The Abstract’s Function

An important part of skillful reading, particularly when reading technical material, is sorting out the chaff from the wheat--finding what's important to spend your time reading. When they read a technical paper, most people won't go to a journal, find a paper and sit down and read it. Instead, they'll look at the title and decide if the article sounds interesting or not. If it looks interesting, they'll go to the next step. Some people at that point will read the abstract next, while others might glance at the figures and then look at the abstract. The point is that the abstract becomes a crucial decision maker about whether or not to read the full article. If the abstract looks interesting, then readers would go to the next step of skimming the paper. If that looks good, then they'd read the whole paper. Reading the whole paper takes valuable time. The abstract is one of the steps to devoting a lot of time to the paper. A key thing to remember is that you're not trying to trap people into reading the paper--there's nothing to be gained by that.