Meeting 4: How to Write Good Title and Abstact? (Scientific Writing) Monday, March 14th, 2022

 Assalamu'alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.

Welcome back to my blog ...

(I wrote this blog, to complete my weekly assignment in Scientific Writing class.)

    1. What I have learned today?

            So, today I am very excited because I have learned how to write good titles and abstracts in a journal. This is very important to learn because it is can help us to do the final semester assignment later. In this opportunity, I would like to share some tips to write a good title and abstract in a journal or article.

Previously, we must know the systematics in journal writing, there are several points that must be in a journal, including:

• Title
• Authors
• Abstract
• Keywords
• Introduction
• Methods
• Finding & discussion
• Conclusion
• References

 After that, we can start how to write a good title and abstract. Let us discuss it one by one.

                                                     

            The title is important to influence the visibility of the paper by attracting more readers. The title summarizes the main idea or ideas of your study. A good title contains the fewest possible words that adequately describe the contents and/or purpose of your research paper. The title is the part of a paper that is read the most, and it is usually read first. If the title is too long it usually contains too many unnecessary words. On the other hand, a title that is too short often uses words that are too general. For example, "African Politics". It could be the title of a book, but it does not provide any information on the focus of a research paper. So, we can conclude that a good title must be: 

1. Eye-catchy, to attract the reader's curiosity.
2. The title should be simple, brief, clear, and concise.
3. Not wordy, at least 10-15 words.
4. Titles should almost never contain abbreviations, chemical formulas, proprietary (rather than generic) names, jargon, and the like. 

            Next, we are going to talk about how to write a good abstract. The abstract is also an important part of a journal because every reader will read the abstract first to know the entire contents of the journal. The abstract is also a determinant because the reviewer will check whether our journal is worthy of publication or not. The abstract should provide a brief summary of each of the main sections of the paper: introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. As Houghton (1975) put it, “An abstract can be defined as a summary of the information in a document.”

So, we can conclude that a good abstract must be: 

1. It is should be cover the entire contents of the journal.
2. It should provide a brief summary of each of the main sections
3. Only one paragraph.
4. Economy of words, at least 250 words.
5.  It should provide the aims of the research.
6. For the structure of the language adjusts to each part, e.g Aims (use present tense), Method (use past tense), Finding & discussion (can use present or past tense), and Conclusion (use present tense).

                                        

2. What I am going to do next?

            After I know some tips for writing good titles and abstracts for journals, what I have to do next is practice them, practice writing good abstracts and titles, and also compare the two journals to find out good titles and abstracts.

I think that's all from my explanation about the material in meeting 4. Thank you so much for my lecturer Dr. Afrianto Daud, M.Ed.

Regards,

Yeni Anggrayni

Wassalamu'alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.