An abstract is a short statement that gives the reader a comprehensive yet concise understanding of your work. Your work could be research, such as a study or clinical trial, or a new or unique service, programme, theory or resource.

An abstract is an opportunity to make your work known, inform practice and/or education, and to establish connections with others in your field of interest. It should tell readers what you are going to present and interest them in learning more about your work — they may decide to attend your presentation, visit your poster or contact you based on it.

Your abstract will have difference audiences:

• Congress delegates (pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists, students, educators, policy-makers and researchers)use abstracts to select which sessions to attend.
• Reviewers will assess the quality of your abstract and recommend its acceptance (and whether the work should be presented orally or as a poster) or rejection.
• Journal editors use abstracts to look for papers to encourage for publication.
• People who can’t attend the congress access abstracts online.

Required subheadings

Your abstract should contain information under the following subheadings:

• Title
• Background information (Why is your work important? Does it fill any gaps in knowledge or research? What is the context?)
• Purpose (What are the objectives? You may include a short statement of your hypothesis.)
• Method (Explain your methods, such as study design. What was done, by whom, how and where? What measurements were taken and how were the data managed?)
• Results (What did you find, discover or achieve? Not just in subjective terms, but also in the form of data. How significant were your findings?)
• Conclusion (What were your overall findings? What do they mean? How could the methods be improved? Is this work part of a bigger piece of research or strategy? What are the suggestions for future work?)

Your abstract is more likely to be accepted if you follow these tips:

1. Before you start, be clear on what aspect of your work you want to present. What will the audience find most interesting?

2. Many readers will not be native English speakers so avoid any play on words in the title and opt for simple sentence construction.

3. Keep language correct, simple, clear, professional and, where needed, scientific.

4. Include key words for your area of work so that content can be determined easily (congress delegates scan hundreds of abstracts to determine what to see.)

5. Avoid abbreviations. (If you do use them, place them all in parentheses after the full word(s) the first time it/they appear in the text.)

6. Delete as many unnecessary words and sentences as possible. Use short sentences.

7. If you need help with your writing, ask supervisors and colleagues.

8. Check that your conclusions can be confirmed by the findings of your study.

9. Test your abstract before submitting it.

10. Ask someone else to read it and to tell you what your work was about. (If he or she is not able to explain it clearly, your abstract may need to be revised.)

11. Proofread your abstract several times.

12. The four Cs of abstract writing