Yesterday I was requested to join Internation Symposium held in Taiwan. One of the requirement to join is to submit abstract before due date which is next week. While I am writing my own abstract, I think it is good idea to put something here about how to write abstract.
Abstract is very vital organ on your research paper, proceeding, journals because it is the “picture” of your overall project or research. It is a way to sell your work and give the core point of what you have done. If you have clearly indicated your reasons and objectives on your abstract, it really save time your readers, rather than they have to download or buy the copy of your paper just to find out that your paper is not what they need. It is really annoying and waste your time. If your abstract readers feel that your paper suits their need, than the way you write abstract will take a big role. Concise and clear description on your abstract may or on the other hand, may not attract readers to furthermore study your paper. That, of course, really hassle for you, since if they find something valuable from your paper, they would cite it, would be point plus for you. So, make sure, you make a very good abstract.
Background
You must indicate the background of sort of introduction of the method or object you use on the research. Some people tend to fill this with problem statement, this is useful for readers that already know before the topic you are addressing.
Motivation
It tells us why do we care about the problem and the results? Is it because you want to find out something new, or is it because you want to improve the performance of previous record of work. A lot of reasons, so simply indicate it on this part. This section may also include the importance of your work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact it might have if successful.
Approach
This will show how did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? What kind of method you use. Did you use simulation, analytic models, prototype construction, or analysis of field data for an actual product? What important variables and parameters did you control, ignore, or measure?
Results and Conclusions
Show the answer of your problems, put the result here, in numbers, to avoid vague such as “very”, “better” or “significant”. In some cases, there will be times that you have to be vague, only when you talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement, or your research status is still ongoing. This may happen when you submit abstract for seminar proceeding that require send to them earlier on which your research probably has not finished yet. Just make sure that your data can not be easily misinterpreted and have room for all the caveats.
So, this is the example of my abstract, there are some points which are not correct. Can you point them? 🙂
Abstract:
Ultrafiltration membrane nowadays has been increasingly used in drinking water treatment as alternative technology to conventional filtration to remove Natural Organic Matter (NOM). Efforts on how to minimize fouling, maximize flux and rejection are always on motion. This study is aimed to improve the performance by combining membrane coated photocatalyst TiO2 under UltraViolet exposure. The experiments are carried out using ceramic disc membrane which is high temperature resistant, using humic acid solutions as model substances representative of naturally occuring organic matter, they are aimed to identify the significance performance between TiO2 coated membrane and naked membrane.
Specific approaches are made to better understand the NOM particle size during photocatalysis process and the effect TiO2 coating on the surface of the membrane by employing Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD). Initial flux for TiO2-UV membrane are known to be better than naked membrane due to higher affinity effect, while for longer term, severe decline has been displayed, due to extensive pore blocking within the TiO2-coated surface membrane.