Doing Science: Writing conference abstracts

In this edition of Doing Science, we will address abstract writing, with a focus on conference abstracts. By providing an opportunity for discussing your work with your peers in specialised meetings, writing and submitting an abstract is often the very first step when you want to show the world the results of your work; be it your research, a clinical case or a review of the literature [1]. However, it can be be a daunting task to condense hours and hours of hard work into abstract format. But fear not! This edition of Doing Science will give you several approaches to writing abstracts, using your own data as well as that of others. Before we begin, a key message: always remember that writing an abstract follows typically the same path as writing a paper [2]. Begin by planning it, before actually writing it, proofreading it, sharing it with colleagues and finally doing the final revision and editing before you submit. In most cases, the keys to success are an important research question and interesting material to analyse in the hope of answering it. That being said, good abstract writing skills will increase your acceptance rate even for data of moderate importance, or seemingly complicated research ideas. So let’s begin... As every researcher knows, the function of a scientific abstract is to provide an overview of your work. But keep in mind that the abstract is what the referees will use to decide whether your work is accepted or rejected for presentation on the meeting. Also, have you remembered that the abstract is the only part of a paper that is published in conference proceedings [3]? Many researchers will even acknowledge that when they scroll through a conference programme, they look only at the titles …