Page 248 - English for Writing Research Papers
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The opening statement is both casual and contentious and is thus unsuitable for publication in
<name of journal> . Start by giving the aims of the paper and how they will be achieved.
Note that what the reviewer says is not in contradiction to what I outlined at the
beginning of this section (i.e. not saying The aim of the paper is to … ). She is simply
recommending that the author begin the abstract by writing something like: We
investigated the physical and mental disabilities of a sample of …
13.16 How much background information should I give?
An Abstract is not an introduction to your paper. This means that context setting
should never take up more than 25% of the whole abstract, as it probably contains
information that the reader already knows. The background information in the
abstract (fictitious) below represents about four fifths of the total abstract – this is
too much.
In the last few years 5G cellular batteries have become increasingly popular in the telecom-
munications and computer industries. Many authors have studied the various features of such
batteries and noted that the lifetime of a 5G cellular battery, in particular those used in the most
recent generations of mobile phones, may be subject to the number of times the battery is
recharged and how long it is charged for. In addition, it has been found that there is no adequate
analytical model to predict this lifetime. Such an accurate model is necessary in order for pro-
ducers and consumers alike to be able to predict how long the batteries will last and also, in
some cases, how they can be recycled. In this work, an analytical model is developed which
describes the relationship between the number of times a battery is recharged, the length of
time of each individual recharge, and the duration of the battery.
Your readers want new information, not old information. Remember that the reader
may be a referee who has to read hundreds of abstracts to decide which to include
for a conference or in a journal. He / She wants to know immediately what the topic
is and will be negatively affected if forced to wait several lines before understanding
this. Of course, you can (and should) give more background details in the
Introduction.
Also, the extract above does not describe the methodology or the results, nor what
can be concluded from the model the authors have developed. A much better solu-
tion is given below:
(1) The lifetime of a 5G cellular phone battery may be subject to the number of times the bat-
tery is recharged and how long it is charged for. To date, there has not been an adequate analyti-
cal model to predict this lifetime. (2) In this work an analytical model is developed which
describes the relationship between the number of times a battery is recharged, the length of
time of each individual recharge, and the duration of the battery. (3) This model has been vali-
dated by comparison with both experimental measurements and finite element analyses, and
shows strong agreement for all three parameters. (4) The results for the proposed model are
more accurate than results for previous analytical models reported in the literature for 5G cell
phones. (5) The new model can be used to design longer lasting batteries.

