Questions Answered: ‘How to write and structure an article’s front matter’ webinar
At the end of June, we hosted a webinar in our How to Do Research and Get Published series. This webinar taught attendees how to effectively craft the front matter of their articles to attract readers and succinctly establish its content. Sage editorial experts Robert Tinkle and Alex Moersen, and Dr Colleen Corte, Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois and Deputy Editor of the Substance Use and Addiction Journal, provided their insights into how to craft an attention-grabbing title, construct an informative abstract, place keywords to enhance SEO, and things to consider when writing a plain language summary.
Our attendees posed many questions that we didn’t have time to answer, so our editorial team provided answers to these questions, and covered all the vital tips for writing your front matter.
If you’re interested in watching the recording of this webinar or exploring one of our previous webinars, complete the form at this link and receive immediate access to our full library of webinar recordings.
Titles
Should I put the study design in the title?
This is not a requirement but might be more common in a STM field. You may want to review the journal in which you are hoping to publish to see if other articles feature the study design in the title. If you choose to name the study design, we’d advise using the most succinct language and/or most widely accepted name to describe it.
How do we use punctuation in the title of a manuscript?
Grammar and spelling are also important throughout a manuscript, including in the title. A small error in grammar or spelling in the title of a manuscript can diminish a reviewer’s enthusiasm for a paper, even if it contains important new information.
What differences should there be for article titles vs. PhD chapter titles?
There is no difference in the way these are written. In fact, PhD chapters often start life as journal-published research articles.
If I am writing a review article, is it important to say that in the title? Is it going to impact SEO?
You do not need to include the article type in your title. However, be sure to review the Manuscript Submission Guidelines and other articles in the journal to see if that is common practice. The Sage journal website already categorizes articles by article type, so it would be redundant to include it in the title.
When do we need a subtitle for our article?
A subtitle is a good way to ensure your primary keyword or key phrase is as close to the beginning of the article as possible. Try to include the topic as close to the start as possible. If you're using a 'creative' title, put it in a subtitle. It should be secondary to a more descriptive title. A descriptive title is also good for making an article more searchable in MEDLINE or Web of Science. The title is usually 20-30 words at most.
Will the quality of a title and abstract affect the speed of peer review?
While a number of factors can affect the speed of peer review, submitting the most high-quality articles, including an abstract and title that have minimal mistakes and follow the journal’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines, may help reduce the peer review and revision process.
I am used to writing the location where I did my research in the title as well as in the abstract and keywords. Is this already overdoing it for SEO?
Sage journals link the author’s name on the byline to their affiliation, which must reflect the institution where the bulk of the research was conducted.
Abstracts
In the abstract, should we make sentences shorter and avoid long sentences?
Not necessarily. Clarity is key, and a sentence can communicate clearly and effectively whether it’s long or short. Your use of impactful keywords, clarity of expression, and adherence to the guidelines outlined by the journal will be more important than the lengths of your sentences.
What verb tenses are used in the abstract?
In most academic writing, including in an abstract, present tense predominates. There are sometimes context-specific reasons for using past or future tense—for example, if you’re reflecting on the state of the field or addressing an existing gap in research, you might write something like “In the 1980s, X scholar demonstrated Z,” with “demonstrated” in past tense. For the most part, though, you’ll use present tense throughout the abstract (“This article seeks to address”, “Our findings show…”, “This data proves that X is of increasing concern”, etc.). As a general rule of thumb, any sentence or clause that doesn’t contain a time marker to indicate past or future action will be written in present tense.
Does Sage provide support making visual abstracts?
Yes—you can find more information about visual abstracts on our Journal Author Gateway, including pricing for infographics and video abstracts.
Should I include theory and concepts used in my abstract?
Yes, but succinctly. As usual, keywords that are well-known within the field are one of your greatest assets here. You don’t have space in an abstract to delve into the history of any particular theory or provide definitions for more than a couple terms, but you can certainly align yourself with a known theory, school of thought, or critical perspective and acknowledge this alignment in your abstract. It’s always good practice to read several abstracts in your target journal, which will give you a good sense of how others have introduced their theoretical alignments. Often this kind of thing can be done in less than a full sentence; for example, “Using Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, this article will show that…”, etc. In this example, in just a few words, you’ve introduced a critical paradigm that will be crucial for your own research.
Can you explain MeSH terms? How can I integrate these into my abstract?
MeSH, or Medical Subject Headings, were created and continue to be updated by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) in order to standardize key terms in life science fields for indexing purposes. In large databases like Medline and PubMed, MeSH terms as well as their standardized synonyms are assigned to a majority of articles in the database. Note that this assignation is done manually, meaning the process takes time and that a search will not always show recent entries. MeSH terms can be integrated into an article abstract like any keyword, and careful choice of keywords will aid in search engine optimization of your article. Note that because databases like PubMed tag published articles with MeSH terms retroactively, as an author you will still need to produce your own keywords when writing your abstract. However, familiarizing yourself with NLM’s MeSH terms may prove helpful in drafting your own keywords list.
Should storytelling be included in the abstract to make it more engaging?
It may sound wishy-washy, but it’s true: all writing, at some level, is storytelling. As a writer you should always seek to lead your reader from point A to point B to point C in an engaging and thoughtful manner. That said, your abstract should (in most cases) not be anecdotal—an abstract is not a piece of creative nonfiction nor an opportunity to reflect on your own personal experience of conducting your research. This form of narrative storytelling should be avoided. The only exception would be if personal experience is in some way integral to, or inseparable from, the kind of research you’ve done. In almost every case, your abstract ought to avoid personal sentiment, autobiography, or narration of lived events; keep the focus on your research questions, methods, and results.
Do we need to include the implication of the article in the abstract?
Abstract from Slides 14-15 exploring implicitly gesturing toward implications of research.
Yes, it’s always a good idea for your abstract to at least gesture toward the implications of your research. Sometimes this will be done explicitly, perhaps in a full sentence or two (“This research indicates that…”, “In light of these findings, further research will need to be done on…”), but sometimes the implications are more implicit; they ooze from the text but aren’t necessarily spelled out explicitly. For example, in the sample abstract on slides 14-15, the opening sentence states that the article “empirically revisits the idea of ideological segregation and homogeneity in social networks.” That verb, “revisits,” is one example of how to implicitly gesture toward the implications of the research. The article is going to tread familiar ground: “ideological segregation and homogeneity in social networks”; however, the word “revisits” also implies that, in doing so, the article will discover something new, since to revisit something is to see it again with fresh eyes. There’s an implicit suggestion here that something new and important for the field is going to emerge out of the author’s research.
Is it necessary to add recommendations to your abstract?
No—and, in fact, you should altogether avoid recommending other research in your abstract. The abstract might briefly mention other methodologies or schools of thought, a landmark study or two, or research that inspired your own, but it shouldn’t be in the business of recommending or promoting others’ research. By contrast, in the text of your main article, you can certainly encourage the reader to “see more on” X or Y subject and can name articles and books there (especially in a footnote or endnote), but this kind of thing isn’t done in an abstract. Your own argument and your own research should be your focus here.
Is it necessary to write about findings and results in an abstract?
Yes. This kind of information will constitute the bulk of the “Takeaways” portion of your abstract, that is, the final few sentences of the abstract. In a structured abstract, which increasingly predominates in STM fields, there will even be a section heading labeled “Conclusions,” “Results,” or something similar. See the journal’s submission guidelines and/or consult the journal’s recently published articles for the exact verbiage the journal uses for these section headings.
Do you have any advice to write an abstract if we have a complex data and results?
Slides 16-17, example of summarizing and using key words when working with more complex data.
A successful abstract will carefully distill quite a lot of complex information into a handful of sentences. The objective here is to be thoughtful about your main or most important research question, methods, and conclusions, since most articles are probably working with many different pieces in all three of these areas. What are the most essential pieces of the argument for your reader to be aware of?
Slide 18, example abstract using keywords and no complex data.
In the sample abstracts provided in the PowerPoint, you’ll see that the authors don’t provide specific data points at all; instead, they summarize and use keywords. The sample abstract on slides 14-15 mentions a “computer-assisted analysis,” but doesn’t give more detail than that; the sample on slides 16-17 mentions “eight categories,” “household survey data,” and “case studies,” but again doesn’t go into more detail or provide any specific data; and the sample abstract on slide 18 uses keywords but does not lay out any data. An abstract must summarize and economize because there is simply not enough space to get into particulars. Thus, the advice here is to be as eagle-eyed as you can in providing a helpful overview of your research. You might think of your abstract as a kind of academic advertisement for your article: it doesn’t reveal all the inner workings of the machine, but instead extracts the most important information and piques the reader’s interest to learn more. All the nuance and complexities of your data are in the article itself, so the abstract should clue the reader into what they’ll find if they read the full article.
How do you use “signaling language” in the abstract?
Signaling language is anything that alerts the reader to a new movement or direction in the structure of an argument. It’s a way of saying “We are now going to look at X” without actually using those words. While signaling language could show up anywhere, it’s often most effective at or near the beginning of a sentence. For example, a phrase like “We used X program to investigate Y” indicates that the abstract is now going to discuss methods. A phrase like “Results show that…” alerts the reader that they are about to learn what the study concluded. Signaling language comes in a variety of forms, and it helps frame a sentence and cue the reader to what’s coming next. In a complex academic argument that is full of data, difficult concepts, and moving parts, signaling language can be very helpful for guiding the reader through the various steps or stages of the argument, empowering the reader to better differentiate between problems, methods, and takeaways.
Plain Language Summaries
Do you have suggestions about the structure or order when writing a non-technical summary?
A non-technical or plain language summary (PLS) will benefit from the same ‘Problem > Methods > Takeaways’ schema that helps structure an abstract. A PLS and a regular technical abstract are differentiated more by their vocabulary and word choice than by their structure or order, with a PLS using much less technical language or jargon (and perhaps a less complex syntax) than a traditional abstract. Even while using less technical language, however, a PLS should still provide an overview of the main critical question the article poses, a description of the tools used to tackle the main critical question, and, finally, a summary of the conclusions or main findings. By using simpler, less technical language while retaining a logical ordering of concepts, a successful PLS will make the research more legible to a non-specialist audience.
Keywords
Are keywords only single words or can they include key phrases?
Your keywords can be made up of multiple words. We recommend trying to make your keywords as specific as possible. Remember people search on key phrases not just single words e.g., ‘women’s health’ not ‘health’.
How many keywords would you suggest including while minimizing redundancy with the keywords in the journal?
Some journals will specify a minimum requirement for keywords, so be sure to read the journal’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines. Typically, 3-7 keywords are recommended.
Can we put non-English words as keywords according to our field of work?
Keywords should match the language that the article will be published in.
To watch the recording of this webinar or explore one of our previous webinars, complete the form at this link and receive immediate access to our full library of webinar recordings.