Abstracts are a concise summary of a paper. The layout of an abstract may differ between disciplines and specific requirements of conferences and journals--such as length. Typically abstracts are between 150-300 words. Below are the basic components of an abstract and what questions they're answering.
Abstract Components
- Motivation or Problem Statement - What were you trying to accomplish through this research? Why did you write this paper in the first place?
- Methods/Approach/Framework/Research - What did you do to get the results/findings?
- Example: Compared French and Japanese photography from the 19th century?
- Results/Findings - What is the outcome of the methods/research done?
- Conclusions/Larger Implications - What do these results mean?
This often includes a brief description at the top about what will be discussed and why it was discussed, any frameworks used, the main arguments in the paper, and a brief description of the conclusion(s).
