Communication Skills (1+0)

11.1.3.Types of abstract

• Informative abstracts
• Indicative abstracts
• Critical abstracts

1. Informative abstracts

• Represent as much of the information from the document’s content as possible. This means they can be long (up to 500 words). Good for documents describing research that contains a single process. Not good for review documents with many different concepts to describe.
• An informative abstract stands in the place of the real document. It may be all that researchers need to read - the abstract contains enough information for their purposes

2. Indicative abstracts

• Indicates general content without trying to describe it all. Usually a list of topics but no detail.
• Very useful as a selection aid - will contain all relevant keywords.
• Easier to write than informative abstracts!
• An indicative abstract does not stand on its own. It leads the researcher to the full document. The abstract helps with searching the literature.

3. Critical abstracts

• Does more than just describe content.
• Evaluates work and places it in context, so write of abstract is adding personal opinion to abstract.
• Not common.