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

Allison Hosier is an Information Literacy Librarian in the University at Albany, SUNY. She has presented and published on research linked to practical applications associated with the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy included in information literacy instruction. Her current scientific studies are focused on exploring the metaconcept that scientific studies are both an activity and an interest of study. Follow her on Twitter at @ahosier.

In 2012, I attended a few workshops for brand new faculty about how to write your first article that is peer-reviewed step-by-step. These workshops were loosely based on Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher.

Our first assignment? Write the abstract for the article.

This advice was shocking in my experience in addition to other new scholars in the area at that time. Write the abstract first? Wasn’t that the part that was designed to come last? Just how can you write the abstract in the event that you don’t even comprehend yet exacltly what the article will be about?

We have since come to regard this as the most piece that is useful of advice We 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 little bit of wisdom, I discover that I am generally regarded with polite skepticism, especially by those who strongly believe that your introduction (much less your abstract) is the best written in the final end regarding the process in place of at the beginning. This might be fair. That which works for just one person won’t necessarily work for another. But i do want to share why i believe you start with the abstract is beneficial.

Structuring Your Abstract

“For me, you start with the abstract in the very beginning gets the added bonus of helping me establish in early stages exactly what question I’m trying to resolve and why it’s worth answering.”

For almost any piece of scholarly or writing that is professional have ever written (including that one!), I started by writing the abstract. In doing so, I follow a format suggested by Philip Koopman of Carnegie Mellon University, which I happened upon through a Google search. His recommendation is that an abstract should include five parts, paraphrased below:

• The motivation: Why is this research important?
• The problem statement: What problem are you currently trying to solve?
• Approach: How did you go about solving the issue?
• Results: What was the takeaway that is main?
• Conclusions: which are the implications?

To be clear, whenever I say that I write the abstract at the beginning of the writing process, after all the very beginning. Generally, it’s the first thing i actually do before I try to do a literature review after I have an idea I think might be worth pursuing, even. This differs from Belcher’s recommendation, which will be to write the abstract once the step that is first of revision as opposed to the first step for the writing process but i do believe the huge benefits that Belcher identifies (a way to clarify and distill your opinions) are exactly the same either way. For me personally, you start with the abstract during the very beginning has got the added bonus of helping me establish early on just what question I’m trying to resolve and exactly why it’s worth answering. I also find it beneficial to start thinking by what my approach would be, at the very least in general 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 the writing process, how will you come up with the results and conclusions? You can’t know what those is going to be before you’ve actually done the research.

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

It’s true that the results as well as the conclusions you draw from their store will likely not actually be known until such time you involve some real data to do business with. But keep in mind that research should involve some kind of prediction or hypothesis. Stating everything you think the total results will be in the beginning is a means of forming your hypothesis. Thinking by what the implications will undoubtedly be in the event the hypothesis is proven helps you think of why your work shall matter.

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

You certainly can do all of those things. In reality, I have done all those things, even with writing the abstract first. Because writing the abstract first commits you to nothing. It’s just a real way to organize and clarify your thinking.

An Example

Let me reveal an draft that is early of abstract for “Research is an action and an interest of Study: A Proposed Metaconcept and its own Practical Application,” an article I wrote which was recently accepted by College & Research Libraries:

Motivation: As librarians, the transferability of information literacy across one’s academic, professional, and private life is easy to grasp but students often are not able to observe how the skills and concepts they learn included in 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 a process, a strategy that has been well-supported by the Standards. Further, the procedure librarians teach is certainly one associated primarily with only 1 genre of research—the college research essay. The Framework allows more flexibility but librarians may well not be using it yet. Approach: Librarians might reap the benefits of teaching research not only as a task, but as an interest of study, as it is through with writing in composition courses where students first study a genre of writing and its particular rhetorical context prior to 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 only an activity but additionally as a subject of study is more in line with the new Framework.

This can be most likely the time that is first looked over this since I originally wrote it. It’s a little messy and as I worked and began to receive feedback, first from colleagues and mentors, then from peer reviewers and editors while I recognize the article I eventually wrote in the information here, my focus did shift significantly.

For comparison, here is the abstract that appears in the preprint associated with the article, which is scheduled to be published in January 2019:

Information literacy instruction in line with the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education has a tendency to concentrate on basic research skills. However, research is not merely an art but also an interest of study. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education opens the door to integrating the study of research into information literacy instruction via its acknowledgement associated with contextual nature of research. This short article introduces the metaconcept that scientific studies are both a task 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 suggested.

So obviously the published abstract is a complete lot shorter because it had a need to fit within C&RL’s guidelines. In addition does not follow the recommended format exactly but it does reflect an evolution in thinking that happened included in the revision and writing process. This article I ended up with was not the article I started with. That’s okay.

Then why is writing the abstract first useful it out later if you’re just going to throw? Given that 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 I only had a vague sense of what I wanted to say about it but. Writing the abstract first forced me to articulate my ideas in a way that made clear not only why this topic was of interest for me but how it could be significant to the profession as a whole.