Thanks to those of you who have already submitted your first assignment for Publishing & Presenting Clinical Research. As a reminder, your structured abstracts are due by Monday, April 24 by 5 pm. Please use the assignment upload link on the course CLE website as well as the posted document template, and include your first and last name in the document.
Your abstract should be directed at readers who have a general knowledge about your field but may not have specific expertise in your research topic. Keep in mind that readers tend to scan through multiple abstracts in a short period of time and rely upon you to guide them in grasping the significance of your work. Based on the relatively small number of words you put on paper, readers may decide whether to accept your abstract for presentation at a conference, attend your presentation session, or read the full-length paper describing your work.
Your goal is to help your readers understand why your research question is interesting or important, summarize your methods in a way that is faithful to the research but also calls attention to its strengths, present key findings in terms that indicate both their magnitude and their significance, and point out any important clinical or scientific implications of your results.
If you're not yet at the stage where you have your own research data, you can borrow data from a mentor or colleague, or make up hypothetical data for a project that's still in progress. (While making up data is unacceptable in real-life research, it's fine in the context of this course.) But you should not directly copy text from another researcher's abstract or manuscript in a way that amounts to plagiarism of his or her work.
Best wishes,Alison Huang, MD, MAS