LibParlor Contributor, Allison Hosier, discusses how writing an abstract first can help clarify what you’re writing about.

Allison Hosier is an given information Literacy Librarian at the University at Albany, SUNY. She’s got published and presented on research pertaining to practical applications associated with ACRL Framework for Information Literacy included in information literacy instruction. Her current scientific studies are focused on examining the metaconcept that scientific studies are both a task and a topic of study. Follow her on Twitter at @ahosier.

In 2012, I attended a series of workshops for brand new faculty on the best way to write your first peer-reviewed article, step-by-step. These workshops were loosely centered on Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher.

Our first assignment? Write the abstract for the article.

These tips was shocking for me together with other scholars that are new the area during the time. Write the abstract first? Wasn’t that the right part that was designed to come last? Just how can the abstract is written by you if you don’t even understand yet exactly what your article will probably be about?

I have since come to regard this as the most useful piece of writing advice We have ever received. So much so that I constantly attempt to spread the phrase to many other scholars that I meet, both new and experienced. However, whenever I share this piece of wisdom, I realize that I am generally regarded with polite skepticism, especially by people who strongly believe that your introduction (not as your abstract) is most beneficial written at the end associated with the process in the place of at the start. This is certainly fair. What realy works for just one person won’t necessarily work with another. But i do want to share why I think starting with the abstract is useful.

Structuring Your Abstract

“For me, you start with the abstract during the very beginning has the added bonus of helping me establish early on precisely what question I’m trying to answer and exactly why it’s worth answering.”

For every single piece of scholarly or professional writing I have ever written (including that 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 the fact that an abstract will include five parts, paraphrased below:

• The motivation: exactly why is this research important?
• The situation statement: What problem are you wanting to solve?
• Approach: How do you go about solving the problem?
• Results: the thing that was the takeaway that is main?
• Conclusions: do you know the implications?

To be clear, when I say that I write the abstract at the start of the writing process, I mean the very beginning. Generally, it’s the first thing i really do after I have a notable idea I think could be worth pursuing, even before I make an effort to do a literature review. This differs from Belcher’s recommendation, that is to write the abstract while the first rung on the ladder of a revision rather than the first rung on the ladder associated with the writing process but i believe the advantages that Belcher identifies (a chance to clarify and distill your thinking) are the same in any case. For me, you start with the abstract during the very beginning has the added bonus of helping me establish early on exactly what question I’m trying to answer and why it is worth answering. In addition find it helpful to start thinking as to what my approach will soon 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 talk about the outcome and conclusions? You can’t know very well what those is supposed to be until such time you’ve actually done the study.

“…writing the abstract first commits you to nothing. It’s just a real way to prepare and clarify your thinking.”

It’s true that the results as well as the conclusions you draw until you have some real data to work with from them will not actually be known. But remember that research should possess some sort of prediction or hypothesis. Stating what you think the total results will be in early stages is a means of forming your hypothesis. Thinking by what the implications should be in the event the hypothesis is proven helps you think about why your projects shall matter.

Exactly what if you’re wrong? Imagine if the total results are very different? What if other areas of your quest change as you choose to go along? What if you need to change focus or change your approach?

You can do all of those things. In fact, We have done all of those things, even after writing the abstract first. Because writing the abstract first commits you to nothing. It’s just a real way to prepare and clarify your thinking.

An Illustration

Listed here is an early draft associated with abstract for “Research is a task and a Subject of Study: A Proposed Metaconcept and Its Practical Application,” an article I wrote that 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 know but students often fail to observe how the skills and concepts they learn as part of an information literacy lesson or course might apply to anything other than the immediate research assignment.

Problem: A reason for this might be that information literacy librarians focus on teaching research as a procedure, an approach that was well-supported by the Standards. Further, the process librarians teach is one associated primarily with only one genre of research—the college research essay. The Framework allows more flexibility but librarians might not be using it yet. Approach: Librarians might reap the benefits of teaching research not only as an activity, but as a subject 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 several types of research will help make sure they are alert to the many forms research usually takes and could improve transferability of data literacy skills and concepts.

Conclusions: Finding ways to portray research as not just a task but in addition as a topic of study is much more on the basis of the new Framework.

This is probably the time that is first looked at this since I originally wrote it. It’s a little messy and while I recognize this article I eventually wrote in the information here, my focus did shift significantly when I worked and started initially to receive feedback, first from colleagues and mentors, then from peer reviewers and editors.

For comparison, this is actually the abstract that appears into the preprint associated with article, that is scheduled to be published in 2019 january:

Information literacy instruction based on the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education tends to give attention to preliminary research skills. However, scientific studies are not just an art and craft but additionally a subject of study. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for advanced schooling opens the door to integrating the study of research into information literacy instruction via its acknowledgement associated with nature that is contextual of. This article introduces the metaconcept that scientific paper writing service studies are both an action and an interest of study. The use of this metaconcept in core LIS literature is discussed and a model for incorporating the scholarly study of research into information literacy instruction is recommended.

So obviously the published abstract is a complete lot shorter given that 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. This article I wound up with had not been the article I started with. That’s okay.

Then how come writing the abstract first useful if you’re just going to throw it out later? Since it focuses your research and writing through the very start. I only knew that in reading Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, I had found significant parallels between their work and information literacy when I first came up with the idea for my article. I needed to create about this but I only had a vague sense of the thing I desired to say. Writing the abstract first forced me to articulate my ideas in a way that made clear not merely why this topic was of great interest to me but how it may be significant to your profession all together.