Back to: Report Your Findings

Each journal has slightly different requirements for the abstract. As always, be sure to read the author instructions before you do too much work. However, abstracts for systematic reviews typically follow the format of what’s known as a “structured” abstract.

Structured abstracts

Structured abstracts summarize each part of the article under a separate heading. Here are typical headings to include:

Background

Purpose

Data sources

Study selection/selection criteria

Data extraction

Data synthesis

Limitation

Conclusion