essay. The Framework allows more flexibility but librarians may not yet be using it. Approach: Librarians might benefit from teaching research not only as a task, but as a topic of study, as is through with writing in composition courses where students first study a genre of writing and its rhetorical context before attempting to write themselves.
Results: Having students study different types of research will help cause them to conscious of the many forms research might take and might improve transferability of information literacy skills and concepts.
Conclusions: Finding approaches to portray research as not just an activity but also as a topic of study is much more on the basis of the new Framework.
This can be possibly the time that is first looked at this since I originally wrote it. It’s a little messy and as I worked and began to receive feedback, first from colleagues and mentors, then from peer reviewers and editors while I recognize the article I eventually wrote in the information here, my focus did shift significantly.
For comparison, here is the abstract that appears into the preprint of the article, which will be scheduled to be published in 2019 january:
Information literacy instruction on the basis of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education tends to give attention to basic research skills. However, research is not just an art but in addition a subject of study. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for advanced schooling opens the door to integrating the study of research into information literacy instruction via its acknowledgement of this contextual nature of research. This article introduces the metaconcept that scientific studies are both an activity and an interest of study. The effective use of this metaconcept in core LIS literature is discussed and a model for incorporating the study of research into information literacy instruction is recommended.
So obviously the published abstract is a lot shorter as it had a need to fit within C&RL’s guidelines. It does not follow the recommended format exactly however it does reflect an evolution in thinking that happened included in the writing and revision process. The article I ended up with had not been the content I started with. That’s okay.
Then how come writing the abstract first useful it out later if you’re just going to throw? As it focuses your research and writing from the very start. When I first came up with the idea for my article, I only knew that in reading Naming that which we Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, I had found significant parallels between their work and information literacy. I needed to publish I only had a vague sense of what I wanted to say about it but. Writing the abstract first forced me to articulate my ideas in a real way that made clear not only why this topic was of interest for me but how it may be significant to your profession in general.
