An abstract is a concise summary of a research paper, about 250 words long. An abstract must be fully self-contained, without further reference to outside sources or to the actual paper. The abstract must make sense by itself and not be an excerpted passage.

The usual sections in a structured abstract are the Background, (the purpose of the study and research question that motivated the study) Methods, (how they addressed the research question/ problem, Results, and Conclusions. Other headings with similar meanings may be used (eg, Introduction instead of Background and Findings instead of Results).

Abstracts precede papers in research journals. In journals, the abstract allows readers to quickly grasp the purpose and major ideas of a paper and lets other researchers know whether reading the entire paper will be worthwhile.