Summarized description of the content of a document or document component.
Abstract Length: Many publishers limit an abstract to a very short summary of the major findings or conclusions of a work and further limit this abstract to a paragraph or two. But some publishers encourage “long” or “summary” abstracts in which each chapter of the book or section of a chapter is summarized in a separate abstract section that has as its title the title of the chapter or section being summarized. Such abstracts may be extensive, incorporating figures and tables. The model for the element <abstract> has been made flexible enough to allow for these titled sections.
Abstract Type: The @abstract-type attribute may be used to identify special types of abstracts required by some publishers, for example, graphical abstracts, RSS/Atom/Twitter feeds, stereochemical abstracts, ASCII abstracts for sending to small devices, and table-of-contents abstracts that can be inserted as annotations into a Table of Contents. See the attribute page for @abstract-type for a more complete list of types. If the abstract is not one of the types listed, the @abstract-type attribute should not be used.
Accessibility: For accessibility purposes, it is useful to provide a very short synopsis abstract (much like a Table of Contents blurb or a dek in some journals) whose purpose is to tell a non-sighted reader what the document is about. This abstract can be given the @abstract-type such as “meta-description”, “description”, or “dc:description” to indicate that, when making web pages from this XML, the abstract should be used to create the XHTML metadata description.
<!ELEMENT abstract %abstract-model; >
((object-id)*, (sec-meta?, label?, title?, subtitle*, alt-title*, (address | alternatives | array | boxed-text | chem-struct-wrap | fig | fig-group | graphic | media | preformat | supplementary-material | table-wrap | table-wrap-group | disp-formula | disp-formula-group | def-list | list | tex-math | mml:math | p | related-article | related-object | ack | disp-quote | speech | statement | verse-group | x)*, (sec)*, (notes | fn-group | glossary | ref-list | sig-block)*))
The following, in order:
<book-meta>, <book-part-meta>, <collection-meta>, <toc-entry>
A typical abstract:
...
<book-part-meta>
<title-group>
<label>1</label>
<title>GenBank: The Nucleotide Sequence Database</title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group>...</contrib-group>
<pub-history>...</pub-history>
<abstract>
<title>Summary</title>
<p>The GenBank sequence database is an annotated collection of all
publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations.
This database is produced at National Center for Biotechnology
Information (<xref ref-type="kwd" rid="bid.1353">NCBI</xref>) as part
of an international collaboration with the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory (EMBL) Data Library from the European Bioinformatics
Institute (EBI) and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ). GenBank and
its collaborators receive sequences produced in laboratories throughout
the world from more than 100,000 distinct organisms. GenBank continues
to grow at an exponential rate, doubling every 10 months. Release 134,
produced in February 2003, contained over 29.3 billion nucleotide
bases in more than 23.0 million sequences. GenBank is built by direct
submissions from individual laboratories, as well as from bulk
submissions from large-scale sequencing centers.</p>
<p>Direct submissions are made to ...</p>
</abstract>
</book-part-meta>
...
An abstract with summarized sections:
...
<book-meta>
...
<abstract>
<sec>
<title>Objective</title>
<p>To examine the effectiveness of
day hospital attendance in prolonging independent living for elderly
people.</p></sec>
<sec>
<title>Design</title>
<p>Systematic review of 12 controlled clinical trials (available
by January 1997) comparing day hospital care with
comprehensive care (five trials), domiciliary care (four trials),
or no comprehensive care (three trials).</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Subjects</title>
<p>2867 elderly people.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Main outcome measures</title>
<p>Death, institutionalisation, disability, global “poor
outcome,” and use of resources.</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Results</title>
<p>Overall, there was no significant difference between day hospitals and
alternative services for death, disability, or use of resources. However, ...</p>
</sec>
<sec>
<title>Conclusions</title>
<p>Day hospital care seems to be an effective service for elderly
people ...</p>
<p><boxed-text position="float">
<sec><title>Key messages</title>
<p>...</p>
</sec>
</boxed-text></p>
</sec>
</abstract>
</book-meta>
...
JATS-articlemeta1.ent