How to Write an Abstract

The abstract should be written at the stage of the author's research, as it summarizes the research activity. This can help to highlight the key sentences from each section as they are written and place them in the same order as they are in the paper. Then all you have to do is edit these sentences in order to write the abstract.

The abstract, or the author's summary, is that the reader's acquaintance with the paper begins. A person who reads your paper should understand why you have held the research, how the research was held, what result has been received and why your paper is so important. Under any circumstances the abstract should not include paper elements, but it should be unique. However, it is permissible to include some of the most important data from the paper.

The abstract should be informative. The purpose of the paper, the main problem that the author proposes to solve, solutions proposed by him/her, the course and methodology of the research for solutions should be clear from the abstract.

The four-part structure presented below, shall serve as a basic guide of  abstract writing. By following these tips, your abstract shall be well structured and contain all necessary elements. There are four basic questions you need to answer:

1. What problem have you studied and why is it important? Here you can provide some background of the research, and / or a specific hypothesis. This section may consist of two or three sentences.
   2. What methods have you used to study this problem? Depending on the type of research (theoretical, empirical), you need to list research methods. The methods section should be brief.
   3. What are main results of the research? When describing your results, try to focus on two or three key achievements and conclusions.
   4. What conclusions have you drawn and what are the prospects for further research? In this section, you need to talk about what is new in the results obtained? What is the significance of your results? Are there any apps? When writing this section, do not indicate that the research is still ahead, and your ideas require further discussion in the future. Let a reader know if the research will or should lead to a change in scientific thinking or practice. In particular, what knowledge gap has been filled by this research?

It should be noted that in the abstract you can not use phrases that begin with the words "The article is devoted to..." or "The article is considered...". The abstract should cover not only the subject of the research. The subject of the research should already follow from the title of the paper.

Thus, the author's summary should be informative, i.e. without general words,  you should write the essence and not waffle. The abstract should be meaningful, reflect results of the research and the essence of the article itself. As for the volume of the abstract, it is necessary to adhere to the golden mean: make the abstarct compact, but not short. 200-250 words will be quite enough for the informative, meaningful, original author's abstract written in a competent scientific language.