IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v57y2003i3d10.1023_a1025008802657.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Abstracts, introductions and discussions: How far do they differ in style?

Author

Listed:
  • James Hartley

    (University of Keele)

  • James W. Pennebaker

    (University of Texas)

  • Claire Fox

    (University of Keele)

Abstract

Two computer-based style programs were used to analyse the Abstracts, Introductions and Discussions of 80 educational psychology journal articles. Measures were made of the overall readability of the texts as well as of sentence lengths, difficult and unique words, articles, prepositions and pronouns. The results showed that the Abstracts scored worst on most of these measures of readability, the Introductions came next, and the Discussions did best of all. However, although the mean scores between the sections differed, the authors wrote in stylistically consistent ways across the sections. Thus readability was variable across the sections but consistent within the authors.

Suggested Citation

  • James Hartley & James W. Pennebaker & Claire Fox, 2003. "Abstracts, introductions and discussions: How far do they differ in style?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 57(3), pages 389-398, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:57:y:2003:i:3:d:10.1023_a:1025008802657
    DOI: 10.1023/A:1025008802657
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1023/A:1025008802657
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1023/A:1025008802657?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rosemary King, 1976. "A comparison of the readability of abstracts with their source documents," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 27(2), pages 118-121, March.
    2. Gladys B. Dronberger & Gerald T. Kowitz, 1975. "Abstract readability as a factor in information systems," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 26(2), pages 108-111, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Edoardo Magnone, 2014. "A novel graphical representation of sentence complexity: the description and its application," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1301-1329, February.
    2. Lutz Bornmann & Markus Wolf & Hans-Dieter Daniel, 2012. "Closed versus open reviewing of journal manuscripts: how far do comments differ in language use?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(3), pages 843-856, June.
    3. Dolnicar, Sara & Chapple, Alexander, 2015. "The readability of articles in tourism journals," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 161-166.
    4. Diego Marino Fages, 2020. "Write better, publish better," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1671-1681, March.
    5. Shan Wang & Xiaojun Liu & Jie Zhou, 2022. "Readability is decreasing in language and linguistics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4697-4729, August.
    6. Ju Wen & Lei Lei, 2022. "Adjectives and adverbs in life sciences across 50 years: implications for emotions and readability in academic texts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4731-4749, August.
    7. Christos Alexakis & Michael Dowling & Konstantinos Eleftheriou & Michael Polemis, 2021. "Textual Machine Learning: An Application to Computational Economics Research," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 57(1), pages 369-385, January.
    8. Omar Mubin & Dhaval Tejlavwala & Mudassar Arsalan & Muneeb Ahmad & Simeon Simoff, 2018. "An assessment into the characteristics of award winning papers at CHI," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(2), pages 1181-1201, August.
    9. Naser Rashidi & Hussein Meihami, 2018. "Informetrics of Scientometrics abstracts: a rhetorical move analysis of the research abstracts published in Scientometrics journal," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1975-1994, September.
    10. Lundmark, Erik & Milanov, Hana & Seigner, Benedikt David Christian, 2022. "Can it be measured? A quantitative assessment of critiques of the entrepreneurship literature," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 17(C).
    11. Dowling, Michael & Hammami, Helmi & Zreik, Ousayna, 2018. "Easy to read, easy to cite?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 100-103.
    12. Meva Bayrak Karsli & Sinem Karabey & Nergiz Ercil Cagiltay & Yuksel Goktas, 2018. "Comparison of the discussion sections of PhD dissertations in educational technology: the case of Turkey and the USA," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1381-1403, December.
    13. Melissa A. Wheeler & Ekaterina Vylomova & Melanie J. McGrath & Nick Haslam, 2021. "More confident, less formal: stylistic changes in academic psychology writing from 1970 to 2016," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9603-9612, December.
    14. Xi Zhao & Li Li & Wei Xiao, 2023. "The diachronic change of research article abstract difficulty across disciplines: a cognitive information-theoretic approach," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    15. Ante, Lennart, 2022. "The relationship between readability and scientific impact: Evidence from emerging technology discourses," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    16. Yue Su & Jia Xue & Xiaoqian Liu & Peijing Wu & Junxiang Chen & Chen Chen & Tianli Liu & Weigang Gong & Tingshao Zhu, 2020. "Examining the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown in Wuhan and Lombardy: A Psycholinguistic Analysis on Weibo and Twitter," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(12), pages 1-10, June.
    17. Lei Lei & Sheng Yan, 2016. "Readability and citations in information science: evidence from abstracts and articles of four journals (2003–2012)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1155-1169, September.
    18. Shuo Xu & Ling Li & Xin An & Liyuan Hao & Guancan Yang, 2021. "An approach for detecting the commonality and specialty between scientific publications and patents," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7445-7475, September.
    19. Berninger, Marc & Kiesel, Florian & Schiereck, Dirk & Gaar, Eduard, 2021. "Citations and the readers’ information-extracting costs of finance articles," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tan Jin & Huiqiong Duan & Xiaofei Lu & Jing Ni & Kai Guo, 2021. "Do research articles with more readable abstracts receive higher online attention? Evidence from Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8471-8490, October.
    2. Edoardo Magnone, 2014. "A novel graphical representation of sentence complexity: the description and its application," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 1301-1329, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:57:y:2003:i:3:d:10.1023_a:1025008802657. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.