EDITOR’S NOTE: Creating Engaging Abstracts For The Journal Of Astronomy & Earth Sciences Education

Abstract

The crafting of journal article abstracts is a consistent weakness among authors across many disciplines. Far too many abstracts serve as brief “teasers” and fail to comprehensively provide a summary of the research. Abstracts that result in the largest number of article citations are those that follow a simple writing formula that starts with a broad description of the field and highlights what is as yet unsatisfactorily examined in the existing literature. The middle section provides the research question, a description of the study-participants, and the research methods used. Finally, desirable, comprehensive abstracts that present a summary of the paper include illustrative results and a short statement of evidence-based conclusions.