LibParlor Contributor, Allison Hosier, discusses how writing an abstract first can help clarify what you’re currently talking about.
Allison Hosier is an given information Literacy Librarian during the University at Albany, SUNY. She’s got published and presented on research linked to practical applications for the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy as part of information literacy instruction. Her current research is focused on examining the metaconcept that research is both a task and an interest of study. Follow her on Twitter at @ahosier.
In 2012, I attended a few workshops for new faculty on how best to write your first peer-reviewed article, step-by-step. These workshops were loosely according to Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher.
Our first assignment? Write the abstract for the article.
This advice was shocking to me while the other new scholars in the space at the time. Write the abstract first? Wasn’t that the right part that has been likely to come last? How do the abstract is written by you in the event that you don’t even know yet exactly what your article will likely be about?
I have since come to regard this as the most useful written piece advice I have ever received. So much so 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 discover that I am generally regarded with polite skepticism, especially by people who strongly feel that your introduction (much less your abstract) is the best written during the end for the process instead of at the beginning. This might be fair. That which works for one person won’t necessarily work with another. But I want to share why I think beginning with the abstract is beneficial.
Structuring Your Abstract
“For me, starting with the abstract during the very beginning has got the added bonus of helping me establish early on precisely what question I’m trying to answer and why it is worth answering.”
For every piece of scholarly or professional writing I have ever written (including this one!), I started by writing the abstract. In doing this, I follow a format suggested by Philip Koopman of Carnegie Mellon University, that we happened upon through a Google search. His recommendation is that an abstract will include five parts, paraphrased below:
- The motivation: exactly why is this research important?
- The issue statement: What problem are you currently attempting to solve?
- Approach: How did you go about solving the problem?
- Results: that which was the takeaway that is main?
- Conclusions: Exactly write my paper for me what 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 is the very first thing i really do once I have a notable idea i do believe could be worth pursuing, even before I try to do a literature review. This differs from Belcher’s recommendation, that will be to write the abstract whilst the step that is first of revision as opposed to the initial step for the writing process but i believe the advantages that Belcher identifies (an opportunity to clarify and distill your ideas) are the same 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 as to what my approach will likely be, at the least as a whole terms, I have a sense of how I’m going to go about answering my big question before I start so.
So now you’re probably wondering: if this right part comes at the very beginning of this writing process, how can you write on the outcomes and conclusions? You can’t know very well what those are going to be until you’ve actually done the investigation.
“…writing the abstract commits that are first to nothing. It’s just a way to prepare and clarify your thinking.”
It’s true that your particular results and also the conclusions you draw from their website will likely not actually be known and soon you have some real data to utilize. But remember that research should possess some type of hypothesis or prediction. Stating everything you think the results will likely be in the beginning is a means of forming your hypothesis. Thinking in what the implications are going to be in case the hypothesis is proven can help you think of why your projects shall matter.
Exactly what if you’re wrong? Let’s say the total email address details are very different? Let’s say other aspects of your quest change as you go along? What if you wish to change focus or replace your approach?
You can certainly do all those things. In reality, We have done all those plain things, even after writing the abstract first. Because writing the abstract commits that are first to nothing. It’s just a real way to organize and clarify your thinking.
An Illustration
Here is an early draft regarding the abstract for “Research is an action and a Subject of Study: A Proposed Metaconcept and Its Practical Application,” an article I wrote which was recently accepted by College & Research Libraries:
Motivation: As librarians, the transferability of data literacy across one’s academic, professional, and personal life is not difficult to understand but students often fail to see how the skills and concepts they learn as part of an information literacy lesson or course might apply to anything other than the research assignment that is immediate.
Problem: A reason because of this could be that information literacy librarians focus on teaching research as an ongoing process, an approach which was well-supported because of the Standards. Further, the procedure librarians teach is certainly one associated primarily with just one genre of research—the college research essay. The Framework allows more flexibility but librarians may not be using it yet. Approach: Librarians might reap the benefits of teaching research not just as a task, but as a topic of study, as it is done with writing in composition courses where students first study a genre of writing and its particular rhetorical context before trying to write themselves.
Results: Having students study various kinds of research can help make them aware of the numerous forms research might take and could improve transferability of data literacy skills and concepts.
Conclusions: Finding how to portray research as not just a task but in addition as a subject of study is much more in line with the new Framework.
This might be probably the time that is first looked at this since I originally wrote it. It’s a little messy and while I recognize the content I eventually wrote when you look at the information here, my focus did shift significantly as I worked and started to receive feedback, first from colleagues and mentors, then from peer reviewers and editors.
For comparison, here is the abstract that appears when you look at the preprint associated with article, which is scheduled to be published in 2019 january:
Information literacy instruction on the basis of the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for advanced schooling has a tendency to give attention to preliminary research skills. However, scientific studies are not only a skill but in addition an interest of study. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education opens the door to integrating the research of research into information literacy instruction via its acknowledgement for the nature that is contextual of. The metaconcept is introduced by this article that scientific studies are both an activity and a topic of study. The use of this metaconcept in core LIS literature is discussed and a model for incorporating the study of research into information literacy instruction is suggested.
So obviously the published abstract is a complete lot shorter as it needed seriously to fit within C&RL’s guidelines. It also does not stick to the recommended format exactly however it does reflect an evolution in thinking that happened within the writing and revision process. The content I wound up with had not been the content I started with. That’s okay.
Then exactly why is writing the abstract first useful it out later if you’re just going to throw? Since it focuses your research and writing from the start that is very. Whenever I first came up with all the idea for my article, I only knew that in reading Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, I experienced found significant parallels between their work and information literacy. I desired to create about it but I only had a vague feeling of the things I wanted to say. Writing the abstract first forced me to articulate my ideas in a real way that made clear not merely why this topic was of interest if you ask me but how it can be significant to the profession all together.