64
votes
Is it wrong to start your abstract with a question?
As an author, you can choose different styles for abstracts. As far as I know, the most interesting and shortest abstract ever was written in this paper, Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be ...
- 2,933
51
votes
How do researchers send unsolicited emails asking for feedback on their works?
The real answer is that they don't. I'm sorry, but I can't slice it any other way. You would need all the planets to align in order to receive an answer after such an email. You are asking someone who ...
- 371
49
votes
How do researchers send unsolicited emails asking for feedback on their works?
Essentially, you have three challenges that work against you receiving an answer to this mail:
You need to avoid your mail to appear like academic spam. Your email draft is rather good in that sense ...
- 135k
48
votes
Accepted
Is it wrong to start your abstract with a question?
As others said, this is a matter of style of convention and taste.
Compare these two abstracts:
Does every compact Hausdorff space admit a compatible metric? In this work we show that the answer ...
- 1,875
44
votes
Accepted
How strict are minimum abstract lengths in submission requirements?
Your question has 82 words, 35% more than what you claim your abstract has. If you claim that within that length, you can adequately express the content of a paper, your expectations of your audience ...
- 95.8k
40
votes
Is it wrong to start your abstract with a question?
"I will never start an abstract with questions, and I will never read this paper if it starts with questions."
These are your friend's personal opinions regarding abstracts.
If you take a moment to ...
- 3,660
34
votes
Can I send just the abstract before sending the full paper?
I recommend not to do this. If you think that a journal might be a good fit for your paper send the whole paper and if you think that it is not, do not send them the paper at all. Of course the ...
- 1,432
33
votes
Accepted
Repeating definitions in the Abstract in the Introduction?
I think the body of the paper needs the full definition. The abstract might not. If you can write it without formulas it will be easier to read and easier for tools to parse and tag. So
This paper ...
- 35.5k
32
votes
Accepted
What can you get from submitting an abstract?
You submit an abstract to a conference if you would like to give a talk there. The abstract is then used to determine whether or not you get that chance (based on how interesting/relevant/sound the ...
- 44k
28
votes
If the main idea of an article is simple enough to be meaningfully exposed in the abstract, should that be done?
This is a personal view, I suppose, and others might disagree, but the purpose of an abstract is to permit a reader to get a complete picture of the work, not an introduction or background. Those can ...
- 365k
22
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to write the abstract in more than 2 languages
Whether it's 'allowed' or not, formally speaking, is exclusively the decision of your institution. However, this is your thesis, and within reasonable parameters you can and should do with it what you ...
- 6,845
22
votes
Accepted
If the main idea of an article is simple enough to be meaningfully exposed in the abstract, should that be done?
In my field(s) [statistics, economics, finance], it's generally bad practice to introduce notation in an abstract, unless the journal is highly specialized. My suggestion is to go with the first ...
- 1,619
20
votes
Can I send just the abstract before sending the full paper?
What you want to do is usually called a pre-submission inquiry.
It is somewhat common for high-level journals in some fields, where a major hurdle is convincing the editor that your paper is relevant ...
- 61.2k
18
votes
What can you get from submitting an abstract?
Following up the comment - giving a talk is not just a CV line. For most academic researchers, access to funding to attend a conference depends on being a presenter at that conference. So giving a ...
- 6,357
16
votes
Is it wrong to start your abstract with a question?
Just some strayed thoughts:
Be cautious with reviewers who give overly dogmatic "rules of thumb" about writing. A few of those rules are reasonable and legitimate, the majority are either learned ...
- 20.9k
15
votes
Accepted
How to address in the thesis that the abstract is translated by someone
A small piece of translation like this should be clearly credited, but is not large enough that I think that it should be considered a significant piece of independent work.
As such, I think that a ...
- 188k
13
votes
Accepted
Using an abbreviation of another language in the abstract
You could refer to the German research project by acronym without referring to the full name or you could omit the acronym entirely. The former is perhaps better when the acronym is well known; the ...
- 40.7k
12
votes
Accepted
Is it bad style to include a list in an abstract?
One important thing to keep in mind is that the abstract is typically copied to various article databases, which have varying support for markup. As such, much of the formatting will not necessarily ...
- 5,243
11
votes
Accepted
Should I self-impose a word limit for a journal article abstract
Yes, you should limit yourself because the goal of the abstract is to be short.
Now, where to put the limit?
A good idea would be to look at recently published articles in this journal and note their ...
- 5,734
11
votes
Can I send just the abstract before sending the full paper?
You are not stating your discipline, which may make a difference here. In applied computer science, this would be utterly pointless - if you get any answer at all to such a request, it would be "...
- 135k
11
votes
Should we count articles (a, an, the) during word count of the abstract of a research paper?
Articles are words, so they count.
- 35.1k
11
votes
Accepted
Should a conference abstract submission contain citations if current research is an extension of other research?
I think there is already a reasonable answer, but I wanted to add my own experience in the medical field. I don't think this is quite as straightforward as @Buffy makes it out to be.
It is not ...
- 7,362
10
votes
Accepted
Can I withdraw from one conference and attend another one with the same abstract?
It is not unethical, but people will not be pleased.
usually conferences would like to have good presentations, and if yours is accepted, they would like to have it.
if it is currently under review, ...
- 13.1k
9
votes
Submitting to a journal that requires a French abstract as a non-French-speaker: how important is the French abstract?
I would not use Google Translate for this. I recently moved to France and I needed to do this a few times, and when I did a Google Translate (even a 'nice' one*) it still sounded bad to the native ...
- 1,801
9
votes
How do researchers send unsolicited emails asking for feedback on their works?
Hello Dr. X
To introduce myself, I am Y, in institute Z.
Looks good so far.
I'm sorry if this email is not convenient at this time, but my work about A is highly relevant to your work in B, so ...
- 190k
9
votes
How strict are minimum abstract lengths in submission requirements?
What I would do in this case is to submit the paper as is. Most likely, your paper will be recommended for acceptance or rejection based on its content, not on the length of the abstract. If it is ...
- 4,716
8
votes
How can an old research paper published before the Internet be made available online to prevent plagiarism?
What you propose is covered by copyright law, both the uploading and any publishing of a translation. First determine if it is a copyrighted publication. If so, ask the publisher or other copyright ...
- 365k
7
votes
Accepted
How to politely reply to adviser for his mistake
I suggest a slightly longer response than Nicole's answer that allows for a somewhat graceful exit and has less potential for coming across as reproachful between the lines:
I am not sure which ...
- 18.4k
7
votes
Do you need to define standard abbreviations like "EEG" and "fMRI" in the abstract?
Yes, define your abbreviations as per the instructions. Each reader may be familiar with all, none, or some of the techniques you mention. There is certainly a set of acronyms and terminology which ...
- 1,602
7
votes
Definitions and proofs in extended abstract(mathematics)
Before you start writing, try to create a 5-minute elevator pitch talk about your paper. Imagine you're describing the results to your friend (or actually invite a friend) and talk through the main ...
- 55.4k
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