Abstracting and précis writing
Our translation and interpreting agency TransEurope offers abstracting and précis writing services of scientific papers, articles and news in any foreign language.
A précis or a review abstract is a synopsis of a news item, an article, a dissertation or an experiment report conveying the most important information from the paper and making it easy for the reader to understand the main purpose of the document. It is usually included at the start of the document and can be viewed as the ‘‘door’’ inside the work; it can be a standalone separate document or an introduction to the paper. Many conference organisers and workshop leaders will provide you with a précis or a review abstract in a form of a booklet. Naturally, review abstracts are used widely on the Internet: many search engines will show only review abstracts rather than complete texts of articles or books that need to be paid for due to copyright and publishing fees. This makes review abstracts an important marketing tool aimed to persuade the reader to buy a printed or an electronic copy of the full document. Besides this, abstract reviews make it easier for a scientist to find all the necessary information without going through many articles and papers.
As any other type of text, review abstracts are protected under copyright, however publishers always make them available to readers despite the fact that the full article is not available on the grounds of taxes and other fees. In a review abstract you are likely to come across main results and conclusions of a scientific article, but all the details of scientific methodology, a complete list of results and a critical evaluation of explanations and conclusions can only be found in the article itself. Using solely review articles can lead to wrong decisions and conclusions which is unacceptable when dealing, for example, with medical issues. It is an unspoken rule that all the necessary references and quotes must be taken form the full text of an article or a book and not from a review abstract.
A review abstract or a précis usually covers 4 elements of the completed work:
The purpose of work – a summary of research questions and problems.
Methodology – an experimental or a situational study, questionnaires, etc.
Obtained data and results.
Main outcomes and conclusions.
Sometimes review abstracts can contain brief references although many publications will (and quite rightly so) include them only in the main document. The length of a review abstract or a précis depends on the subject and publisher’s requirements. Usually it has between 100 and 500 words and rarely takes more than a page.
As a rule, review abstracts can be logically divided into different parts which contain brief summaries of the material. Sometimes these parts will be given subheadings. A typical review abstract can be divided into 6 main sections:
1. Introduction (‘‘The background of the research question’’ ‘‘The purpose of work’’, etc.) This section covers the reasons why this work is written and why the experiments are carried out. The author must indicate why he/she was interested to find out the results of the experiment and why the article will be interesting and useful for the reader. The language in this section must be clear and simple.
2. ‘‘Presentation of the research question’’ (‘‘Question formulation’’, etc.): this section sets out what exactly you have decided to investigate. It is a good practice to repeat the research question a few times in the simplest of terms, for example: ‘‘What effect does regular consumption of caffeine in coffee, Coca-Cola or tea has on a resting heart rate?
3. ‘‘Hypothesis’’ presents author’s thoughts about possible findings of the experiment: ‘‘I am confident that regular daily consumption of more than 80 mg of caffeine in coffee, Coca-Cola or tea can lead to the increase in a resting heart rate.’’
4. In the ‘‘Conduction of experiment’’ (‘‘Methodology’’, ‘‘Procedures’’, etc.) section the author tells us how he/she researched the question. Here he/she needs to include what materials were used without going into too much detail as the number of words is limited.
5. The next section is ‘‘Results’’- the findings of the experiment with a detailed description including numbers and facts. The main rule here is to avoid any uncertainty and be very precise and accurate, for example: ‘‘I have found out that a resting heart rate of all the participants in the experiment has increased by 1,3 beats a minute after consuming 80 mg of caffeine every 24 hours during 14 days.’’
6. And the last section is ‘‘Conclusion’’ (‘Outcomes’’, etc.) In this section all the obtained results and their possible application in a particular field are discussed; the author also evaluates the hypothesis and explains why it was right or wrong.
Summarising review abstracts.
Another type of abstracting and précis writing is summarising review abstracts. In this case our translators will study articles and news items on a particular topic/particular topics published by the foreign media during a certain period of time and based on the analysis of the content will prepare a précis including main facts in the Russian language. Many of our business clients use this service in order to obtain necessary information on different business areas quickly, often during a day or night.
If you need to have a précis or a summary of review abstracts prepared, our translation agency TransEurope will be happy to help you!