<abstract>
Abstract
Summarized description of the content of a document or document component.
Remarks
Article Abstracts: Many journal publishers request an abstract that is a very short summary of the major findings or conclusions of an article and limit this abstract to a paragraph or two. But some publishers require “long” or “summary” abstracts in which each section of the paper is summarized in a separate abstract section that has the same title as the article section being summarized. Such abstracts may be extensive, incorporating figures and tables. While the model for the element <abstract> has been made flexible enough to allow for these titled sections, it is expected that most abstracts will be much simpler and will contain one or more paragraphs.
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.
The <abstract> element should not be used to take the place of the
regular accessibility elements <alt-text> or <long-desc>, which are, respectively, shorter and longer descriptions of a
component of a document, such as a table or figure.
Attributes
Content Model
<!ELEMENT abstract %abstract-model; >
Expanded Content Model
(title?, (p)*, sec*)
Description
This element may be contained in:
Example 1
A typical abstract of a single paragraph:
<article dtd-version="1.1d3">
<front>
<article-meta>...
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright © 2000, The National Academy
of Sciences</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2000</copyright-year>
</permissions>
<abstract>
<p>We describe a method for cloning nucleic acid molecules onto the
surfaces of 5-μm microbeads rather than in biological hosts.
A unique tag sequence is attached to each molecule, and the tagged
library is amplified. Unique tagging of the molecules is achieved by
sampling a small fraction (1%) of a very large repertoire of
tag sequences. The resulting library is hybridized to microbeads that
each carry ≈10<sup>6</sup> strands complementary to one
of the tags. About 10<sup>5</sup> copies of each molecule are collected
on each microbead. ...</p>
</abstract>
<kwd-group kwd-group-type="author">...</kwd-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
...</article>
Example 2
An abstract with summarized sections:
<article dtd-version="1.1d3">
<front>
<article-meta>...
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright © 1999, British
Medical Journal</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>1999</copyright-year>
</permissions>
<abstract abstract-type="section">
<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 ...</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>
</article-meta>
</front>
...</article>
Example 3
The @abstract-type attribute can differentiate between multiple abstracts:
... <article-meta>... <abstract> <p>This is the third and last part of the volume devoted to solubility data of rare earth metal chlorides in water and in ternary and quaternary aqueous systems. Compilations of all available experimental data for each rare earth metal chloride are introduced with a corresponding critical evaluation. Every such evaluation contains a tabulated collection of all solubility results in water, a scheme of the water-rich part of the equilibrium ... Because the ternary and quaternary systems were almost never studied more than once, no critical evaluations or systematic comparisons of such data were possible. Simple chlorides (no complexes) of Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, and Lu are treated as the input substances. The literature (including a thorough coverage of papers in Chinese and Russian) has been covered through the middle of 2008.</p> </abstract> <abstract abstract-type="short"> <p>The is the third and last part of the volume devoted to solubility data of rare earth metal chlorides in water and in ternary and quaternary aqueous systems. Compilations of all available experimental data are introduced for each rare earth metal chloride with a corresponding critical evaluation. This part covers chlorides of Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, and Lu, with coverage of the literature through the middle of 2008.</p> </abstract> </article-meta> ...