Alun SaltAnnals of Botany had an editorial meeting recently one of the topics that came up was how can authors increase the readership of their paper? One place that can have a surprisingly large impact is the abstract.
If you’ve spent an age trying to get all the details of your research right, it can be painful reducing everything to a couple of hundred words. However an abstract isn’t a mini-version of your paper, it’s a tool to get people to read your paper, and that means making it as easy as possible for people to see why they should care. There’s the full slidedeck up at Haiku Deck or press play above.
Rachel Shekar
An abstract should engage the reader, and be as compelling as the Introduction to a paper. I often read manuscripts where the introduction was clearly written, but the abstract seems to have been written in a hurry. Since the abstract provides the reader’s first impression, the writing should be crisp and polished. Before you submit a manuscript to a journal, ask yourself the following question: If a reader skimmed 20 abstracts in one sitting, is my paper the one they would want to read first?
Jeff Karron
North American Editor, Annals of Botany
Hi Alun,
Thanks so much for using Haiku Deck; your deck looks great and we’ll definitely make sure to share it via our social channels!
I would also like to personally invite your readers to check out our Web App beta at http://www.haikudeck.com; our team is always open to suggestions on ways we could make it better and the feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Lisa Ma
Haiku Deck Customer Evangelist