An abstract should provide a precise and concise overview of the work you are going to present at the conference. An abstract needs to provide enough information to allow conference attendees to decide if they want to go to your presentation, and if they do attend what to expect. This is a way to advertise your work.
Conferences sometimes ask for abstracts well in advance, so you might not have all the results ready. Ideally you will have some preliminary results that you can use to shape your abstract. Things can also go wrong, and your results might show something different to initial results. That’s fine. Just correct this at the start of your presentation. You can also give yourself some wiggle room by leaving some aspects vague and hint at your results. That way you won’t need a full on correction but can use your presentation to provide the detail.
DO read the instructions and give yourself enough time to write and edit your abstract. Thing to look out for are:
Word count
Check the word or character count. However write everything you want to say first and then edit down (if you are over the word count).
- Word count
- Information required
- Submission format
- Deadline
DON’T overload your abstract with information (key points only)
Keep in mind what you want to cover in your actual presentation. This might depend on the conference audience, where you are in your PhD or research timeline, what results you want to highlight.
Conference abstract formula
Topic + Title + Motivation + Problem Statement + Approach + Results + Conclusions
= Conference abstract
5 key sentences to plan your abstract
- Introduction
- State the problem
- Where do you fit
- Describe what you did
- What is the key impact of your research
- Background and motivation. Start with a big research questions your work relates to > Why
- Explain what your research is about
- How does your work relate to existing research in this or related areas. Map the research landscape
- Explain briefly what you did and why you decided to do it this way. Methodology and methods. No need to go into too much detail
- Use key results to showcase your impact and how it fits into the landscape (again)
Stephanie G Zihms, PhD 