Three pillars of a biomedical research article: The title, abstract and keywords

Abstract

The title is the main advertisement for an article and enables the reader to decide whether they want to read the article or not. The title should be simple, specific and reflect the article′s content clearly and precisely in 10 - 15 words. The abstract summarizes the whole article in 200 to 250 words and should be structured for a research article. It includes the problem or the study objectives, the methods used, the main results obtained and the conclusion reached. Most authors write the abstract last, so that it accurately reflects the content of the article. Keywords are placed below the abstract and are usually 3 - 7 in number. Choosing right keywords will enhance the article being found by other researchers as these are used by abstracting and indexing services. Ultimately, a well-cited research article depends on how well the title, abstract and keywords are written.