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Conferences are the perfect opportunity to present your work to a wider audience,
thus your abstract must:

• not be too technical (i.e. not take for granted that all readers will understand
the importance of the work or the technical jargon used to describe it) – note
that certain words have different meanings for scientists with different
backgrounds

• give examples that the majority of your audience will understand even if they

don't have the same background info as you have
• highlight how your innovations and results could potentially be transferred to
other disciplines to solve other problems

In high profile conferences you need to write your abstract as if you were targeting
a journal paper. The review process is strict and it’s a real privilege if you are
accepted.

If the conference that you plan to go to is not in its first edition, you can look at
abstracts from the previous editions to see their style and tone. In any case, the rules
for writing the abstract itself are the same as for a journal, though your style may be
slightly more informal.

Finally, show your abstract to someone outside your research group – if they can't
understand it, it probably means you need to rewrite it more clearly.

13.27 How do I write an abstract for a work in progress that
will be presented at a conference?
Conferences are generally planned up to two years in advance. When you answer the
call for papers, your research may not yet be complete, but nevertheless you think that
the conference would be a good way to get feedback on your progress. Below is the

first draft of an abstract on how students choose the topic for their doctorate. It was
written for a conference by Rossella Borri, an Italian PhD student in Political Sciences,
whose research at the time of writing the abstract was only in its initial stages. Her
initial draft, below, was not suitable for a conference – it is misleading because it is
still a work in progress, which is not apparent from the draft.

With its focus on the research cycle, scientific methodology has devoted a great deal of atten-
tion to the phase of problem solving. However, the issue of problem choice has been relatively
neglected, notwithstanding its relevant epistemological implications. What are the criteria used
by PhD students to set their research agenda? To what extent is the research agenda driven by