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2) What key information is missing in the Abstract below?
The aim of our research was to discover whether it is possible to transform recycled
plastic into pure 100% gold. Background information . This paper describes how
recycled plastic provided by local industries was fused and then mixed with an
innovative mixture of water and air. Tests were then carried out over a six-month
period. Future work will involve repeating the same tests to see whether platinum
can be produced with the same procedure.

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The first fourteen subsections of this chapter explain what an Abstract is, what

tenses and style to choose (Sects. 13.8 and 13.9 ), and what the various types of
Abstracts are (structured, extended, video). Sections 13.15 – 13.19 explain how to
begin an abstract, what to include and how to raise its impact. Sections 13.20 – 13.22
outline some typical pitfalls of badly written abstracts. Sections 13.23 – 13.24 high-
light how abstracts may vary from discipline to discipline. Sections 13.25 – 13.28

discuss abstracts for review papers and conferences. The final section ( 13.29 ) indi-
cates how editors and reviewers evaluate an abstract.
Note that the sources of the many abstracts mentioned in this chapter can be found
in the References.

13.2 What is an abstract?

An Abstract is like a mini paper. It accurately summarizes all the sections of your
paper. It will be judged in isolation from the accompanying paper. Abstracts are
sometimes called Summaries.

Abstracts are found before a full article in a journal, standalone in databases of
abstracts, and in conference programs.

The structure of an abstract and its length will depend on the journal or conference,
as well as on your field of research. Make sure you read their instructions to authors

( 13.7 ) before you begin writing.
An Abstract generally answers at last the first three of the following questions, and

generally in the following order. You can use the answers to these questions to struc-
ture your Abstract.

• Why did I carry out this project? Why am I writing this paper?

• What did you I, and how?