Abstracts
Feedback from judging abstracts for the Research Student Conference, June 2013
The judges, Dr Tim Brooks, Prof Guido Rings, Dr Darren Sharpe and Prof Caroline Strange received a
total of 72 abstracts. Our thoughts after reading your abstracts are:
Good practice
 Follow the guidelines – very few researchers did this!
 Keep to the word length – the number of words in these abstracts varied from 115 to 456
words. 115 words is too short for an abstract where 300 words is given as the guideline. An
abstract of this length is very unlikely to provide sufficient information. An abstract with 456
words is far too long!
 Lead the reader clearly through the abstract.
 Explain carefully the context for your research.
 Provide keywords that reflect the research and are not too general – you want someone
searching for your work to find it! You may need to use a phrase rather than a single word.
Suggestions to improve your abstract
 Discuss your abstract with at least one of your supervisors.
 Read your abstract out aloud – this will help with punctuation and detect long sentences
 Think about replacing a long sentence with two shorter sentences to make your abstract
easier to read.
 Check that all sentences include a verb.
 Have a concise title – it does not have to include every aspect of your research but give the
area of your research. Between 7 and 10 words should be sufficient for a title. We were not
judging the titles but some had over 30 words.
 Do not include references unless these are absolutely necessary for citations.
 Avoid including figures.
Dr Tim Brooks
Prof Guido Rings
Dr Darren Sharpe
Prof Caroline Strange
June 2013