<abstract>

Abstract

Summarized description of the content of a journal article

Remarks

Most journal publishers use the abstract as a very short summary of the major findings or conclusions of an article and limit its contents to a paragraph or two. But some publishers require “long” or “summary” abstracts that summarize each section of the paper in a separate abstract section that has the same section title as the article section. Such abstracts may be extensive, incorporating figures and tables. While the model for the element <abstract> has been made flexible enough to allow for these titled sections, it is expected that most abstracts will be much simpler and will contain one or more paragraphs.

The @abstract-type attribute may be used to identify special types of abstracts required by some publishers, for example, graphical abstracts, stereochemical abstracts, ASCII abstracts for sending to small devices, and Table-of-Contents abstracts that are so short they are inserted as annotations into a Table of Contents. See the attribute page for @abstract-type for a more complete list of types. If the abstract is not one of the special types listed, the @abstract-type attribute should not be used.

Attributes

abstract-type Type of Abstract
id Identifier
specific-use Specific Use
xml:lang Language

Content Model

<!ELEMENT  abstract     %abstract-model;                             >

Expanded Content Model

(title?, p*, sec*)

Description

The following, in order:

This element may be contained in:

<article-meta>

Example 1

A typical abstract:

<article>
<front>
<article-meta>
...
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright &#x00A9; 2000, The National Academy of
Sciences</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2000</copyright-year>
</permissions>
<abstract>
<p>We describe a method for cloning nucleic acid molecules onto the 
surfaces of 5-&#x03BC;m microbeads rather than in biological hosts. A
unique tag sequence is attached to each molecule, and the tagged 
library is amplified. Unique tagging of the molecules is achieved by 
sampling a small fraction (1&#x0025;) of a very large repertoire of 
tag sequences. The resulting library is hybridized to microbeads that 
each carry &#x2248;10<sup>6</sup> strands complementary to one of the 
tags. About 10<sup>5</sup> copies of each molecule are collected on 
each microbead. ...</p>
</abstract>
<kwd-group kwd-group-type="author">
...
</kwd-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
...
</article> 

Example 2

An abstract with summarized sections:

<article>
<front>
<article-meta>
...
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright &#x00A9; 1999, British
Medical Journal</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>1999</copyright-year>
</permissions>
<abstract>
<sec>
<title>Objective</title>
<p>To examine the effectiveness of
day hospital attendance in prolonging independent living for elderly
people.</p></sec>
<sec>
<title>Design</title>
<p>Systematic review of 12 controlled clinical trials (available
by January 1997) comparing day hospital care with
comprehensive care (five trials), domiciliary care (four trials),
or no comprehensive care (three trials).</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Subjects</title>
<p>2867 elderly people.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Main outcome measures</title>
<p>Death, institutionalisation, disability, global &#x201C;poor
outcome,&#x201D; and use of resources.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Results</title>
<p>Overall, there was no significant difference between day hospitals and
alternative services ...</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Conclusions</title>
<p>Day hospital care seems to be an effective service for elderly
people ...</p>
<p><boxed-text position="float">
<sec><title>Key messages</title>
<p>...</p>
</sec>
</boxed-text></p>
</sec>
</abstract>
</article-meta>
</front>
...
</article>

Module

articlemeta3.ent