Abstract
All journal articles require an abstract, a concise summary of what the manuscript contains, including conclusions. The abstract is more than an introduction to the research paper, it provides an overview of the paper and tells the reader why it's important, what it is, what is means to the reader and for society or the wider researcher area of the subject.
Reinvention asks that ALL manuscripts be submitted with an abstract, up to 200 words long, and not less than 100 words long. This should be placed at the beginning of the paper so that the reader has an understanding of whether they want to read the whole paper. Writing a good abstract can be as difficult given the word constraint. Follow this guide to support you write a useful and well-structured abstract.
There are various techniques you can use to write an effective abstract, the preferred structure for Reinvention journal is the why, what, so what, now what structure. This provides a good understanding of the research and helps make it more accessible to readers not from the subject area of the paper.
Go through your article and summarise each paragraph in one line, use all these lines to form the basis of your abstract. Don't use the lines word for word and just run them together, but use them to shape your abstract and fulfil the why, what, so what and now what. This technique means that there is a logical chronology to your abstract, which matches your main paper, and ensures that your abstract doesn't suddenly contain new information not included in your article. To help shape you abstract, you should also read the Structuring your Article section and once you have you article complete using this method, you can form the basis of your abstract.
One important thing to remember about an abstract is that it shouldn't be a 'teaser' like the blurb on the back of a book. If you find yourself writing something like 'What were the exciting results of my work? Read on to find out …' then you probably want to rethink. An abstract should be a summary of your whole paper – what you did, why you did it, how you did it, what your results were and where your research is going from here.
Keywords
Keywords need to be both specific and informative.
You will probably also be asked to come up with some keywords if you are writing an academic article. These are words that people will be able to use on internet or database searches to find your article and they may be used to allocate reviewers to your paper. Again, the trick is to be concise and informative. Try to think of the sort of things people would search for in an index or if they were searching for your work on Google – for example, if they're interested in colloid stability then 'colloid' is going to be a better word than 'chemistry'.
Keywords (and abstracts and titles) are becoming more and more important as readers access papers more on-line than in hard copy. Keywords, titles and abstracts are the window to your research and must be accurate, interesting and relevant in order to ensure that (the right) people read your work. Make every word count and remember, this may be the only part of your research people read (particularly if you get it wrong!).