Research Article Abstract: Components of Content and Coherence

Abstract

The purpose of this research article was to investigate the content components and the coherence of the research article abstract. The texts used for this study were research article abstracts published in TCI 1 academic journals during 2020–2021. Purposive sampling was used to select 50 research articles—25 articles published in 2020 and 25 articles published in 2021—from five journals at five educational institutions.

The findings revealed that the research content components consisted of questions, background or significance, objectives, methodology, results, discussions, recommendations, and benefits, which could be categorized into 4 characteristics: 1) two-part components, 2) three-part components, 3) four-part components, and 4) five-part components. The five coherence characteristics were discovered in the following order: 1) reference, 2) vocabulary, 3) transition words, 4) ellipsis, and 5) substitution. Nonetheless, each research article abstract employed a different coherence technique to ensure that the content was complete and the messages could be conveyed without ambiguity or omission. Thus, both authors and readers of research article abstracts should benefit from the article.