Lecture 2

Research Methodology
By:
Engr. Dr. Muhammad Ali Qureshi
Head of Department,
Telecommunication Engineering
The Islamia University of Bahawalpur.

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 Outline
How to prepare title and abstracts for
academic articles:
• Title
• Characteristics of Good title
• Abstract Characteristics of Good abstract
• Summary

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Four Questions of Manuscript Writing

What is the? INTRODUCTION

What did you do? METHODS
What did you find? RESULTS
What does that means? DISCUSSION
 Parts of a Manuscript
Title
Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
Acknowledgements
References
Title, key words and abstracts are used for electronic
searches
 Skeleton of an Article-Continued
IMRaD structure- Writing a draft

Introduction--- What is the?

Materials and methods/experimental
procedures-- What did you do?
Results-- What did you find?
and
Discussion-- What does it mean?

Huth EJ. Writing and Publishing in Medicine, 3rd ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins; 1999.
Scientific Writing: My Approach and Irreverent Opinions, Mark Yeager.
 Attributes of a Good Manuscript

• Concise but powerful

• Story like
• To the point
• Free from grammatical and stylistic errors
• Recognizing contributions of others
• Technically correct
 Title – The Backbone of an Article
• It indicates content and main discoveries with
few possible words and attracts the readers
attention.
• It decides whether article is worth reading or
will get attention of the readers.

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The Impact of Article Titles on Citation Hits

• Most published articles are not cited- the title

play a vital role
• Construction of an article title has a significant
impact on citation frequency.
• Electronic searches are now preferred over
other means, which includes SciFinder,
PubMed, Web of Sceince, Google Scholar, etc.
• These searches are based on the title or key
word .

*J R Soc Med Sh Rep 2010;1:2. DOI 10.1258/shorts.2009.100020

 Importance of Title
The title forms an important part of your
communication with your readers, both with
the editor and referees who will evaluate the
paper, and with the members of your
discipline community whom you want to
read the paper after its publication.

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 Strategies
▪ Provide as much relevant information as
possible, but be concise
▪ Use keywords prominently
▪ Choose noun phrase, statement, or question?
▪ Avoid ambiguity in noun phrases

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 Trick 01
Provide as much relevant information as
possible, but be concise
▪ To attract busy readers
▪ Potential readers can judge your article easily

e.g.: Quantifying blur in colour images using higher order singular values
MA Qureshi, M Deriche, A Beghdadi - Electronics Letters, 2016

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 Trick 02
Use keywords prominently
▪ effective way to ensure your keyword(s) are at the
front of your title is to use a colon (:) or a dash (–) to
separate the first, keyword containing part of the
title from a second, explanatory section.

e.g.: 1. Clustering: A neural network approach

2. Wireless mesh network security: A traffic engineering
management approach

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 Trick 03
Choose strategically: noun phrase, statement, or
question?
▪ Statement titles are only suitable for papers that address
a specific question and present a non-complex answer.
▪ When there is no simple answer better to write title as
question.

e.g. : Computer games created by middle school girls: Can they be

used to measure understanding of computer science concepts?

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 Summary
Several characteristics of Effective titles 14
Indicate accurately the subject and scope of the study.
Avoid using abbreviations. Use words that create a
positive impression and stimulate reader interest. Use
current nomenclature from the field of study. Identify key
variables, both dependent and independent. May reveal
how the paper will be organized. Suggest a relationship
between variables which supports the major hypothesis.
Is limited to 10 to 15 substantive words. Do not include
"study of," "analysis of" or similar constructions. Titles are
usually in the form of a phrase, but can also be in the
form of a question.

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 Exercise
1. Answer the questions: What is my paper about? What
techniques/ designs were used? Who/what is studied? What
were the results?
▪ My paper studies whether X therapy improves the cognitive function of
patients suffering from dementia.
▪ It was a randomized trial.
▪ I studied 40 cases from six cities in Japan.
▪ There was an improvement in the cognitive function of patients.
2. Use your answers to list key words.
▪ X therapy
▪ Randomized trial
▪ Dementia
▪ 6 Japanese cities
▪ 40 cases
▪ Improved cognitive function

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 Exercise
3. Build a sentence with these key words.

This study is a randomized trial that investigates whether X therapy

improved cognitive function in 40 dementia patients from 6 cities in
Japan; it reports improved cognitive function. (28 words)

4. Delete all waste words (e.g., study of, investigates) and repetitive
words; link the remaining.

This study is a randomized trial that investigates whether X therapy

improved cognitive function in 40 dementia patients from 6 cities in
Japan; it reports improved cognitive function

Randomized trial of X therapy for improving cognitive function in 40

dementia patients from 6 cities in Japan (18 words)
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 Exercise
5. Delete non-essential information and reword.
Randomized trial of X therapy for improving cognitive
function in 40 dementia patients from 6 cities in Japan
reports improved cognitive function

Randomized trial of X therapy for improving cognitive

function in 40 dementia patients (13 words)

OR (reworded with subtitle and a focus on the results)

X therapy improves cognitive function in 40 dementia

patients: A randomized trial (12 words)
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Abstract

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 Abstract
An abstract summarizes, usually in one
paragraph of 300 words or less, the major
aspects of the entire paper in a prescribed
sequence that includes:
1. the overall purpose of the study and the research
problem(s) you investigated;
2. the basic design of the study;
3. major findings or trends found as a result of your
analysis; and,
4. a brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions.

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 The Abstract

• The abstract should be the best part of

the paper!
• It is the most frequently read part of
an article after the title.
 Purposes of the Abstract
• Provides an overview of the article (readers
may read nothing else)
• Provides context for those who do read the
article
• Used by journals to assign reviewers
• Used by abstracting and information services
to index and retrieve articles
• Used by translation services for foreign
readers
 Purposes of the Abstract
• Helps reader decide whether to read the
article (ie, is this important to me?)
• Provides reminders for readers after they’ve
read the article
• Directs readers’ attention to the highlights of
the article

In general, the abstract reflects on the

professionalism and integrity of the work.
Characteristics of the Abstract

• Accurate, coherent, and readable

• Concise, specific, and selective
• Self-contained, ie, stand alone (Gives
the quick idea of the contents)
• Should be informative, indicative and
reflects the main ‘story’ of the article.
• I generally write abstract at the end
 Importance of Abstract
For busy readers the Abstract, sometimes
called the Summary, may be the only part of
the paper they read, unless it succeeds in
convincing them to take the time to read the
whole paper.

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 Abstract Types
▪ Descriptive Abstract
▪ Indicative abstracts (review articles)
▪ Informative Abstract (results papers)
▪ Presentation, meeting, poster abstracts

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 Indicative Abstracts
Abstracts of Review Articles

• State objective of review

• Give succinct summary of the data sources
• Specify criteria used to select studies
• Describe guidelines used for abstracting data
and assessing data quality
• State main results of review and methods used
to obtain these results
• State conclusions and potential applications of
the results

Written after the paper has been written

 Informative Abstracts
Abstracts of Results Papers

• State briefly the content of the paper

• Follow the sequence of the article
– Intro, Method, Results, Discussion
– Also possibly Background, Conclusions, Implications
• Include the species or population, study design or
experimental approach, and independent and
dependent variables
• Represent each section of the paper by at least one
sentence in the abstract

Written after the paper has been written

 Abstract Models (BPMRC)
▪ B Why did you start? Some background
information
▪ P What did you try to do? The principal activity
(or purpose) of the study and its scope
▪ M What did you do? Some information about
the methods used in the study
▪ R What did you find? The most important
results of the study
▪ C What does it mean? A statement of
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conclusion or recommendation
Characteristics of Effective Abstract
1.Problem:
What is the problem your paper addresses?
Avoid describing the solution here.

e.g. We address the problem of robot navigation

across unmapped rough terrain.

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Characteristics of Effective Abstract
2. Importance:
How would a solution to this problem change
the world? Remember that it’s not obvious to
everyone else how important this problem is.

e.g. A solution to this problem will enable more rapid

validation of the efficacy of sleep medication.

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Characteristics of Effective Abstract
3. New capability:
What can we do now that we couldn’t do
before? Quantify if possible.

e.g. Our approach enables robots to climb trees five

times more quickly than was possible before.

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Characteristics of Effective Abstract
4. Challenge:
Why is this problem hard? and/or What
difficulty do other solutions face?

e.g. In order to solve this problem a robot must know

its location to within 1mm.

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Characteristics of Effective Abstract
5. Insight:
What did you discover? or How did you
approach the problem differently?

e.g. By framing the problem as an optimization task,

we are able to leverage a linear time algorithm.

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Characteristics of Effective Abstract
6. Solution:
Provide some specific detail about the solution.

e.g. Our algorithm measures the standard deviation of

the quantitative features in each dimension, then sorts
the result, providing an optimal solution.

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Characteristics of Effective Abstract
7. Evidence:
Summarize the evidence you have for your
approach: A proof, an implementation, or
quantitative results.

e.g. The algorithm was implemented on a monkey-

based robot and shown to perform 17% faster than a
dog of similar mass.

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 Summary
• Title and Abstract are very important when we
writing research articles.
• Make the title and abstract the best part of the
article
• There are many strategies to make title and
abstract.
• Double check every piece of data

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Thank You

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Suggest few more suitable title for
this article
What should be the key words?
How we can we improve the
abstract?

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