IML 605 [ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING]

CHAPTER 9: ABSTRACTS

Introduction

In today digital age, information is growing at a very rapid pace. New information is

created every minute making it more difficult for individuals or researchers to locate and retrieve

the right information that suit their needs and requirement. Finding materials such as journal,

articles, conference proceedings, book, dissertation, and etc. may possibly take time because of

the information explosion that we are dealing with in this era. Nevertheless, abstract can help

quicken the process as it provides representation of the actual documents. Normally users want

an easy shortcut where they don’t have to read the entire documents. They want a brief summary

about the documents and then only they will decide whether or not the documents worth reading.

They read the 150 words abstract to see whether or not the documents meet their needs or

requirements: if yes they will retrieve and read the complete document. But if the document

doesn’t, then they will forget it and continue the search.

Types of Abstracts

There are 4 types of abstracts discuss in this book which has different technique in

describing the documents they represent. Indicative abstracts or descriptive disclose main ideas

and reveal important information that can be found in the document. For example: “The natural

habitat of a Panda in China was determined and reported in this article.” Basically, this type of

abstracts only discusses about the document topic in general and surface level as it doesn’t go in

depth.

An informative abstracts give users a specific data about the document it represent. For

example: “Wild pandas live only in remote, mountainous regions in central China and there are

only about 1,000 giant pandas left in the wild.” “An informative abstract tries to presents as

much quantitative and qualitative data as possible.” (Cleveland, Donald B. & Cleveland, Ana D,

2013, p. 130).

A critical abstract is an editorial judgement regarding the document. For example: “The

report does not include the years of which the facts are given and doesn’t have picture for readers

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IML 605 [ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING]

to understand the natural habitat of Panda.” This type of abstracts is least preferred because it can

contain bias opinion of the editorial or abstractors.

The last type of abstracts is telegraphic abstracts. It is called that way because of it’s

describe the document content in very short word. For example: “Panda natural habitat in

China.”

Categorizing Abstracts by Purpose

Abstract can be classified by its purpose. There are three purposes which are: discipline

oriented, mission-oriented, or slanted. If the abstract is written for one particular area of

knowledge such as geometry it is known as discipline oriented. When it is written to support

application activities that may or may not be interdisciplinary in nature, it is a mission oriented

abstract. A slanted abstract is when an abstractor only highlight partial topic being discussed on

the documents.

Categorizing Abstracts by Author

There are three main people who can write an abstracts: author of the document, subject

specialist, and abstractors. These three groups of people have their own advantage and

disadvantages in writing abstracts. It is much more ideal for the author of the document itself to

write their abstracts because they are much more familiar with the subject being discussed and it

will also be cost-efficient as there is no additional charge. Expert subject specialist can produce

excellent and high quality abstracts if they have proper training. When abstractors write abstracts

they create a very concise abstracts that suitable and fulfil reader demands.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, an abstract is a concise summary of a document that is written in less than

150 words. There are four types of abstracts which are: indicative, informative, critical, and

telegraphic. Besides that there also a structured abstract that has a set of sub headings and the

abstractors can fills in the blanks. In addition, abstracts can also be categorized by purpose and

author. It is very important to understand these fundamentals information about abstracts before

we continue to learn on how to make one.

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