How To Write Research Article Summary In 5 Steps

The summary of a research article is one of the main aspects of the work. Experienced professors believe that an incorrect summary can spoil even a perfect paper. 

What is the summary?

A summary of an article is the conclusion of all written work and an invitation to discussion. Its task is to prove that the author has achieved the set goals, completed the set tasks, and received a valuable result. A research article involves the presentation of intermediate or final results of research. It should contain the author’s developments, conclusions, and recommendations.

A research article should have a novelty effect. The results obtained should not be previously published. When publishing it, the author assigns priority to the chosen research area. All conclusions must be objective. Readers prefer to read the author’s point of view on the results. The author needs to express a subjective opinion.

What to include in the summary?

• List the main conclusions and the results obtained. To do this, you should rely on the topic and purpose of the study. Moreover, you need to take into consideration the tasks for the project. All these items should be logically related and codependent;
• Indicate the possible applications of the results you obtained in the research. In other words, you have to prove the practical significance of your study;
• Evaluate the results of a personal experiment within the framework of a research project;
• Formulate proposals for the elimination of the problems you specified in the project;
• Summarize the research and describe the achieved goals and completed tasks.

The plan of the article summary

We have figured out what you should include in the final chapter of the research article. Now we can move on to drawing up its plan. It will help you not to stray from the topic and to cover all the issues that should be presented in the conclusions.

1. The essence of the problem of research work. In the final part, the author must justify why he chose a particular topic. To answer this question, he has to rely on the materials of the conducted research.

2. Problems discovered while studying the topic. After listing them, the author indicates the solutions that he found.

3. The results of the practical steps that he took. In the summary, he has to specify a brief conclusion on each of them.

4. The goal which an author set for himself and the tasks that he planned to perform. There is no need to rewrite the whole list. He has to indicate what results he achieved and how he achieved them. The author has to mention what difficulties arose, and what he did not manage to cope with at all. He has to focus on the achievements and write about the obstacles that have arisen in passing.

5. Prospects for further research on the topic, the relevance of the problem, and the possibility of applying the results in practice. The author should describe how to implement his project and what improvements it can bring if implemented.

It will be much easier to summarize an article if you make small intermediate conclusions after each section. If you did not do that, you need to make theses that reflect the essence of the theoretical part of the project. When summing up the results of the practical block, you use technical calculations. To make the numbers easier to perceive, you should present them in the form of a table or graph.

The author needs to ensure the readers that he used various options to solve the problems and chose the most effective ones. To do this, the author must describe in detail the methods used and choose the most effective ones. Summing up, he should emphasize that the goal was achieved and all the tasks were completed.

Each conclusion should have a reason. However, it is not recommended to copy fragments of previous chapters. When checking the text before submission, the author should pay attention to the coincidence of the wording. Remember that the words from the main and final parts cannot match more than 50%. You should carefully study the material and say it in your own words. You should present the information in the 3rd person. There is no need to make references to primary sources in this block.

What should you remember about the writing style?

Remember to observe the style. In this case, you should use a strictly scientific style. It is specific and is characterized by several features. These include:

• the speech functionality;
• well-thought-out phrases;
• the desire for standardized speech;
• nomological nature of the presentation of the material;
• careful selection of language tools.

Technological processes and research are described with the help of specific terminology. You can use artistic descriptions and adjectives only when they are necessary for the disclosure of the research topic. In texts written in a scientific style, the information is usually presented in two ways:

• detailed material from the 3rd person;
• citation of authors of research papers and other literature.

In the first case, the author reads and comprehends the material, then passes it on in his own words, adds his reasoning, and draws conclusions. In the second case, the author writes the excerpt from the source and indicates the source itself.

The 5 steps of summarizing the article

To correctly draw up a summary, each author needs to follow 5 easy steps:

1. Open the introduction

Read again the goals and objectives of the project outlined there. Be sure to make comments about this in the summary.

2. Run through each section of the main part of the project

Make small conclusions for each of them on the draft. It should be no more than 3-5 sentences. After that, you can harmoniously pour them into the conclusion so that the thoughts are not broken and incomplete.

3. Pay special attention to the practical component of the article

Check your calculations. Draw conclusions on them, briefly indicate the methods used, and offer your vision of solving the problem.

4. Write the summary

Take into consideration all conclusions, research results, and your ideas.

5. Check every part of the article and the whole paper for plagiarism

If the percentage of uniqueness is too low, the reader will consider your work as a copy-paste of someone else’s work. If the indicator is excellent, make a brief emphasis on uniqueness.

If there were difficulties in the course of the research, indicate them briefly in the summary. It will be an indicator of a thorough approach to work and your responsibility.

How to write a summary of an article? Tips on writing a correct conclusion

We offer a few recommendations to those who want to cope with the task on their own:

1. Thoroughly read your research paper

Before you start working on the conclusion, reread the entire text. Pay special attention to the introduction (namely, the goals and objectives of the methodology used). It is important that the summary of the research work reflects them and contains all the relevant information.

2. Pay attention to small conclusions

Small conclusions at the end of each section will help you make the summary more informative. The main thing is to make sure that they are harmoniously connected, and the text is structured.

3. Stick to the scientific style

To emphasize the peculiarities of the research, you should describe the problems encountered during the work on the project. Moreover, you have to express your attitude to the topic. The more interesting and informative the conclusions are, the more likely the reader will believe you delved into the study. The conclusion should be restrained but at the same time lively and understandable.

4. Avoid fillers

The final chapter should not contain fillers and detailed descriptions. The first one is usually used to increase the volume of the text. As for the detailed descriptions, they have already been used in previous parts of the research. 

5. Eliminate unnecessary data

Sometimes the authors do not know how to formulate conclusions correctly. Besides, some of them do not fall into the specified volume and decide to increase it by writing unnecessary data. The summary is not a part where you need to “pour water”. The information there should be clear and concise.

6. Check with the introduction 

The requirements oblige students to indicate the purpose and objectives of the article in the introduction. In the summary, the author should mention whether he was able to achieve the expected results. He also has to display the conclusions he wrote for the other chapters. 

Conclusion

How do I write an article review so that readers will appreciate the work? Take sufficient time to prepare this section and use the recommendations listed in the article. We hope that they will help each author to achieve a good result. Remember that in the summary, you do not need to retell the work. It is enough to analyze the text and draw conclusions.

Frequently Asked Questions