This situation is not uncommon; in my case, I have to submit abstract for conference in September by the end of January already. But the problem is I have no results yet. I'm pretty sure that in those 8 months I will get pretty interesting results. But..

How to write smooth abstract without reporting results?

I started something along these lines:

1. This and this is an important factor ...
2. However, few studies on this topic have been done ...
3. In our study, we compare this and this
4. ??

Now the problem comes in point 4, where I should report some results.

• How should I go around that?
• What formulations should I use?
• Shall I speak in present, future, or past tense? The studies are usualy written in past tense like "we analysed, we compared...", but in this case I would tend to present tense.

Thank you for your help. Examples are welcome!

P.S.: this is an interesting discussion however didn't give me actual guidelines of how to write it.