 We will review abstract writing first and then do some exercises, so I would like to briefly point out one thing that in all the exercises that we are doing in face to face, the concepts will only be very briefly reviewed, so the idea of flip classroom is that participant that is your students in later if they take this flip classroom mode, they are supposed to view the lectures online, take the exercises which you have already done and then come to the classroom. Now I understand that you might have viewed all these lectures long back about more than a month back, so it is very likely that you might have forgotten those concepts and if we are to review all the lectures now then we would not be doing more of interaction. So I request you if you do not recollect the facts to please view the lectures again the lectures are still available in IIT Bombay X and the schedule is also available, so looking at the schedule you can view the lectures online and then come to this class the next day. So because of time constraint we cannot go through it completely but definitely we will review important points from the lectures. So today we will continue with abstract writing and today it is whole day it is about summary writing, so with different forms of summary we will see. So firstly we are seeing summary for technical work which is called as abstract writing and then summary for an elevator pitch which is like a very short summary and then summary for a general audience, suppose you want to tell your work to a very general audience like your somebody at home, somebody who is not even educated in science and so on. So these are three different types of summary that we will be seeing today. So very briefly there are different ways we can structure abstract. What I am going to discuss now is the most generic way it has been adopted from the guidelines followed in nature and we are just slightly modified it, so the important thing to remember is the most generic description of an abstract is this hourglass shape. So hourglass shape means there is a broad background which includes the introduction to the problem as well as the background to the specific problem and then actual problem that you are stating. Remember we said that technical communication the two important things are the question and then answer. What is the question that you are trying to solve? What is the research question you are trying to solve? And what is it that you have found out? So that is the problem and then followed by the result. So the background to the problem followed by the result and then once you have the result so what, the answer is so what, what does it imply that is the still broader implication. So quickly it will be, so we will do an exercise when you will be able to identify all these things, we will do two exercises now but let me just quickly see how it is located. So first two lines of introduction which can be understood by anybody who is generally literate in science or engineering, so that is a very broad statement. What is the broad area of work and so on. And then so it is actually a very nice analogy you can give this analogy to your students which they will be easily able to appreciate. The analogy is to think of a university. Now the first statement that you say has to be understood by everybody in your university. The second statement is more specific and that has to be understood by people in your department. So that is also the background part and then a couple of sentences, two or three sentences you can use and then come to the only one statement of the problem. Once the problem and the answer, the result is just two statements, one statement each and then once you have got the result how does it imply to something in your department. So you started with the university, come to the department, state the problem, state the result and then go back to the department. What does this result imply to the department and then very broad what does it imply to the society or the university at large. So this is the structure. So I will take a couple of questions here very briefly. So if you have questions please raise your hands. After that we will do the tutorial where you will see examples of this and we will ask you to identify things. So if you have questions please raise your hands. Yes sir is it necessary to write index terms or keywords in abstract? Question is is it necessary to use index terms and keywords in abstract? The answer is yes it is very important because abstract is the only thing that is freely available. So when search engines are looking for content only abstract is freely available. The text is not generally available to all search engines. So therefore it is important that you include the keywords in different forms. I mean when you describe the problem and the background problem and result you will definitely encounter or where you say methodology or whatever you will encounter places where you can mention the keywords. So it is very important that you mention the keywords. Thank you. Yeshwantra of Chawan College. Sir some journals or conferences demand that the number of words for abstract should not be more than 150 words. Many a times it becomes impossible to describe the new ideas of our paper in 150 words. In this case what should be done? Okay write your whole abstract in 30 words to begin with okay. Then you make it 60 words then you will not have problem with 150 words. See the problem is we always assume that we have to convey the entire thing in the abstract that is not so. You need to convey only the essence of the whole work and the essence of the work is just in the question and the answer. In the structure that I have given this is the essence the problem and the result is the essence. Now you start here you can finish this in 30 words. Somebody has asked you for 100 words maybe you include one line here and one line there. Somebody has asked you for 150 words maybe use one more line here. So you have to think about the core. The core is about 30 words. You start here and then expand this way and this way you will be able to do it okay. We will do this exercise today and you will see how you are able to do this. You will see a different levels of writing abstract. So in one of them you will be able to write it in 30 words and then from there you can expand. So the problem is if you think you want to put everything it is not possible. I will take one last question from Geetanjali Institute. Sir the difference between introduction of abstract and introduction of paper. Introduction is introduction to the problem okay whether it comes in abstract or whether it comes in the paper it is the same. Now introduction is a broad area the context where you are coming from. So if you state it in one line you can if you can compress the whole paragraph in one line it you can put it in the abstract but both are the same okay thank you alright. So I am going to reset the questions now we are going to do some exercises. So I want you to write down in a paper the following three things whatever the structure that I described introduction, background, problem, result, implication to the area and a broad societal implication okay. So please keep this structure in mind now what I will want you to do this is an abstract from nature okay the same guidelines that we saw alright. So I want you to read each of the sentence and identify which sentence indicates what okay. So this is an exercise that we give our own students. So I am asking you to do it because it will help you to give the same exercise to your own students. So what you need to do is you just download any recent nature article you please go through it first and see that you are able to make out the different parts of the abstract and then you give a print out to your students and ask them to underline which sentence is the introductory sentence which sentence is the background which is the problem which is the result implication and so on okay. So take a couple of minutes I am going to reset after some time and then when you are ready I will call upon institute you do not have to raise your hands I am going to call upon institute today. So basically first sentence is an introductory sentence is just only the first sentence or more than that. Sir more than that first two or three lines okay. Now which is the audience that can understand the first sentence sir it is a broader audience tell me I mean what background is required to understand the first sentence. Sir from a electrical and electronics background why can a chemistry student not understand this okay understand that broadly resistance capacitance anybody who has gone to school will understand that correct resistance capacitance are small experiments done even in school. So any high school student can understand the first sentence so what I wanted to point out is that the introductory sentence that is written is very broad okay. So that is the first point I wanted to bring out thank you very much hello Xavier sir. The first three sentences or introduction first three sentences or introduction what is the background then which from where you have a more background statement. Second sentence. So the second sentence however in 1971 Leon Chua reasoned from symmetry that there should be a fourth fundamental element called and which he called as memrister. Now this statement can be understood by which group of audience some electrical engineer right. Memrister he is already introducing some keywords now starting from a school student now he has come to engineering electrical engineering department school student everybody understands what a resistance is and so on now he has come to something specific memrister and so on okay so now more keywords are being introduced correct. So you notice this how from broad it is being narrowed down it is still not very narrow okay thank you Xavier's national college Tirunelvili so my question I hope my question was clear the sentence beginning although he showed that such an element exists has many interesting properties until now no one has presented a useful physical model what does this sentence represent. The first point is the general introduction which can be understood by all but start with anyone and the problem is here we show starts with the third point which indicates the problem okay how do you say that here we show is a problem. So the third point shows the problem my question is the statement beginning although he showed that okay what sentence does that represent he showed that such an element has many interesting this introduction can be understood by the department thank you for your answer but that is not correct I am going to let me just discuss this once for you now everybody take a look at this although he showed that there are interesting properties until now nobody has presented a useful physical model okay this is the problem the problem is there is no physical model so this is not an introduction this is the precise problem statement so this is a research question is there a can we get a physical model for a member is to the background is there has been people have shown that there is something called a member is to but there is no physical model so the research question that these group has taken is can we get a physical model or a mathematical model of a member is to for this statement until now no one has presented either a physical or an example of a member is to so this is the actual research question although it is not written like a question but this is the research question the question is can we get a physical model why because nobody has got it before okay so this statement is the problem it is followed by the result one question of problem one statement of result can we get it yes we can get it and here we show blah blah blah right the research question was can we get a physical model alright answer is yes we can get and what is it yes we can get and we are here we show using a simple analytical model example the member is to arises naturally in nano scale systems blah blah blah whatever those are all technical details okay you do not need to this is just basic English you do not need to understand it physically to understand what it is and you should be able to tell your students to identify this so in IIT Bombay the way we do is we ask students to pick up topics from their research area and give them a article published in nature of ANIS or top journals why we choose top journals the reason is they are written by experts experts who have written many papers and it is also reviewed by a very professional editorial body right so when such things are expressed and we try to model on them we try our we ask our students to write the abstracts modeled on them then it is nearly close to perfect of what is expected of a abstract okay so as I said you do not need to understand the technicalities when you show these examples to your students you do not need to have a background in this but you should be able to just identify what are different aspects the first aspect we have said is this is the introduction this is a kind of little background which the department level people can understand and then this is the problem notice that the problem statement is given as a disruptive statement what is a disruptive statement a disruptive statement is something which has however it has not been done this is known but this is not known this is there until this it was there but this is not there okay so here what is the disruptive statement although it has been shown although it is known but this is not known okay so this kind of statements are called disruptive statements. So in an introduction when you state a problem you always state it in terms of something that is there and then you disrupt it no one has shown it is not there this is not understood this is not available and so on that becomes your research problem okay so that is your research problem followed by the result alright so research the result is up to this place then these results serve as the foundation for understanding a wide range of something something okay this is all technical but you understand this much alone you do not have to go beyond this this much anybody can understand these results serve as a foundation for understanding so this is what an implication of the result something was not known so far I have found it so what you answer a question so what I have found this result so what the answer to that question is because is that this result has serve as a foundation to understanding something L although the remaining thing is technical I do not understand many of you may not understand that is okay but when you are teaching your students you need to just point out these cues what you fill in there is subject specific but these are very generic portions of the abstract that you can identify alright so then this is looks like this is an implication that can be understood by people in the department then it is followed by the final line okay in this case there is only one line they do not have a broader introduction so there is this itself they say it as a nano scale device electronic devices and something so they do not have a broader statement which is okay alright so now I will open the room for questions okay I am going to take couple of questions Siliguri Institute. Since you have told that we have to go for introduction background problem result conceptual implications broader implications but we have the in the system when we teach abstract editing at that moment we teach that the if the paragraph is of 300 words we have to go for like selecting one third of it and we then simply go for introduction and the problem and then the conclusion is it the right approach or the approach that you have given is the right one no so the as I said at the beginning when you write an abstract you write according to this structure okay this is the most general structure that you can write for an abstract so if you see this structure of an abstract exactly reflects the structure of the paper the paper starts with an introduction the paper then follows with literature then the problem statement then the methodology then the results then the conclusion okay so that is the structure of the paper and the structure I have recommended here is the structure which reflects the paper structure instead of a paragraph of introduction I have one line of introductory statement and then a literature instead of doing a four five paragraphs of literature survey I have summarized it as one line of background which is essentially literature if you notice this however in 1971 Leon Schuwa reasoned for from symmetry arguments that is essentially a literature survey conclusion from the literature survey kind of and then that is followed by methodology in the paper you give methodology then you said the problem then methodology then results so you can also include methodology in your abstract one line of methodology one line of result then conclusion now once you get this ready it might come to 400 words 500 words it is okay once you have this ready then from here you decide depending on what the journal requires now the structure that I have recommended is not necessarily the structure that you have to use for all journals but this is the most generic thing in many area specific journals you do not need to give the broad introduction on background because you are already suppose the journal name is journal of memory stir in which case the first two lines are redundant you do not need to write the first two lines in journal of memory stir okay but as a practice that you have to ask your students because when a student writes an abstract they usually write for a report or a thesis so when they write an abstract they are supposed to write as wide as possible to the university's audience so there they should follow this structure and once they have written this from here they can keep reducing depending on the requirement of the journal or the place you are submitting the abstract okay does that answer your question thank you very much one more question sir yeah go ahead so I have seen is it necessary to go for keywords also you mean explicitly write a list of keywords or use keywords inside the introduction abstract inside the abstract or list of abstracts are both yeah so this question was asked before I repeat the answer yes you have to use abstract keywords in the abstract the reason being that because it is being indexed people search engines use words from the abstract and because it is freely available it is easy to locate and the very important thing about keywords is that you use the same keywords everywhere you use it in the abstract if possible little bit in the title then in the introduction then in the conclusion and so on and the keywords there are synonyms please do not use synonyms okay suppose you want to tell something as called as a stress so use only stress do not use stress one place pressure one place something force per unit area another place and so on it is very important that the keywords are used the same in all the places it is one of the things that unites the article so keywords has to come everywhere and that is what links up the whole article so you need to make sure the keywords are the same okay thank you very much Siliguri Sona College of Technology yeah my question is that sir when we when we write the abstract when we focus on our implication or broader broader implication is it necessary that we have to compare our results with the previous work done by others in the numerical value let me repeat the question for the benefit of others the question is when we write the implication or broader implication do we need to compare our results in numerical value with the existing results and this is very discipline or papers specific there are two levels of implication one is an implication to your area of work and one is a very broad implication now for very broad implication definitely you do not need to compare with the previous thing now suppose it is significant that the number that you got is different from the earlier work and that is very important that is a important thing that you need to say but what does it imply that you have got a better number is a kind of a part of the result okay so you need to tell in words somebody got 5 I got 10 so what okay always keep this in mind so what if ask present it to your colleague or when your colleague presents it to you your colleague says that I have found this result ask them so what okay the answer to so what is what you have to write for implication you ask the question again so what till it becomes very simple okay now let us take this example so this persons have found out memristor okay they are saying that I have found out some analytical model memristor it is some electronic device let us forget about what it means he is saying I found out a memristor so what it is because if you get this you can do better electronics so what okay so you ask this question so the answer to that so if you do better electronics maybe your health care will improve so what so then you keep on asking this till you become very you make a statement that is very broadly easily understood it means that it can I can buy better devices which will improve your longevity after that nobody is going to ask so what okay so you have come to us this one that okay this is got very broad implications very good I understood okay so the stating number is actually part of the result answers the question so what if you have got better numbers that is part of implication I have another question to you yeah go ahead please sir when we write the abstract is it mandatory that we need to have this much number of keywords or it depends on the title or the perspective that we are looking for there is nothing mandatory about any number of keywords that you want to write it is what you want to stress right and you have a limitation in number of words so you write so abstract and all cannot be written at one go you always have to write abstract at least twice one before beginning to write the paper so write an abstract even before writing the paper or a thesis or an article that will give you an overall perspective for how to plan to write the paper so write the abstract first and in that abstract you use whatever keywords that comes to you at that time forget about that now when you finish the paper or the thesis when the student finishes the paper report or thesis and then ask them to write the abstract again maybe one time two times at that time you see if they have captured all the important keywords that is coming in the paper or the report and then you can decide to drop something or include something else so abstract is at least written twice one before and one after the final structure has come ok. Again we will take one last question from Ghar the institute of technology. Sir actually somewhat I got the answer my question is what is the ideal method of writing abstract is it first we should write abstract and then paper or first we should write paper and then abstract so I answered a question and you are asking a question for that ok I will repeat it so you write abstract at least twice you write it before starting writing the paper or a report because that will give you is it is called a guiding abstract the first abstract that you write is called as a guiding abstract which helps you write the paper so first abstract is for yourself it is to guide you to structure that your thoughts to structure the paper and then once you have written the complete paper and you have revised it and as a final form you are right to write another abstract revise the abstract now the intended audience is the actual readers initially the audience was you wanted to something to guide you to write the abstracts you write that first so that guide you to write the paper after that you write a final abstract which is polished and written well and it actually matches the structure of the paper intended for the actual readers ok alright so what we will do now is I will go back and we will take a second example and I had asked you to do the same exercise now the first exercise I almost guided you now this one I am not going to guide you I want each of you to write down in your own paper which is the introductory statement take the sentence rechargeable solid state and tell me write it down in your paper the write the first two words rechargeable solid state it corresponds to introduction something else corresponds to background something else corresponds to problem and so on so write the first two words write it down in a piece of paper or your notebook and then discuss it with your neighbor alright I think we are close to this one we will continue this activity after we are back from lunch so spend the next couple of minutes looking at each of this lines and identify for example you should write rechargeable solid state batteries is colon introduction and so on so do that and we will come back from lunch at 1.15 and I will we will discuss point wise.