OOPSLA 1993, pp.429-436.
This excellent advice is aimed towards writing papers,
but also applies to abstracts.
In brief, your abstract should contain four sentences:
- Problem statement
- Why the problem is a problem
- The startling sentence
- The implications of the startling sentence
Beck said:
-
Write to the program committee.
Never forget
that before you can write to the vast,
eager,
and appreciative OOPSLA audience
you must first get past the program committee.
Before I begin I fix in my mind a picture of a harried PC member,
desk piled with papers.
Mine comes to the top.
I have maybe thirty seconds to grab their interest.
Remember
that the program committee is made up of experts in the field.
Even if your topic is of broad interest to beginners,
there must still be some spark in it
to keep an expert reading to the end.
If your topic is highly technical,
it may not be in an area
that they are familiar with,
so it must readably present the novel aspects of the work.
-
One startling sentence.
Now
that you know you are writing to the program committee,
you need to find the one thing you want to say
that will catch their interest.
If you have been working on the world's niftiest program night
and day
for five years,
the temptation is to include absolutely everything about it,
"The Foo System In All Its Glory." It'll never work.
I know it's painful to ignore all those great insights,
but find the most interesting thing you have done
and write it down,
"network garbage collection is fast
and easy."
You want the reader's eyes to open wide
when they realize what it is you've just said.
I think some people are reluctant
to boil their message down to one startling sentence
because it opens them up to concrete criticism.
If you write about the Foo System
and someone says it isn't neat,
you can just reply,
"Is so,
nyah!" If you say network garbage collection is easy,
it is a statement
that is objectively true
or false.
You can be proven wrong.
Wait!
You spent five years proving it was easy.
Make your case.
-
Argument:
problem,
solution,
defense,
related work.
Now
that you have a startling sentence,
your paper must stand as the argument
for its validity.
You are convincing the by-now-intrigued committee member
of the truth of your amazing statement.
Divide your paper into four sections.
The first describes the problem to be solved.
When the PC member is done reading it,
they should understand why it is a problem,
and believe
that it is important to solve.
The second section describes your problem.
You are convincing the PC member
that your solution really could solve the problem.
This section is sometimes supplemented with a section between the defense
and related work which describes implementation details.
The third section is your defense of
why your solution really solves the problem.
The PC member reading it should be convinced
that the problem is actually solved,
and
that you have thought of all reasonable counter arguments.
The final section describes what other people have done in the area.
Upon reading this section,
the PC member should be convinced
that what you have done is novel.
-
The abstract is your four sentence summary of
the conclusions of your paper.
Its primary purpose is to get your paper into the A pile.
Most PC members sort their papers in an A pile
and a B pile by reading the abstracts.
The A pile papers get smiling interest,
the B pile papers are a chore to be slogged through.
By keeping your abstract short
and clear,
you greatly enhance your chances of being in the A pile.
I try to have four sentences in my abstract.
The first states the problem.
The second states why the problem is a problem.
The third is my startling sentence.
The fourth states the implication of my startling sentence.
An abstract
for this paper done in this style would be:
The rejection rate
for OOPSLA papers in near 90%.
Most papers are rejected not
because of a lack of good ideas,
but
because they are poorly structured.
Following four simple steps in writing a paper
will dramatically increase your chances of acceptance.
If everyone followed these steps,
the amount of communication in the object community would increase,
improving the rate of progress.
Well,
I'm not sure that's a great abstract,
but you get the idea.
I always feel funny writing an abstract this way.
The idea I thought was
so wonderful when I started writing the paper looks naked
and alone sitting there with no support.
I resist the temptation to argue
for my conclusion in the abstract.
I think it gives the reader more incentive to carefully read
the rest of the paper.
They want to find you how in the world you could possible say
such an outrageous thing.
There are my four steps to better papers.
You can use them sequentially to write papers,
or you can use them to evaluate papers you have already written.
- Your abstract should lure people to read your paper.
- Your abstract should be a succinct summary of
your finding's exact details.
It should contain your paper's most important results.
- Motivation
Why should a reader care about the problem and your results?
- Problem statement
What problem are you trying to solve?
- Approach
How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem?
- Results
What's the answer?
- Conclusions
What are the implications of your answer?
