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ecialties • Volum

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ril 2016 • Pages 87-000

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July 2016 / Volume 4 / Issue 3

Journal of Health Specialties

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186 © 2016 Journal of Health Specialties | Published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow

INTRODUCTION

The title and abstract are the first steps toward publication, communication and dissemination of results among scientific community and general public that is imperative for the advancement of science.[1] They are the most visible parts and are available free in all online journals. The abstract is the first section usually read by a researcher and its content can either attract or repel a reader. Most of the journals have their own guidelines to authors, but many authors still find it difficult to write a good abstract that will compel or entice the readers to read the article. The most frequently read manuscripts have a better chance of getting citations and thereby increasing the impact factor. This article presents in detail how to write a good title, abstract and keywords for biomedical journals.

TITLE

The title of an article is the first part encountered of any paper. The title should make it standout from other literatures in the field.[2] The editors, editorial board members, reviewers, as well as organizing committees of scientific or professional congresses see and decide whether the paper is going to be peer reviewed, accepted for publication or not based on the title itself.[3] Readers often first scan the titles in the content of a journal and if found appealing, then they review the abstract before going to the full article. The title should attract researchers’ attention; so that the article can be included in their research and thus provide citations and impact factors. Sometimes, the database being searched does not include the abstract of the article; in such cases, the title becomes more important.

There are indicative and informative titles. Indicative titles reveal the area of investigation and not the answers to the paper, whereas informative titles convey messages of the paper on all its relevant elements. A

Review Article

Three pillars of a biomedical research article: The title, abstract and keywordsMuktikesh DashDepartment of Microbiology, Sriram Chandra Bhanj Medical College and Hospital, Utkal University, Cuttack, Odisha, India

ABSTRACTThe title is the main advertisement for an article and enables the reader to decide whether they want to read the article or not.Thetitleshouldbesimple,specificandreflectthearticle’scontentclearlyandpreciselyin10–15words.Theabstractsummarizes the whole article in 200 to 250 words and should be structured for a research article. It includes the problem or the study objectives, the methods used, the main results obtained and the conclusion reached. Most authors write the abstract last,sothatitaccuratelyreflectsthecontentofthearticle.Keywordsareplacedbelowtheabstractandareusually3–7innumber. Choosing right keywords will enhance the article being found by other researchers as these are used by abstracting and indexing services. Ultimately, a well-cited research article depends on how well the title, abstract and keywords are written.

Keywords: Abstract, keywords, research article, title

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DOI:

10.4103/2468-6360.186488 How to cite this article: Dash M. Three pillars of a biomedical research article: The title, abstract and keywords. J Health Spec 2016;4:186-9.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.

For reprints contact: reprints@medknow.com

Address for correspondence: Dr. Muktikesh Dash, Department of Microbiology, Sriram Chandra Bhanj Medical College and Hospital, Utkal University, Cuttack ‑ 753 007, Odisha, India. E‑mail: mukti_mic@yahoo.co.in

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good title should be made up of the fewest possible words, typically 10 – 12 words and constitute about 100 characters.[3] The title should be specific, easily understandable and not have too many technical terms, consisting of both independent (set or manipulated at the beginning) and dependent (observed or measured) variables that accurately highlight the core content of the article, i.e., the species studied, specific drug name, the technology discussed or the literary work evaluated.[4,5] Vancouver requirements indicate that title should be concise and informative.[6] Therefore, the title must be accurate, informative, complete but not declarative.

There are some tips on writing the titles: Avoid using abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms, i.e. “Mg” for magnesium could be mistaken for ‘mg’ which means milligrams; write scientific names in full, i.e. Staphylococcus aureus instead of S. aureus; refer to chemicals by their common names or generic names rather than the formulas and trade names; avoid use of roman numerical in the title as they can be interpreted differently, i.e. Part II could be mistaken for Factor II.[7] The title should be written with distinct letters, not underlined and without a full stop at the end. Subtitles and supertitles should be avoided. The author, co‑authors and peers may initially consider a number of titles and finally choose the most appropriate one.[8] Some journals ask for running or short titles to be used at the top or bottom of the journal page. For this purpose, the title should be shortened to very few words.

ABSTRACT

Abstract is a short summary containing essential details of a research article. Almost all journals except for few sections, i.e., editorials and letters to the editors or correspondence require abstract. The abstract may be indicative or informative. Indicative or descriptive abstracts are usually used in social sciences and humanities and do not give specific information about the methods and results.[9,10] Informative abstracts are commonly used in the sciences and present information on the background, objectives, methods, results and conclusions.[9,10] This type of format is typically found in medical literatures and clinical trial reports. The maximum word count of an abstract varies from 100 to 400 words, but the majority of the journals prefer a word count of 200 to 250 words. The number of words and subtitles of the abstract should be written according to the instruction to the authors. Most journals require a research or original article to be structured and the review article and case report as an unstructured free flowing paragraph.[11,12] The Ad Hoc Working Group

for Critical Appraisal of the Medical Literature has suggested that authors of articles with direct clinical implications should write their abstracts with seven explicitly defined headings: Objective, design, setting, patients’ interventions, measurements, main results and conclusions with a partially‑controlled vocabulary.[13] Guidelines have also been suggested for review article abstracts with six headings; purpose, data identification, study selection, data extraction (including how data were assessed for quality), results of the data synthesis (including relevant description statistics) and conclusions (including future research needs and applications).[14]

Structured abstracts are essentially informative abstracts that are divided into a series of headings, i.e., background or introduction, aims or objectives, methods, materials and methods or subjects and methods, results and conclusions.[15,16] This is the standard and preferred way for original research article.[17] This format is also recommended for conference papers. The structured abstracts were initially proposed to make literature searches more accurate, more explicit, relevant and easier to understand the text written in shorter paragraphs. The structured abstract is intended to make it easier for the reader to select important details and to access the value and applicability of the study. It reminds the readers about the whole paper and it reveals errors regarding used methodology.[3]

The abstract should not include references to the literature or to the figures and tables described in the body of the paper. It should not include any information that is not mentioned in the article and it should not contain common abbreviations or acronyms unless very well‑known. Abstract should be written in the end after completely editing the article. A good abstract should be a miniature version of the paper, providing a brief summary of the main sections of the paper. The abstract should be self‑contained and able to stand alone without the need to refer the full text. For example, if the publishing journal is indexed in Index Medicus (MEDLINE), the articles will be locatable via the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM’s) PubMed search engine[18] and the abstract will be viewable at the website.

Different sections of an abstractBackground or introduction or contextThis section of the abstract should be shortest part of the abstract and should outline the following information in one or two sentences: “What are the facts already known or unsettled about the subject? What is the magnitude of the problem and its importance related to the paper in question?”

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Dash: The title, abstract and keywords

For example, “antimicrobial resistance of urinary tract pathogens has increased worldwide. Empiric treatment of community acquired urinary tract infection (CA‑UTI) is determined by antimicrobial resistance patterns of uropathogens in a population of specific geographical location.”[19]

Objectives or aims or purposeA single sentence is used to summarize the aims and objectives of an article. Here, we put forth the study questions in a summarized form. In some journals, objectives may be the opening section of the journals.

For example, “this study was conducted to determine the prevalence of CA‑UTI in rural Odisha, India and the effect of gender and age on its prevalence as well as etiologic agents and the resistance profile of the bacterial isolates.”[19]

Methods or material and methods or subject and methodsThis section provides a concise description of the study design and methods used. The reader should understand what and how the study was done. This section is usually longer consisting of 30 – 35% of the whole abstract. The methods should highlight the important issues such as research design, research setting, sample size required and how they were selected and a brief description of techniques or interventions used in the study.

For example, “consecutive clean‑catch mid‑stream urine samples were collected from 1670 adult patients. The urine samples were processed and microbial isolates were identified by conventional methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed on all bacterial isolates by Kirby–Bauer disc diffusion method.”[19]

ResultsThe results section is usually the longest and most important part containing about 35 – 40% of the whole abstract. Results begin with the total number of respondents and a description of subjects that were included or excluded from the study. It can be presented as a comparison of the outcome variables between various subgroups, within the study (i.e., male vs. female, young vs. old, diagnosed vs. undiagnosed, treated vs. untreated, etc.). Numerical results also include standard deviations or 95% confidence limits and the level of statistical significance.[20]

For example, “the prevalence of UTI was significantly higher in females compared to males (females 455 [45%], males 122 [18%], odds ratio = 2.04, 95% confidence interval = 1.64 – 2.52, P < 0.001). Young females within the age group of 18 – 37 years and

elderlymales(≥68years)showedhighprevalenceofUTI. Escherichia coli (69%) were the most prevalent isolate followed by Enterococcus spp. (10%). Amikacin and nitrofurantoin were the most active antimicrobial agents, which showed low resistance of 6% and 10%, respectively.”[19]

ConclusionThe conclusion should be written concisely, stating the implications of the study and if applicable, making recommendations for action to the general public quite often in one or two sentences. The first line summarizes the results and the second states the interpretation or clinical implications. The conclusion must be supported by the data presented in the abstract. It should answer the research questions that are put forth in the form of objectives.[21]

For example, “our study revealed E. coli as the predominant bacterial pathogen and nitrofurantoin should be used as empirical therapy for uncomplicated CA‑UTIs. In the Indian setting, routine urine cultures may be advisable, since treatment failure is likely to occur with commonly used antimicrobials. Therefore, development of Regional Surveillance Programs is necessary for the implementation of national CA‑UTI guidelines.”[19]

KEYWORDS

Keywords should be provided below the abstract of the article. It describes the medical contents, which are the characteristics for the whole article. Most standard journals usually ask for 3 – 10 keywords. Journals, creators of databases and search engines and indexing and abstracting services classify articles using keywords. Thus, accurately chosen keywords will ensure correct cross indexing and help wider visibility of the research among the interested communities. This will in turn increase the article’s chances of being cited. Authors should read the article thoroughly and list down all the key terms or phrases that are used repeatedly in the text. It may include the variant of a term or phrase (i.e., kidney and renal), drug names, procedures, etc., and common abbreviation of terms, i.e. HIV. After that, common vocabulary or term list or indexing standard (GeoRef, ERIC Thesaurus, ChemWeb, PsycInfo, BIOSIS Search Guide, Medical Subject Heading [MeSH] Thesaurus) are referred to ensure that the terms used in the research matches those terms used in these resources.[5,22,23] For biomedical research, the thesaurus of the American National Library of Medicine (NLM) MeSHs is accepted as a standard for vocabulary/term listing or indexing.[18] MeSH terms used as keywords are followed by biomedical libraries and journals all over

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the world. The MeSH thesaurus is available in Index Medicus, in MEDLINE on CD and on the American National Library of Medicine website.[24]

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, a good research article depends on how well the title and abstract is written. Some authors usually write the title and abstract instantly at the time of submission of article in a journal without giving much importance. The title, abstract and keywords should be written at the end after thoroughly reading the article several times.

Financial support and sponsorshipNil.

Conflicts of interestThere are no conflicts of interest.

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