Analysis of research article abstracts in library and information science according to the IMRaD model

Abstract

Research article abstracts are very valuable texts that provide the reader with summary information about the scope, methodology and findings of the study. In particular, abstracts written in IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion) format tend to convey the results of scientific studies more clearly and understandably. The sample was selected from 10 journals in different quartiles in the Social Sciences Citation Index, and a total of 250 abstracts were analysed and 25 abstracts of articles published in the last 5 years from each journal. The findings indicate that the most common IMRaD components in the analysed abstracts are purpose (96.8%), method (80%), results (78.8%), background (68.80%) and discussion (66.8%), respectively. More than half of the abstracts (51.2%) follow the regular ‘I-M-R-D’ format, while the second most common format (18%) is the ‘I-M-R’ format, where the ‘discussion’ section is missing. The highest number of characters in the abstracts is used in the results section (24.3%) and the background section (23.9%), while the discussion section (15.4%) has the fewest characters. The research results indicate that complete standardisation of abstract writing has not yet been achieved in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field. Different journal editorial policies create variability in abstract structure and content. There is a need for more standardisation in abstracts in the field literature.