Titles, Abstracts and Summary Text

Most readers, editors and reviewers decide from the title and abstract alone. They are also what search engines and indexing services see. Write them last, from the finished results, and revise them more than any other part of the paper.

Inputs to collect first

• The single main finding, with its key number (effect size, accuracy, p-value/CI, sample size).
• The target venue's limits: abstract word count, structured vs. unstructured, title length, keyword count, highlights/significance requirements. Look these up in the venue's current author guidelines (the venue-templates skill and journal-format skills help). Never assume.
• Who reads it: specialists (field venue) or broad scientists (Nature, Science, PNAS).

Abstract: the five-move structure

Unstructured abstracts still follow these moves. Structured ones label them.