Abstract
Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it
is vital to write a complete but concise
description of your work to entice potential readers into obtaining
a copy of the full paper. This article
describes how to write a good computer architecture abstract for both
conference and journal papers. Writers
should follow a checklist consisting of: motivation, problem statement,
approach, results, and conclusions.
Following this checklist should increase the chance of people taking
the time to obtain and read your complete
paper.
Introduction
Now that the use of on-line publication databases is prevalent, writing
a really good abstract has become even
more important than it was a decade ago. Abstracts have always served
the function of "selling" your work. But
now, instead of merely convincing the reader to keep reading the rest
of the attached paper, an abstract must
convince the reader to leave the comfort of an office and go hunt down
a copy of the article from a library (or
worse, obtain one after a long wait through inter-library loan). In
a business context, an "executive summary" is
often the only piece of a report read by the people who matter; and
it should be similar in content if not tone to a
journal paper abstract.
Checklist: Parts of an Abstract
Despite the fact that an abstract is quite brief, it must do almost
as much work as the multi-page paper that
follows it. In a computer architecture paper, this means that it should
in most cases include the following
sections. Each section is typically a single sentence, although there
is room for creativity. In particular, the parts
may be merged or spread among a set of sentences. Use the following
as a checklist for your next abstract:
Motivation:
Why do we care about the problem and the results?
If the problem isn't obviously "interesting" it might be
better to put motivation first; but if your work
is incremental progress on a problem that is widely
recognized as important, then it is probably better
to put the problem statement first to indicate which piece
of the larger problem you are breaking off to work
on. This section should include the importance of your
work, the difficulty of the area, and the impact
it might have if successful.
Problem statement:
What problem are you trying to solve? What is the
scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a
specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much
jargon. In some cases it is appropriate to put the
problem statement before the motivation, but usually
this only works if most readers already understand
why the problem is important.
Approach:
How did you go about solving or making progress
on the problem? Did you use simulation, analytic
models, prototype construction, or analysis of field
data for an actual product? What was the extent of your
work (did you look at one application program or
a hundred programs in twenty different programming
languages?) What important variables did you control,
ignore, or measure?
Results:
What's the answer? Specifically, most good computer
architecture papers conclude that something is so
many percent faster, cheaper, smaller, or otherwise
better than something else. Put the result there, in
numbers. Avoid vague, hand-waving results such as
"very", "small", or "significant." If you must be vague,
you are only given license to do so when you can
talk about orders-of-magnitude improvement. There is a
tension here in that you should not provide numbers
that can be easily misinterpreted, but on the other hand
you don't have room for all the caveats.
Conclusions:
What are the implications of your answer? Is it
going to change the world (unlikely), be a significant "win",
be a nice hack, or simply serve as a road sign indicating
that this path is a waste of time (all of the previous
results are useful). Are your results general, potentially
generalizable, or specific to a particular case?
Other Considerations
An abstract must be a fully self-contained, capsule description of the
paper. It can't assume (or attempt to
provoke) the reader into flipping through looking for an explanation
of what is meant by some vague statement.
It must make sense all by itself. Some points to consider include:
Meet the word count limitation. If your abstract
runs too long, either it will be rejected or someone will take
a chainsaw to it to get it down to size. Your purposes
will be better served by doing the difficult task of
cutting yourself, rather than leaving it to someone
else who might be more interested in meeting size
restrictions than in representing your efforts in
the best possible manner. An abstract word limit of 150 to
200 words is common.
Any major restrictions or limitations on the results
should be stated, if only by using "weasel-words" such
as "might", "could", "may", and "seem".
Think of a half-dozen search phrases and keywords
that people looking for your work might use. Be sure
that those exact phrases appear in your abstract,
so that they will turn up at the top of a search result listing.
Usually the context of a paper is set by the publication
it appears in (for example, IEEE Computer
magazine's articles are generally about computer
technology). But, if your paper appears in a somewhat
un-traditional venue, be sure to include in the
problem statement the domain or topic area that it is really
applicable to.
Some publications request "keywords". These have
two purposes. They are used to facilitate keyword
index searches, which are greatly reduced in importance
now that on-line abstract text searching is
commonly used. However, they are also used to assign
papers to review committees or editors, which can
be extremely important to your fate. So make sure
that the keywords you pick make assigning your paper
to a review category obvious (for example, if there
is a list of conference topics, use your chosen topic area
as one of the keyword tuples).
Conclusion
Writing an efficient abstract is hard work, but will repay you with
increased impact on the world by enticing
people to read your publications. Make sure that all the components
of a good abstract are included in the next
one you write.
Further Reading
Michaelson, Herbert, How to Write & Publish Engineering Papers and
Reports, Oryx Press, 1990. Chapter 6
discusses abstracts.
Cremmins, Edward, The Art of Abstracting 2nd Edition, Info Resources
Press, April 1996. This is an entire
book about abstracting, written primarily for professional abstractors.
Phil Koopman 10/97