Creating and Saving Abstracts

An abstract provides a brief summary of the topic, the approach, the purpose, the most important findings, and occasionally possibilities for future research. It should be written concisely and objectively.

When writing an abstract, keep the following points in mind:

• Briefly summarize the contents of the text by describing the main topic, arguments, and scope.
• Consider its subject-specific context: What scholarly discussions is it relevant to? What methodological and/or theoretical approaches does the author take?
• Determine the author's contributions to the research: what are the key contributions of the work? What are the author's major findings? What questions remain open for investigation?

Your own opinions and critical evaluations should be recorded as a Review .

Writing an abstract

If you're writing an abstract yourself, we recommend including your name and the date in brackets at the beginning of the abstract so that you do not forget that you are the author.

1. In the References workspace, switch to the Content tab.
2. Write the text in the Abstract field. If you want to use font formatting (e.g. bold, underlined, etc.), highlight the text to be formatted and click Font . Chose the desired font format and click OK .

Saving an abstract from a PDF file

Many journal articles in electronic form already include an abstract. If this is the case, you can easily copy it into Citavi.

1. Open the PDF file in the References workspace.
2. Click the text selection tool.
3. Highlight the text of the abstract.
4. Click More.
5. Click Abstract. Citavi will transfer the highlighted text to the Abstract field.