Writing A Sexier Research Abstract:

Making Research In Life Science More Discoverable

PF Anderson, Enriching Scholarship, May 5, 2016

Why would you want a sexier abstract?

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Why would you want a sexier abstract?“Citations, according to the conventional wisdom, are the glue that binds a research paper to the body of knowledge in a particular field and a measure of the paper's importance. So what fraction of the world's vast scientific literature is cited at least once? Seventy percent? Eighty percent? Guess again.” David P. Hamilton. Publishing by -- and for? -- the Numbers. Science, 250:1331-2, 1990.

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Why would you want a sexier abstract? Charles A. Schwartz. The Rise and Fall of Uncitedness. College & Research Libraries, January 1997, 19-29.

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Uncitedness Rates

No Disaggregation Articles Only

Physical Sciences 47% 22%

Social Sciences 75% 48%

Humanities 98% 93%

exciting, stimulating, interesting, appealing, intriguing, slick, red-

hot

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What would a sexy abstract look like?

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Before you start

Who is your primary audience?

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Who is your secondary audience?

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Who is the audience for the abstract?

A lot more people than you’ve been thinking about

Who is the audience for the abstract?“This is important, because the abstract is all that many people see,” wrote Loder. “The information it contains about the study helps people decide if they should retrieve the full article.”

Who is publishing the article?What are their rules for abstracts?

Is the journal open or closed?

What is their target audience?

How different or similar is it to your ideal audience?

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Planning strategy

What are the most important ideas?

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… for which audience?

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What are the most common words for them?

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What are the MeSH Terms for those concepts?

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Let’s find out …

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Let’s do it!

Start in Pubmed

Go to the MeSH Database

Example: Osteogenesis

Example: Osteogenesis

Example: Osteogenesis

MeSH Browserhttps://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html

More about MeSHhttps://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/authors.html

Yale MeSH Analyzer

http://mesh.med.yale.edu/help

KNALIJ.com

ContactPF Anderson

@pfanderson

<pfa@umich.edu>