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Journal Abstracts

This resource can help undergraduate, graduate, and professional scholars write proposals for academic conferences, articles, and books.

Contributors: Martina Jauch, Allen Brizee
Last Edited: 2010-04-17 05:47:39

Journal abstracts are often requested by scholarly journals and written following the original manuscript was composed. While an offer can be very lengthy with respect to the assignment and purpose, an abstract is usually stored brief (roughly 150-200 words), but includes a few of the same elements like a proposal:

• An announcement from the problem and objectives
• A listing of employed methods or perhaps your research approach the value of the suggested subject should become obvious too
• A self-contained written piece that may be understood individually in the essay or project

As journal editors still follow traditional criteria of obvious argumentation, your journal abstract will include a legitimate thesis in understandable language and follow lucid, persuasive prose. The first consideration is going perfectly into a well considered revision of this article you want to submit for publication.

Instead of writing for the dissertation committee or professors, you will have to prove thorough idea of primary and secondary materials, and you comprehend the good and bad implications of those bits of evidence.

You need to find out about the specific journal audience, or even the interested readers in everyone thus, you need to provide obvious explanations of terms and digressions low, preferably restricted to the footnotes within the manuscript.

The abstract should tell readers whether they would like to review your article in greater detail when studying it within the journal. Merely a couple of journals request you to send just an abstract with no complete manuscript, plus they mainly advertise these calls on their own websites and general requires papers websites of the several fields. British majors, for example, might find all of the these around the College of Pennsylvania British Department website.

No matter field, journal abstract authors should explain the objective of the job, methods used, the outcomes and also the conclusions that may be attracted. However, each field purports slightly new ways to structure the abstract. Hartley and Sykes (Reported in: Page, Gillian et al. Journal Publishing. Cambridge, United kingdom: Cambridge UP, 1997. p. 316) have recommended that papers for that social sciences (and then any other empirical work) should retain the following:

Most scientific journals require authors to submit such abstracts, whereas the social sciences and humanities journals don’t always achieve this but they are rapidly catching to the trend. It’s generally better to write the abstract within the British language, since many papers in other languages, especially Asian nations, have a tendency to publish an British abstract with common search engines like google, for example, the MLA site.

Instead of delivering off your proposal to some random listing of popular journals, you need to conduct thorough research around the following facets of a journal before writing the proposal. (Adapted from: Scodel, Ruth and Marilyn B.

Skinner. “Publishing the Scholarly Article in Classical Studies: Helpful Information for brand new People of the marketplace.” 2004. world wide web.apaclassics.org):

Look into the policy statements from the journals as well as their tables of contents from recent issues to discover the precise scope from the journal and it is specialization inside the field.

Check out the journal’s website or even the MLA Bibliography of Periodicals for info on limitations through the journal, as a number of these only accept submissions by people of the particular association. Other journals limit the size of articles and you’ll have to determine whether you’ll shorten your article or send it in to a different publication.

The journal’s website may also offer you info on the specific methodological approach liked by the journal and also the general audience that it caters.

In addition, in order to improve your chances using the editorial board, you should think about their backgrounds and publications, unless of course the journal uses anonymous refereeing. You need to try to find supportive but rigorous referees, like a weak journal publication can grow to be worse than no publications inside a competitive employment market.

It’s also wise to find out about the time from submission to decision. Usually, the optimum time for submitting is between September and November, as reviews will proceed more gradually throughout the summer time several weeks. If you think the journal already has some issues backlogged, you might like to contact the editor for more information, particularly if time is really a factor for your journal publishes couple of issues every year.

Consider both status from the journal within the hierarchy of publications inside your field in addition to personal bias, for example, your mentors’ ties and connections to journal editors, before submitting your proposal and article.