how to write an abstract for a literature review paper

Writing an Abstract for Your Research Paper

Definition and Purpose of Abstracts

An abstract is a short summary of your (published or unpublished) research paper, usually about a paragraph (c. 6-7 sentences, 150-250 words) long. A well-written abstract serves multiple purposes:

• an abstract lets readers get the gist or essence of your paper or article quickly, in order to decide whether to read the full paper;
• an abstract prepares readers to follow the detailed information, analyses, and arguments in your full paper;
• and, later, an abstract helps readers remember key points from your paper.

It’s also worth remembering that search engines and bibliographic databases use abstracts, as well as the title, to identify key terms for indexing your published paper. So what you include in your abstract and in your title are crucial for helping other researchers find your paper or article.

If you are writing an abstract for a course paper, your professor may give you specific guidelines for what to include and how to organize your abstract. Similarly, academic journals often have specific requirements for abstracts. So in addition to following the advice on this page, you should be sure to look for and follow any guidelines from the course or journal you’re writing for.

The Contents of an Abstract

Abstracts contain most of the following kinds of information in brief form. The body of your paper will, of course, develop and explain these ideas much more fully. As you will see in the samples below, the proportion of your abstract that you devote to each kind of information—and the sequence of that information—will vary, depending on the nature and genre of the paper that you are summarizing in your abstract. And in some cases, some of this information is implied, rather than stated explicitly. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , which is widely used in the social sciences, gives specific guidelines for what to include in the abstract for different kinds of papers—for empirical studies, literature reviews or meta-analyses, theoretical papers, methodological papers, and case studies.

Here are the typical kinds of information found in most abstracts:

• the context or background information for your research; the general topic under study; the specific topic of your research
• the central questions or statement of the problem your research addresses
• what’s already known about this question, what previous research has done or shown
• the main reason(s) , the exigency, the rationale , the goals for your research—Why is it important to address these questions? Are you, for example, examining a new topic? Why is that topic worth examining? Are you filling a gap in previous research? Applying new methods to take a fresh look at existing ideas or data? Resolving a dispute within the literature in your field? . . .
• your research and/or analytical methods
• your main findings , results , or arguments
• the significance or implications of your findings or arguments.

Your abstract should be intelligible on its own, without a reader’s having to read your entire paper. And in an abstract, you usually do not cite references—most of your abstract will describe what you have studied in your research and what you have found and what you argue in your paper. In the body of your paper, you will cite the specific literature that informs your research.

When to Write Your Abstract

Although you might be tempted to write your abstract first because it will appear as the very first part of your paper, it’s a good idea to wait to write your abstract until after you’ve drafted your full paper, so that you know what you’re summarizing.

What follows are some sample abstracts in published papers or articles, all written by faculty at UW-Madison who come from a variety of disciplines. We have annotated these samples to help you see the work that these authors are doing within their abstracts.

Choosing Verb Tenses within Your Abstract

The social science sample (Sample 1) below uses the present tense to describe general facts and interpretations that have been and are currently true, including the prevailing explanation for the social phenomenon under study. That abstract also uses the present tense to describe the methods, the findings, the arguments, and the implications of the findings from their new research study. The authors use the past tense to describe previous research.

The humanities sample (Sample 2) below uses the past tense to describe completed events in the past (the texts created in the pulp fiction industry in the 1970s and 80s) and uses the present tense to describe what is happening in those texts, to explain the significance or meaning of those texts, and to describe the arguments presented in the article.

The science samples (Samples 3 and 4) below use the past tense to describe what previous research studies have done and the research the authors have conducted, the methods they have followed, and what they have found. In their rationale or justification for their research (what remains to be done), they use the present tense. They also use the present tense to introduce their study (in Sample 3, “Here we report . . .”) and to explain the significance of their study (In Sample 3, This reprogramming . . . “provides a scalable cell source for. . .”).

Sample Abstract 1

From the social sciences.

Reporting new findings about the reasons for increasing economic homogamy among spouses

Gonalons-Pons, Pilar, and Christine R. Schwartz. “Trends in Economic Homogamy: Changes in Assortative Mating or the Division of Labor in Marriage?” Demography , vol. 54, no. 3, 2017, pp. 985-1005.

Sample Abstract 2

From the humanities.

Analyzing underground pulp fiction publications in Tanzania, this article makes an argument about the cultural significance of those publications

Emily Callaci. “Street Textuality: Socialism, Masculinity, and Urban Belonging in Tanzania’s Pulp Fiction Publishing Industry, 1975-1985.” Comparative Studies in Society and History , vol. 59, no. 1, 2017, pp. 183-210.

Sample Abstract/Summary 3

From the sciences.

Reporting a new method for reprogramming adult mouse fibroblasts into induced cardiac progenitor cells

Lalit, Pratik A., Max R. Salick, Daryl O. Nelson, Jayne M. Squirrell, Christina M. Shafer, Neel G. Patel, Imaan Saeed, Eric G. Schmuck, Yogananda S. Markandeya, Rachel Wong, Martin R. Lea, Kevin W. Eliceiri, Timothy A. Hacker, Wendy C. Crone, Michael Kyba, Daniel J. Garry, Ron Stewart, James A. Thomson, Karen M. Downs, Gary E. Lyons, and Timothy J. Kamp. “Lineage Reprogramming of Fibroblasts into Proliferative Induced Cardiac Progenitor Cells by Defined Factors.” Cell Stem Cell , vol. 18, 2016, pp. 354-367.

Sample Abstract 4, a Structured Abstract

Reporting results about the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy in managing acute bacterial sinusitis, from a rigorously controlled study

Note: This journal requires authors to organize their abstract into four specific sections, with strict word limits. Because the headings for this structured abstract are self-explanatory, we have chosen not to add annotations to this sample abstract.

Wald, Ellen R., David Nash, and Jens Eickhoff. “Effectiveness of Amoxicillin/Clavulanate Potassium in the Treatment of Acute Bacterial Sinusitis in Children.” Pediatrics , vol. 124, no. 1, 2009, pp. 9-15.

“OBJECTIVE: The role of antibiotic therapy in managing acute bacterial sinusitis (ABS) in children is controversial. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of high-dose amoxicillin/potassium clavulanate in the treatment of children diagnosed with ABS.

METHODS : This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Children 1 to 10 years of age with a clinical presentation compatible with ABS were eligible for participation. Patients were stratified according to age (<6 or ≥6 years) and clinical severity and randomly assigned to receive either amoxicillin (90 mg/kg) with potassium clavulanate (6.4 mg/kg) or placebo. A symptom survey was performed on days 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30. Patients were examined on day 14. Children’s conditions were rated as cured, improved, or failed according to scoring rules.

RESULTS: Two thousand one hundred thirty-five children with respiratory complaints were screened for enrollment; 139 (6.5%) had ABS. Fifty-eight patients were enrolled, and 56 were randomly assigned. The mean age was 6630 months. Fifty (89%) patients presented with persistent symptoms, and 6 (11%) presented with nonpersistent symptoms. In 24 (43%) children, the illness was classified as mild, whereas in the remaining 32 (57%) children it was severe. Of the 28 children who received the antibiotic, 14 (50%) were cured, 4 (14%) were improved, 4(14%) experienced treatment failure, and 6 (21%) withdrew. Of the 28children who received placebo, 4 (14%) were cured, 5 (18%) improved, and 19 (68%) experienced treatment failure. Children receiving the antibiotic were more likely to be cured (50% vs 14%) and less likely to have treatment failure (14% vs 68%) than children receiving the placebo.

CONCLUSIONS : ABS is a common complication of viral upper respiratory infections. Amoxicillin/potassium clavulanate results in significantly more cures and fewer failures than placebo, according to parental report of time to resolution.” (9)

Some Excellent Advice about Writing Abstracts for Basic Science Research Papers, by Professor Adriano Aguzzi from the Institute of Neuropathology at the University of Zurich:

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APA Abstract (2020) | Formatting, Length, and Keywords

Published on November 6, 2020 by Raimo Streefkerk . Revised on January 17, 2024.

An APA abstract is a comprehensive summary of your paper in which you briefly address the research problem , hypotheses , methods , results , and implications of your research. It’s placed on a separate page right after the title page and is usually no longer than 250 words.

Most professional papers that are submitted for publication require an abstract. Student papers typically don’t need an abstract, unless instructed otherwise.

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Table of contents

How to format the abstract, how to write an apa abstract, which keywords to use, frequently asked questions, apa abstract example.

Formatting instructions

Follow these five steps to format your abstract in APA Style:

• Insert a running head (for a professional paper—not needed for a student paper) and page number.
• Set page margins to 1 inch (2.54 cm).
• Write “Abstract” (bold and centered) at the top of the page.
• Do not indent the first line.
• Double-space the text.
• Use a legible font like Times New Roman (12 pt.).
• Limit the length to 250 words.
• Indent the first line 0.5 inches.
• Write the label “Keywords:” (italicized).
• Write keywords in lowercase letters.
• Separate keywords with commas.
• Do not use a period after the keywords.

Scribbr Citation Checker New

The AI-powered Citation Checker helps you avoid common mistakes such as:

• Missing commas and periods
• Incorrect usage of “et al.”
• Ampersands (&) in narrative citations
• Missing reference entries

The abstract is a self-contained piece of text that informs the reader what your research is about. It’s best to write the abstract after you’re finished with the rest of your paper.

The questions below may help structure your abstract. Try answering them in one to three sentences each.

• What is the problem? Outline the objective, research questions , and/or hypotheses .
• What has been done? Explain your research methods .
• What did you discover? Summarize the key findings and conclusions .
• What do the findings mean? Summarize the discussion and recommendations .

Check out our guide on how to write an abstract for more guidance and an annotated example.

Guide: writing an abstract

At the end of the abstract, you may include a few keywords that will be used for indexing if your paper is published on a database. Listing your keywords will help other researchers find your work.

Choosing relevant keywords is essential. Try to identify keywords that address your topic, method, or population. APA recommends including three to five keywords.

An abstract is a concise summary of an academic text (such as a journal article or dissertation ). It serves two main purposes:

• To help potential readers determine the relevance of your paper for their own research.
• To communicate your key findings to those who don’t have time to read the whole paper.

Abstracts are often indexed along with keywords on academic databases, so they make your work more easily findable. Since the abstract is the first thing any reader sees, it’s important that it clearly and accurately summarizes the contents of your paper.

An APA abstract is around 150–250 words long. However, always check your target journal’s guidelines and don’t exceed the specified word count.

In an APA Style paper , the abstract is placed on a separate page after the title page (page 2).

Avoid citing sources in your abstract . There are two reasons for this:

• The abstract should focus on your original research, not on the work of others.
• The abstract should be self-contained and fully understandable without reference to other sources.

There are some circumstances where you might need to mention other sources in an abstract: for example, if your research responds directly to another study or focuses on the work of a single theorist. In general, though, don’t include citations unless absolutely necessary.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Streefkerk, R. (2024, January 17). APA Abstract (2020) | Formatting, Length, and Keywords. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-style/apa-abstract/

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How do I Write a Literature Review?: #5 Writing the Review

• Step #1: Choosing a Topic
• Step #2: Finding Information
• Step #3: Evaluating Content
• Step #4: Synthesizing Content
• #5 Writing the Review
• Citing Your Sources

WRITING THE REVIEW 

You've done the research and now you're ready to put your findings down on paper. When preparing to write your review, first consider how will you organize your review.

The actual review generally has 5 components:

Abstract  -  An abstract is a summary of your literature review. It is made up of the following parts:

• A contextual sentence about your motivation behind your research topic
• Your thesis statement
• A descriptive statement about the types of literature used in the review
• Summarize your findings
• Conclusion(s) based upon your findings

Introduction :   Like a typical research paper introduction, provide the reader with a quick idea of the topic of the literature review:

• Define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern. This provides the reader with context for reviewing the literature.
• Identify related trends in what has already been published about the topic; or conflicts in theory, methodology, evidence, and conclusions; or gaps in research and scholarship; or a single problem or new perspective of immediate interest.
• Establish your reason (point of view) for reviewing the literature; explain the criteria to be used in analyzing and comparing literature and the organization of the review (sequence); and, when necessary, state why certain literature is or is not included (scope)  - 

Body :  The body of a literature review contains your discussion of sources and can be organized in 3 ways-

• Chronological -  by publication or by trend
• Thematic -  organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time
• Methodical -  the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the "methods" of the literature's researcher or writer that you are reviewing

You may also want to include a section on "questions for further research" and discuss what questions the review has sparked about the topic/field or offer suggestions for future studies/examinations that build on your current findings.

Conclusion :  In the conclusion, you should:

Conclude your paper by providing your reader with some perspective on the relationship between your literature review's specific topic and how it's related to it's parent discipline, scientific endeavor, or profession.

Bibliography :   Since a literature review is composed of pieces of research, it is very important that your correctly cite the literature you are reviewing, both in the reviews body as well as in a bibliography/works cited. To learn more about different citation styles, visit the " Citing Your Sources " tab.

• Writing a Literature Review: Wesleyan University
• Literature Review: Edith Cowan University
• << Previous: Step #4: Synthesizing Content
• Next: Citing Your Sources >>
• Last Updated: Aug 22, 2023 1:35 PM
• URL: https://libguides.eastern.edu/literature_reviews

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Abstract Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide With Tips & Examples

Table of Contents

Introduction

Abstracts of research papers have always played an essential role in describing your research concisely and clearly to researchers and editors of journals, enticing them to continue reading. However, with the widespread availability of scientific databases, the need to write a convincing abstract is more crucial now than during the time of paper-bound manuscripts.

Abstracts serve to "sell" your research and can be compared with your "executive outline" of a resume or, rather, a formal summary of the critical aspects of your work. Also, it can be the "gist" of your study. Since most educational research is done online, it's a sign that you have a shorter time for impressing your readers, and have more competition from other abstracts that are available to be read.

The APCI (Academic Publishing and Conferences International) articulates 12 issues or points considered during the final approval process for conferences & journals and emphasises the importance of writing an abstract that checks all these boxes (12 points). Since it's the only opportunity you have to captivate your readers, you must invest time and effort in creating an abstract that accurately reflects the critical points of your research.

With that in mind, let’s head over to understand and discover the core concept and guidelines to create a substantial abstract. Also, learn how to organise the ideas or plots into an effective abstract that will be awe-inspiring to the readers you want to reach.

What is Abstract? Definition and Overview

The word "Abstract' is derived from Latin abstractus meaning "drawn off." This etymological meaning also applies to art movements as well as music, like abstract expressionism. In this context, it refers to the revealing of the artist's intention.

Based on this, you can determine the meaning of an abstract: A condensed research summary. It must be self-contained and independent of the body of the research. However, it should outline the subject, the strategies used to study the problem, and the methods implemented to attain the outcomes. The specific elements of the study differ based on the area of study; however, together, it must be a succinct summary of the entire research paper.

Abstracts are typically written at the end of the paper, even though it serves as a prologue. In general, the abstract must be in a position to:

• Describe the paper.
• Identify the problem or the issue at hand.
• Explain to the reader the research process, the results you came up with, and what conclusion you've reached using these results.
• Include keywords to guide your strategy and the content.

Furthermore, the abstract you submit should not reflect upon any of  the following elements:

• Examine, analyse or defend the paper or your opinion.
• What you want to study, achieve or discover.
• Be redundant or irrelevant.

After reading an abstract, your audience should understand the reason - what the research was about in the first place, what the study has revealed and how it can be utilised or can be used to benefit others. You can understand the importance of abstract by knowing the fact that the abstract is the most frequently read portion of any research paper. In simpler terms, it should contain all the main points of the research paper.

What is the Purpose of an Abstract?

Abstracts are typically an essential requirement for research papers; however, it's not an obligation to preserve traditional reasons without any purpose. Abstracts allow readers to scan the text to determine whether it is relevant to their research or studies. The abstract allows other researchers to decide if your research paper can provide them with some additional information. A good abstract paves the interest of the audience to pore through your entire paper to find the content or context they're searching for.

Abstract writing is essential for indexing, as well. The Digital Repository of academic papers makes use of abstracts to index the entire content of academic research papers. Like meta descriptions in the regular Google outcomes, abstracts must include keywords that help researchers locate what they seek.

Types of Abstract

Informative and Descriptive are two kinds of abstracts often used in scientific writing.

A descriptive abstract gives readers an outline of the author's main points in their study. The reader can determine if they want to stick to the research work, based on their interest in the topic. An abstract that is descriptive is similar to the contents table of books, however, the format of an abstract depicts complete sentences encapsulated in one paragraph. It is unfortunate that the abstract can't be used as a substitute for reading a piece of writing because it's just an overview, which omits readers from getting an entire view. Also, it cannot be a way to fill in the gaps the reader may have after reading this kind of abstract since it does not contain crucial information needed to evaluate the article.

To conclude, a descriptive abstract is:

• A simple summary of the task, just summarises the work, but some researchers think it is much more of an outline
• Typically, the length is approximately 100 words. It is too short when compared to an informative abstract.
• A brief explanation but doesn't provide the reader with the complete information they need;
• An overview that omits conclusions and results

An informative abstract is a comprehensive outline of the research. There are times when people rely on the abstract as an information source. And the reason is why it is crucial to provide entire data of particular research. A well-written, informative abstract could be a good substitute for the remainder of the paper on its own.

A well-written abstract typically follows a particular style. The author begins by providing the identifying information, backed by citations and other identifiers of the papers. Then, the major elements are summarised to make the reader aware of the study. It is followed by the methodology and all-important findings from the study. The conclusion then presents study results and ends the abstract with a comprehensive summary.

In a nutshell, an informative abstract:

• Has a length that can vary, based on the subject, but is not longer than 300 words.
• Contains all the content-like methods and intentions
• Offers evidence and possible recommendations.

Informative Abstracts are more frequent than descriptive abstracts because of their extensive content and linkage to the topic specifically. You should select different types of abstracts to papers based on their length: informative abstracts for extended and more complex abstracts and descriptive ones for simpler and shorter research papers.

What are the Characteristics of a Good Abstract?

• A good abstract clearly defines the goals and purposes of the study.
• It should clearly describe the research methodology with a primary focus on data gathering, processing, and subsequent analysis.
• A good abstract should provide specific research findings.
• It presents the principal conclusions of the systematic study.
• It should be concise, clear, and relevant to the field of study.
• A well-designed abstract should be unifying and coherent.
• It is easy to grasp and free of technical jargon.
• It is written impartially and objectively.

What are the various sections of an ideal Abstract?

By now, you must have gained some concrete idea of the essential elements that your abstract needs to convey . Accordingly, the information is broken down into six key sections of the abstract, which include:

An Introduction or Background

Research methodology, objectives and goals, limitations.

Let's go over them in detail.

The introduction, also known as background, is the most concise part of your abstract. Ideally, it comprises a couple of sentences. Some researchers only write one sentence to introduce their abstract. The idea behind this is to guide readers through the key factors that led to your study.

It's understandable that this information might seem difficult to explain in a couple of sentences. For example, think about the following two questions like the background of your study:

• What is currently available about the subject with respect to the paper being discussed?
• What isn't understood about this issue? (This is the subject of your research)

While writing the abstract’s introduction, make sure that it is not lengthy. Because if it crosses the word limit, it may eat up the words meant to be used for providing other key information.

Research methodology is where you describe the theories and techniques you used in your research. It is recommended that you describe what you have done and the method you used to get your thorough investigation results. Certainly, it is the second-longest paragraph in the abstract.

In the research methodology section, it is essential to mention the kind of research you conducted; for instance, qualitative research or quantitative research (this will guide your research methodology too) . If you've conducted quantitative research, your abstract should contain information like the sample size, data collection method, sampling techniques, and duration of the study. Likewise, your abstract should reflect observational data, opinions, questionnaires (especially the non-numerical data) if you work on qualitative research.

The research objectives and goals speak about what you intend to accomplish with your research. The majority of research projects focus on the long-term effects of a project, and the goals focus on the immediate, short-term outcomes of the research. It is possible to summarise both in just multiple sentences.

In stating your objectives and goals, you give readers a picture of the scope of the study, its depth and the direction your research ultimately follows. Your readers can evaluate the results of your research against the goals and stated objectives to determine if you have achieved the goal of your research.

In the end, your readers are more attracted by the results you've obtained through your study. Therefore, you must take the time to explain each relevant result and explain how they impact your research. The results section exists as the longest in your abstract, and nothing should diminish its reach or quality.

One of the most important things you should adhere to is to spell out details and figures on the results of your research.

Instead of making a vague assertion such as, "We noticed that response rates varied greatly between respondents with high incomes and those with low incomes", Try these: "The response rate was higher for high-income respondents than those with lower incomes (59 30 percent vs. 30 percent in both cases; P<0.01)."

You're likely to encounter certain obstacles during your research. It could have been during data collection or even during conducting the sample . Whatever the issue, it's essential to inform your readers about them and their effects on the research.

Research limitations offer an opportunity to suggest further and deep research. If, for instance, you were forced to change for convenient sampling and snowball samples because of difficulties in reaching well-suited research participants, then you should mention this reason when you write your research abstract. In addition, a lack of prior studies on the subject could hinder your research.

Your conclusion should include the same number of sentences to wrap the abstract as the introduction. The majority of researchers offer an idea of the consequences of their research in this case.

Your conclusion should include three essential components:

• A significant take-home message.
• Corresponding important findings.
• The Interpretation.

Even though the conclusion of your abstract needs to be brief, it can have an enormous influence on the way that readers view your research. Therefore, make use of this section to reinforce the central message from your research. Be sure that your statements reflect the actual results and the methods you used to conduct your research.

Good Abstract Examples

Abstract example #1.

Children’s consumption behavior in response to food product placements in movies.

The abstract:

"Almost all research into the effects of brand placements on children has focused on the brand's attitudes or behavior intentions. Based on the significant differences between attitudes and behavioral intentions on one hand and actual behavior on the other hand, this study examines the impact of placements by brands on children's eating habits. Children aged 6-14 years old were shown an excerpt from the popular film Alvin and the Chipmunks and were shown places for the item Cheese Balls. Three different versions were developed with no placements, one with moderately frequent placements and the third with the highest frequency of placement. The results revealed that exposure to high-frequency places had a profound effect on snack consumption, however, there was no impact on consumer attitudes towards brands or products. The effects were not dependent on the age of the children. These findings are of major importance to researchers studying consumer behavior as well as nutrition experts as well as policy regulators."

Abstract Example #2

Social comparisons on social media: The impact of Facebook on young women’s body image concerns and mood. The abstract:

"The research conducted in this study investigated the effects of Facebook use on women's moods and body image if the effects are different from an internet-based fashion journal and if the appearance comparison tendencies moderate one or more of these effects. Participants who were female ( N = 112) were randomly allocated to spend 10 minutes exploring their Facebook account or a magazine's website or an appearance neutral control website prior to completing state assessments of body dissatisfaction, mood, and differences in appearance (weight-related and facial hair, face, and skin). Participants also completed a test of the tendency to compare appearances. The participants who used Facebook were reported to be more depressed than those who stayed on the control site. In addition, women who have the tendency to compare appearances reported more facial, hair and skin-related issues following Facebook exposure than when they were exposed to the control site. Due to its popularity it is imperative to conduct more research to understand the effect that Facebook affects the way people view themselves."

Abstract Example #3

The Relationship Between Cell Phone Use and Academic Performance in a Sample of U.S. College Students

"The cellphone is always present on campuses of colleges and is often utilised in situations in which learning takes place. The study examined the connection between the use of cell phones and the actual grades point average (GPA) after adjusting for predictors that are known to be a factor. In the end 536 students in the undergraduate program from 82 self-reported majors of an enormous, public institution were studied. Hierarchical analysis ( R 2 = .449) showed that use of mobile phones is significantly ( p < .001) and negative (b equal to -.164) connected to the actual college GPA, after taking into account factors such as demographics, self-efficacy in self-regulated learning, self-efficacy to improve academic performance, and the actual high school GPA that were all important predictors ( p < .05). Therefore, after adjusting for other known predictors increasing cell phone usage was associated with lower academic performance. While more research is required to determine the mechanisms behind these results, they suggest the need to educate teachers and students to the possible academic risks that are associated with high-frequency mobile phone usage."

Quick tips on writing a good abstract

There exists a common dilemma among early age researchers whether to write the abstract at first or last? However, it's recommended to compose your abstract when you've completed the research since you'll have all the information to give to your readers. You can, however, write a draft at the beginning of your research and add in any gaps later.

If you find abstract writing a herculean task, here are the few tips to help you with it:

1. Always develop a framework to support your abstract

Before writing, ensure you create a clear outline for your abstract. Divide it into sections and draw the primary and supporting elements in each one. You can include keywords and a few sentences that convey the essence of your message.

2. Review Other Abstracts

Abstracts are among the most frequently used research documents, and thousands of them were written in the past. Therefore, prior to writing yours, take a look at some examples from other abstracts. There are plenty of examples of abstracts for dissertations in the dissertation and thesis databases.

3. Avoid Jargon To the Maximum

When you write your abstract, focus on simplicity over formality. You should  write in simple language, and avoid excessive filler words or ambiguous sentences. Keep in mind that your abstract must be readable to those who aren't acquainted with your subject.

4. Focus on Your Research

It's a given fact that the abstract you write should be about your research and the findings you've made. It is not the right time to mention secondary and primary data sources unless it's absolutely required.

Conclusion: How to Structure an Interesting Abstract?

Abstracts are a short outline of your essay. However, it's among the most important, if not the most important. The process of writing an abstract is not straightforward. A few early-age researchers tend to begin by writing it, thinking they are doing it to "tease" the next step (the document itself). However, it is better to treat it as a spoiler.

The simple, concise style of the abstract lends itself to a well-written and well-investigated study. If your research paper doesn't provide definitive results, or the goal of your research is questioned, so will the abstract. Thus, only write your abstract after witnessing your findings and put your findings in the context of a larger scenario.

The process of writing an abstract can be daunting, but with these guidelines, you will succeed. The most efficient method of writing an excellent abstract is to centre the primary points of your abstract, including the research question and goals methods, as well as key results.

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What this handout is about

This handout provides definitions and examples of the two main types of abstracts: descriptive and informative. It also provides guidelines for constructing an abstract and general tips for you to keep in mind when drafting. Finally, it includes a few examples of abstracts broken down into their component parts.

What is an abstract?

An abstract is a self-contained, short, and powerful statement that describes a larger work. Components vary according to discipline. An abstract of a social science or scientific work may contain the scope, purpose, results, and contents of the work. An abstract of a humanities work may contain the thesis, background, and conclusion of the larger work. An abstract is not a review, nor does it evaluate the work being abstracted. While it contains key words found in the larger work, the abstract is an original document rather than an excerpted passage.

Why write an abstract?

You may write an abstract for various reasons. The two most important are selection and indexing. Abstracts allow readers who may be interested in a longer work to quickly decide whether it is worth their time to read it. Also, many online databases use abstracts to index larger works. Therefore, abstracts should contain keywords and phrases that allow for easy searching.

Say you are beginning a research project on how Brazilian newspapers helped Brazil’s ultra-liberal president Luiz Ignácio da Silva wrest power from the traditional, conservative power base. A good first place to start your research is to search Dissertation Abstracts International for all dissertations that deal with the interaction between newspapers and politics. “Newspapers and politics” returned 569 hits. A more selective search of “newspapers and Brazil” returned 22 hits. That is still a fair number of dissertations. Titles can sometimes help winnow the field, but many titles are not very descriptive. For example, one dissertation is titled “Rhetoric and Riot in Rio de Janeiro.” It is unclear from the title what this dissertation has to do with newspapers in Brazil. One option would be to download or order the entire dissertation on the chance that it might speak specifically to the topic. A better option is to read the abstract. In this case, the abstract reveals the main focus of the dissertation:

This dissertation examines the role of newspaper editors in the political turmoil and strife that characterized late First Empire Rio de Janeiro (1827-1831). Newspaper editors and their journals helped change the political culture of late First Empire Rio de Janeiro by involving the people in the discussion of state. This change in political culture is apparent in Emperor Pedro I’s gradual loss of control over the mechanisms of power. As the newspapers became more numerous and powerful, the Emperor lost his legitimacy in the eyes of the people. To explore the role of the newspapers in the political events of the late First Empire, this dissertation analyzes all available newspapers published in Rio de Janeiro from 1827 to 1831. Newspapers and their editors were leading forces in the effort to remove power from the hands of the ruling elite and place it under the control of the people. In the process, newspapers helped change how politics operated in the constitutional monarchy of Brazil.

From this abstract you now know that although the dissertation has nothing to do with modern Brazilian politics, it does cover the role of newspapers in changing traditional mechanisms of power. After reading the abstract, you can make an informed judgment about whether the dissertation would be worthwhile to read.

Besides selection, the other main purpose of the abstract is for indexing. Most article databases in the online catalog of the library enable you to search abstracts. This allows for quick retrieval by users and limits the extraneous items recalled by a “full-text” search. However, for an abstract to be useful in an online retrieval system, it must incorporate the key terms that a potential researcher would use to search. For example, if you search Dissertation Abstracts International using the keywords “France” “revolution” and “politics,” the search engine would search through all the abstracts in the database that included those three words. Without an abstract, the search engine would be forced to search titles, which, as we have seen, may not be fruitful, or else search the full text. It’s likely that a lot more than 60 dissertations have been written with those three words somewhere in the body of the entire work. By incorporating keywords into the abstract, the author emphasizes the central topics of the work and gives prospective readers enough information to make an informed judgment about the applicability of the work.

When do people write abstracts?

• when submitting articles to journals, especially online journals
• when applying for research grants
• when writing a book proposal
• when completing the Ph.D. dissertation or M.A. thesis
• when writing a proposal for a conference paper
• when writing a proposal for a book chapter

Most often, the author of the entire work (or prospective work) writes the abstract. However, there are professional abstracting services that hire writers to draft abstracts of other people’s work. In a work with multiple authors, the first author usually writes the abstract. Undergraduates are sometimes asked to draft abstracts of books/articles for classmates who have not read the larger work.

Types of abstracts

There are two types of abstracts: descriptive and informative. They have different aims, so as a consequence they have different components and styles. There is also a third type called critical, but it is rarely used. If you want to find out more about writing a critique or a review of a work, see the UNC Writing Center handout on writing a literature review . If you are unsure which type of abstract you should write, ask your instructor (if the abstract is for a class) or read other abstracts in your field or in the journal where you are submitting your article.

Descriptive abstracts

A descriptive abstract indicates the type of information found in the work. It makes no judgments about the work, nor does it provide results or conclusions of the research. It does incorporate key words found in the text and may include the purpose, methods, and scope of the research. Essentially, the descriptive abstract describes the work being abstracted. Some people consider it an outline of the work, rather than a summary. Descriptive abstracts are usually very short—100 words or less.

Informative abstracts

The majority of abstracts are informative. While they still do not critique or evaluate a work, they do more than describe it. A good informative abstract acts as a surrogate for the work itself. That is, the writer presents and explains all the main arguments and the important results and evidence in the complete article/paper/book. An informative abstract includes the information that can be found in a descriptive abstract (purpose, methods, scope) but also includes the results and conclusions of the research and the recommendations of the author. The length varies according to discipline, but an informative abstract is rarely more than 10% of the length of the entire work. In the case of a longer work, it may be much less.

Here are examples of a descriptive and an informative abstract of this handout on abstracts . Descriptive abstract:

The two most common abstract types—descriptive and informative—are described and examples of each are provided.

Informative abstract:

Abstracts present the essential elements of a longer work in a short and powerful statement. The purpose of an abstract is to provide prospective readers the opportunity to judge the relevance of the longer work to their projects. Abstracts also include the key terms found in the longer work and the purpose and methods of the research. Authors abstract various longer works, including book proposals, dissertations, and online journal articles. There are two main types of abstracts: descriptive and informative. A descriptive abstract briefly describes the longer work, while an informative abstract presents all the main arguments and important results. This handout provides examples of various types of abstracts and instructions on how to construct one.

Which type should I use?

Your best bet in this case is to ask your instructor or refer to the instructions provided by the publisher. You can also make a guess based on the length allowed; i.e., 100-120 words = descriptive; 250+ words = informative.

How do I write an abstract?

The format of your abstract will depend on the work being abstracted. An abstract of a scientific research paper will contain elements not found in an abstract of a literature article, and vice versa. However, all abstracts share several mandatory components, and there are also some optional parts that you can decide to include or not. When preparing to draft your abstract, keep the following key process elements in mind:

• Reason for writing: What is the importance of the research? Why would a reader be interested in the larger work?
• Problem: What problem does this work attempt to solve? What is the scope of the project? What is the main argument/thesis/claim?
• Methodology: An abstract of a scientific work may include specific models or approaches used in the larger study. Other abstracts may describe the types of evidence used in the research.
• Results: Again, an abstract of a scientific work may include specific data that indicates the results of the project. Other abstracts may discuss the findings in a more general way.
• Implications: What changes should be implemented as a result of the findings of the work? How does this work add to the body of knowledge on the topic?

(This list of elements is adapted with permission from Philip Koopman, “How to Write an Abstract.” )

All abstracts include:

• A full citation of the source, preceding the abstract.
• The most important information first.
• The same type and style of language found in the original, including technical language.
• Key words and phrases that quickly identify the content and focus of the work.
• Clear, concise, and powerful language.

Abstracts may include:

• The thesis of the work, usually in the first sentence.
• Background information that places the work in the larger body of literature.
• The same chronological structure as the original work.

How not to write an abstract:

• Do not refer extensively to other works.
• Do not add information not contained in the original work.
• Do not define terms.

If you are abstracting your own writing

When abstracting your own work, it may be difficult to condense a piece of writing that you have agonized over for weeks (or months, or even years) into a 250-word statement. There are some tricks that you could use to make it easier, however.

Reverse outlining:

This technique is commonly used when you are having trouble organizing your own writing. The process involves writing down the main idea of each paragraph on a separate piece of paper– see our short video . For the purposes of writing an abstract, try grouping the main ideas of each section of the paper into a single sentence. Practice grouping ideas using webbing or color coding .

For a scientific paper, you may have sections titled Purpose, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Each one of these sections will be longer than one paragraph, but each is grouped around a central idea. Use reverse outlining to discover the central idea in each section and then distill these ideas into one statement.

Cut and paste:

To create a first draft of an abstract of your own work, you can read through the entire paper and cut and paste sentences that capture key passages. This technique is useful for social science research with findings that cannot be encapsulated by neat numbers or concrete results. A well-written humanities draft will have a clear and direct thesis statement and informative topic sentences for paragraphs or sections. Isolate these sentences in a separate document and work on revising them into a unified paragraph.

If you are abstracting someone else’s writing

When abstracting something you have not written, you cannot summarize key ideas just by cutting and pasting. Instead, you must determine what a prospective reader would want to know about the work. There are a few techniques that will help you in this process:

Identify key terms:

Search through the entire document for key terms that identify the purpose, scope, and methods of the work. Pay close attention to the Introduction (or Purpose) and the Conclusion (or Discussion). These sections should contain all the main ideas and key terms in the paper. When writing the abstract, be sure to incorporate the key terms.

Highlight key phrases and sentences:

Instead of cutting and pasting the actual words, try highlighting sentences or phrases that appear to be central to the work. Then, in a separate document, rewrite the sentences and phrases in your own words.

Don’t look back:

After reading the entire work, put it aside and write a paragraph about the work without referring to it. In the first draft, you may not remember all the key terms or the results, but you will remember what the main point of the work was. Remember not to include any information you did not get from the work being abstracted.

Revise, revise, revise

No matter what type of abstract you are writing, or whether you are abstracting your own work or someone else’s, the most important step in writing an abstract is to revise early and often. When revising, delete all extraneous words and incorporate meaningful and powerful words. The idea is to be as clear and complete as possible in the shortest possible amount of space. The Word Count feature of Microsoft Word can help you keep track of how long your abstract is and help you hit your target length.

Example 1: Humanities abstract

Kenneth Tait Andrews, “‘Freedom is a constant struggle’: The dynamics and consequences of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1984” Ph.D. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1997 DAI-A 59/02, p. 620, Aug 1998

This dissertation examines the impacts of social movements through a multi-layered study of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement from its peak in the early 1960s through the early 1980s. By examining this historically important case, I clarify the process by which movements transform social structures and the constraints movements face when they try to do so. The time period studied includes the expansion of voting rights and gains in black political power, the desegregation of public schools and the emergence of white-flight academies, and the rise and fall of federal anti-poverty programs. I use two major research strategies: (1) a quantitative analysis of county-level data and (2) three case studies. Data have been collected from archives, interviews, newspapers, and published reports. This dissertation challenges the argument that movements are inconsequential. Some view federal agencies, courts, political parties, or economic elites as the agents driving institutional change, but typically these groups acted in response to the leverage brought to bear by the civil rights movement. The Mississippi movement attempted to forge independent structures for sustaining challenges to local inequities and injustices. By propelling change in an array of local institutions, movement infrastructures had an enduring legacy in Mississippi.

Now let’s break down this abstract into its component parts to see how the author has distilled his entire dissertation into a ~200 word abstract.

What the dissertation does This dissertation examines the impacts of social movements through a multi-layered study of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement from its peak in the early 1960s through the early 1980s. By examining this historically important case, I clarify the process by which movements transform social structures and the constraints movements face when they try to do so.

How the dissertation does it The time period studied in this dissertation includes the expansion of voting rights and gains in black political power, the desegregation of public schools and the emergence of white-flight academies, and the rise and fall of federal anti-poverty programs. I use two major research strategies: (1) a quantitative analysis of county-level data and (2) three case studies.

What materials are used Data have been collected from archives, interviews, newspapers, and published reports.

Conclusion This dissertation challenges the argument that movements are inconsequential. Some view federal agencies, courts, political parties, or economic elites as the agents driving institutional change, but typically these groups acted in response to movement demands and the leverage brought to bear by the civil rights movement. The Mississippi movement attempted to forge independent structures for sustaining challenges to local inequities and injustices. By propelling change in an array of local institutions, movement infrastructures had an enduring legacy in Mississippi.

Keywords social movements Civil Rights Movement Mississippi voting rights desegregation

Example 2: Science Abstract

Luis Lehner, “Gravitational radiation from black hole spacetimes” Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 1998 DAI-B 59/06, p. 2797, Dec 1998

The problem of detecting gravitational radiation is receiving considerable attention with the construction of new detectors in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The theoretical modeling of the wave forms that would be produced in particular systems will expedite the search for and analysis of detected signals. The characteristic formulation of GR is implemented to obtain an algorithm capable of evolving black holes in 3D asymptotically flat spacetimes. Using compactification techniques, future null infinity is included in the evolved region, which enables the unambiguous calculation of the radiation produced by some compact source. A module to calculate the waveforms is constructed and included in the evolution algorithm. This code is shown to be second-order convergent and to handle highly non-linear spacetimes. In particular, we have shown that the code can handle spacetimes whose radiation is equivalent to a galaxy converting its whole mass into gravitational radiation in one second. We further use the characteristic formulation to treat the region close to the singularity in black hole spacetimes. The code carefully excises a region surrounding the singularity and accurately evolves generic black hole spacetimes with apparently unlimited stability.

This science abstract covers much of the same ground as the humanities one, but it asks slightly different questions.

Why do this study The problem of detecting gravitational radiation is receiving considerable attention with the construction of new detectors in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The theoretical modeling of the wave forms that would be produced in particular systems will expedite the search and analysis of the detected signals.

What the study does The characteristic formulation of GR is implemented to obtain an algorithm capable of evolving black holes in 3D asymptotically flat spacetimes. Using compactification techniques, future null infinity is included in the evolved region, which enables the unambiguous calculation of the radiation produced by some compact source. A module to calculate the waveforms is constructed and included in the evolution algorithm.

Results This code is shown to be second-order convergent and to handle highly non-linear spacetimes. In particular, we have shown that the code can handle spacetimes whose radiation is equivalent to a galaxy converting its whole mass into gravitational radiation in one second. We further use the characteristic formulation to treat the region close to the singularity in black hole spacetimes. The code carefully excises a region surrounding the singularity and accurately evolves generic black hole spacetimes with apparently unlimited stability.

Keywords gravitational radiation (GR) spacetimes black holes

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Belcher, Wendy Laura. 2009. Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Press.

Koopman, Philip. 1997. “How to Write an Abstract.” Carnegie Mellon University. October 1997. http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html .

Lancaster, F.W. 2003. Indexing And Abstracting in Theory and Practice , 3rd ed. London: Facet Publishing.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Writing Abstracts for a Literature Review in APA Format

While developing your APA style school research paper, follow the specific formatting guidelines to finalize your paper. This citation example focuses on writing  abstracts for an APA style paper. Learning how to write abstracts is a good skill to have, as it helps you develop the ability to summarize the important points in your paper. A busy student can read abstracts to determine if it’s worth the time to read the full paper.

Sectioning Your APA Research Paper

In APA style, a research paper has four sections:

Types of Research Papers

You may be asked to prepare several types of research papers  as a student, including:

• Empirical Study
• Theory-Oriented
• Methodological

A literature review paper is one you’ll be asked to write frequently, as many times there is not enough time in a class setting to complete extensive research.

Formatting an APA Abstract

The abstract page is the second page of your report, right after the title page. This page is numbered 2 on your report.

On the first line of the page, center the word Abstract . *Do not underline, bold, italicize or otherwise format the title.

On the second line, start your abstract. *Do not indent.

Inserting Keywords into an APA Abstract

In today’s digital world, it is important to think about ways readers can find your work online. Adding keywords at the end of your abstract guides online searches. After the abstract paragraph, type Keywords:  italicized and indented.

Keywords:  digital print, online sources

Abstract Word Limits

The maximum word count for an APA abstract is 250 words. However, your instructor may ask for fewer words or provide you with additional guidance. In fact, some instructors or publications  may restrict the word count to 150.

Writing the Abstract

The abstract is a concise summary of your paper. Write it after you have finished your paper, so you have a clear idea of what to include in this short paragraph.

Examples of APA Abstracts

Following your instructor’s guidance, include these elements in your APA abstract:

• First, briefly state the research topic  and questions.
• Then, using the primary studies in the literature you reviewed, include the participants in the studies and the main results.
• Remember to include the conclusion of your literature review.
• Finally, finish with a sentence about any implications or future research that developed from the research presented in your paper.

APA Abstract Example

This article is an examination of the history of gender demographics in the field of librarianship. The historic development and subsequent “feminization” of librarianship continues to influence the gender wage gap and the disproportionate leadership bias in the field today. This article examines the stereotyping of librarians and the cyclical effect of genderizing the profession. Consideration of current trends and data in librarian demographics demonstrates a consistent decrease in gender diversity, accompanied by a troubling lack of women leaders and executives. Additionally, this article explores options for combating the gender perceptions that negatively impact women in library and information science fields, including management and negotiation training in graduate programs, increased emphasis on technological skills, and professional organization advocacy.

Mars, P. (2018). Gender demographics and perceptions in librarianship.  School of Information Student Research Journal 7 (2). Retrieved from http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slissrj/vol7/iss2/3

Abstract Example With Keywords

The future of books and libraries is put into question by the increasing popularity of e-books and the use of computers as text platforms. In an effort to anticipate which reading platform—print, e-readers, or computers displays—will dominate in the coming years, recent research and experimental data on the suitability of each reading platform for reading comprehension will be considered, from the perspectives of optical issues, cognition, and metacognition. It will be shown that, while printed books are most conducive to learning from longer, more difficult texts, e-readers and computer displays offer convenience and some distinct advantages to readers in particular situations. This synthesis of current research will be helpful to librarians working in digital and print book purchasing and collection development, as well as those making long-range planning decisions.

Keywords : books, digital books, e-paper, reading comprehension, cognition

Tanner, M. J. (2014). Digital vs. print: Reading comprehension and the future of the book.  SLIS Student Research Journal, 4 (2). Retrieved from http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/slissrj/vol4/iss2/6

A Crucial Element

Your APA abstract is a critical part of your school research paper. Thus, you should put a lot of thought into creating your abstract and make sure it includes all the required elements. As always, be sure to follow your teacher’s guidance for length and format.

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Understanding APA Literature Reviews

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How to Write an Abstract | Steps & Examples

Published on 1 March 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 10 October 2022 by Eoghan Ryan.

An abstract is a short summary of a longer work (such as a dissertation or research paper ). The abstract concisely reports the aims and outcomes of your research, so that readers know exactly what your paper is about.

Although the structure may vary slightly depending on your discipline, your abstract should describe the purpose of your work, the methods you’ve used, and the conclusions you’ve drawn.

One common way to structure your abstract is to use the IMRaD structure. This stands for:

• Introduction

Abstracts are usually around 100–300 words, but there’s often a strict word limit, so make sure to check the relevant requirements.

In a dissertation or thesis , include the abstract on a separate page, after the title page and acknowledgements but before the table of contents .

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Table of contents

Abstract example, when to write an abstract, step 1: introduction, step 2: methods, step 3: results, step 4: discussion, tips for writing an abstract, frequently asked questions about abstracts.

Hover over the different parts of the abstract to see how it is constructed.

This paper examines the role of silent movies as a mode of shared experience in the UK during the early twentieth century. At this time, high immigration rates resulted in a significant percentage of non-English-speaking citizens. These immigrants faced numerous economic and social obstacles, including exclusion from public entertainment and modes of discourse (newspapers, theater, radio).

Incorporating evidence from reviews, personal correspondence, and diaries, this study demonstrates that silent films were an affordable and inclusive source of entertainment. It argues for the accessible economic and representational nature of early cinema. These concerns are particularly evident in the low price of admission and in the democratic nature of the actors’ exaggerated gestures, which allowed the plots and action to be easily grasped by a diverse audience despite language barriers.

Keywords: silent movies, immigration, public discourse, entertainment, early cinema, language barriers.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

You will almost always have to include an abstract when:

• Completing a thesis or dissertation
• Submitting a research paper to an academic journal
• Writing a book proposal
• Applying for research grants

It’s easiest to write your abstract last, because it’s a summary of the work you’ve already done. Your abstract should:

• Be a self-contained text, not an excerpt from your paper
• Be fully understandable on its own
• Reflect the structure of your larger work

Start by clearly defining the purpose of your research. What practical or theoretical problem does the research respond to, or what research question did you aim to answer?

You can include some brief context on the social or academic relevance of your topic, but don’t go into detailed background information. If your abstract uses specialised terms that would be unfamiliar to the average academic reader or that have various different meanings, give a concise definition.

After identifying the problem, state the objective of your research. Use verbs like “investigate,” “test,” “analyse,” or “evaluate” to describe exactly what you set out to do.

This part of the abstract can be written in the present or past simple tense  but should never refer to the future, as the research is already complete.

• This study will investigate the relationship between coffee consumption and productivity.
• This study investigates the relationship between coffee consumption and productivity.

Next, indicate the research methods that you used to answer your question. This part should be a straightforward description of what you did in one or two sentences. It is usually written in the past simple tense, as it refers to completed actions.

• Structured interviews will be conducted with 25 participants.
• Structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants.

Don’t evaluate validity or obstacles here — the goal is not to give an account of the methodology’s strengths and weaknesses, but to give the reader a quick insight into the overall approach and procedures you used.

Next, summarise the main research results . This part of the abstract can be in the present or past simple tense.

• Our analysis has shown a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.
• Our analysis shows a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.
• Our analysis showed a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.

Depending on how long and complex your research is, you may not be able to include all results here. Try to highlight only the most important findings that will allow the reader to understand your conclusions.

Finally, you should discuss the main conclusions of your research : what is your answer to the problem or question? The reader should finish with a clear understanding of the central point that your research has proved or argued. Conclusions are usually written in the present simple tense.

• We concluded that coffee consumption increases productivity.
• We conclude that coffee consumption increases productivity.

If there are important limitations to your research (for example, related to your sample size or methods), you should mention them briefly in the abstract. This allows the reader to accurately assess the credibility and generalisability of your research.

If your aim was to solve a practical problem, your discussion might include recommendations for implementation. If relevant, you can briefly make suggestions for further research.

If your paper will be published, you might have to add a list of keywords at the end of the abstract. These keywords should reference the most important elements of the research to help potential readers find your paper during their own literature searches.

Be aware that some publication manuals, such as APA Style , have specific formatting requirements for these keywords.

It can be a real challenge to condense your whole work into just a couple of hundred words, but the abstract will be the first (and sometimes only) part that people read, so it’s important to get it right. These strategies can help you get started.

Read other abstracts

The best way to learn the conventions of writing an abstract in your discipline is to read other people’s. You probably already read lots of journal article abstracts while conducting your literature review —try using them as a framework for structure and style.

You can also find lots of dissertation abstract examples in thesis and dissertation databases .

Reverse outline

Not all abstracts will contain precisely the same elements. For longer works, you can write your abstract through a process of reverse outlining.

For each chapter or section, list keywords and draft one to two sentences that summarise the central point or argument. This will give you a framework of your abstract’s structure. Next, revise the sentences to make connections and show how the argument develops.

Write clearly and concisely

A good abstract is short but impactful, so make sure every word counts. Each sentence should clearly communicate one main point.

To keep your abstract or summary short and clear:

• Avoid passive sentences: Passive constructions are often unnecessarily long. You can easily make them shorter and clearer by using the active voice.
• Avoid long sentences: Substitute longer expressions for concise expressions or single words (e.g., “In order to” for “To”).
• Avoid obscure jargon: The abstract should be understandable to readers who are not familiar with your topic.
• Avoid repetition and filler words: Replace nouns with pronouns when possible and eliminate unnecessary words.
• Avoid detailed descriptions: An abstract is not expected to provide detailed definitions, background information, or discussions of other scholars’ work. Instead, include this information in the body of your thesis or paper.

If you’re struggling to edit down to the required length, you can get help from expert editors with Scribbr’s professional proofreading services .

Check your formatting

If you are writing a thesis or dissertation or submitting to a journal, there are often specific formatting requirements for the abstract—make sure to check the guidelines and format your work correctly. For APA research papers you can follow the APA abstract format .

Checklist: Abstract

The word count is within the required length, or a maximum of one page.

The abstract appears after the title page and acknowledgements and before the table of contents .

I have clearly stated my research problem and objectives.

I have briefly described my methodology .

I have summarized the most important results .

I have stated my main conclusions .

I have mentioned any important limitations and recommendations.

The abstract can be understood by someone without prior knowledge of the topic.

You've written a great abstract! Use the other checklists to continue improving your thesis or dissertation.

An abstract is a concise summary of an academic text (such as a journal article or dissertation ). It serves two main purposes:

• To help potential readers determine the relevance of your paper for their own research.
• To communicate your key findings to those who don’t have time to read the whole paper.

Abstracts are often indexed along with keywords on academic databases, so they make your work more easily findable. Since the abstract is the first thing any reader sees, it’s important that it clearly and accurately summarises the contents of your paper.

An abstract for a thesis or dissertation is usually around 150–300 words. There’s often a strict word limit, so make sure to check your university’s requirements.

The abstract is the very last thing you write. You should only write it after your research is complete, so that you can accurately summarize the entirety of your thesis or paper.

Avoid citing sources in your abstract . There are two reasons for this:

• The abstract should focus on your original research, not on the work of others.
• The abstract should be self-contained and fully understandable without reference to other sources.

There are some circumstances where you might need to mention other sources in an abstract: for example, if your research responds directly to another study or focuses on the work of a single theorist. In general, though, don’t include citations unless absolutely necessary.

The abstract appears on its own page, after the title page and acknowledgements but before the table of contents .

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

11.8  Writing an abstract

All full reviews must include an abstract of not more than 400 words. The abstract should be kept as brief as possible without sacrificing important content. Abstracts to Cochrane reviews are published in MEDLINE and the Science Citation Index, and are made freely available on the internet. It is therefore important that they can be read as stand-alone documents.

The abstract should summarize the key methods, results and conclusions of the review and should not contain any information that is not in the review. Links to other parts of the review (such as references, studies, tables and figures) may not be included in the abstract. A hypothetical example of an abstract is included in Box 11.8.a .

Abstracts should be targeted primarily at healthcare decision makers (clinicians, informed consumers and policy makers) rather than just to researchers. Terminology should be reasonably comprehensible to a general rather than a specialist healthcare audience. Abbreviations should be avoided, except where they are widely understood (for example, HIV). Where essential, other abbreviations should be spelt out (with the abbreviations in brackets) on first use. Names of drugs and interventions that can be understood internationally should be used wherever possible. Trade names should not be used.

The content under each heading in the abstract should be as follows:

Background: This should be one or two sentences to explain the context or elaborate on the purpose and rationale of the review. If this version of the review is an update of an earlier one, it is helpful to include a sentence such as “This is an update of a Cochrane review first published in YEAR, and previously updated in YEAR”.

Objectives:  This should be a precise statement of the primary objective of the review, ideally in a single sentence, matching the Objectives in the main text of the review. Where possible the style should be of the form “To assess the effects of   [intervention or comparison] for [health problem] for/in [types of people, disease or problem and setting if specified]”.

Search methods: This should list the sources and the dates of the last search, for each source, using the active form ‘We searched….’ or, if there is only one author, the passive form can be used, for example, ‘Database X, Y, Z were searched’. Search terms should not be listed here. If the CRG’s Specialized Register was used, this should be listed first in the form ‘Cochrane X Group Specialized Register’. The order for listing other databases should be the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE, other databases. The date range of the search for each database should be given. For the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials this should be in the form ‘Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials ( The Cochrane Library 2007, Issue 1)’. For most other databases, such as MEDLINE, it should be in the form ‘MEDLINE (January 1966 to December 2006)’. Searching of bibliographies for relevant citations can be covered in a generic phrase ‘reference lists of articles’. If there were any constraints based on language or publication status, these should be listed. If individuals or organizations were contacted to locate studies this should be noted and it is preferable to use ‘We contacted pharmaceutical companies’ rather than a listing of all the pharmaceutical companies contacted. If journals were specifically handsearched for the review, this should be noted but handsearching to help build the Specialized Register of the CRG should not be listed.

Selection criteria: These should be given as ‘ [type of study] of [type of intervention or comparison] in [disease, problem or type of people]‘ . Outcomes should only be listed here if the review was restricted to specific outcomes.

Data collection and analysis: This should be restricted to how data were extracted and assessed, and not include details of what data were extracted. This section should cover whether data extraction and assessments of risk of bias were done by more than one person. If the authors contacted investigators to obtain missing information, this should be noted here. What steps, if any, were taken to identify adverse effects should be noted.

Main results: This section should begin with the total number of studies and participants included in the review, and brief details pertinent to the interpretation of the results (for example, the risk of bias in the studies overall or a comment on the comparability of the studies, if appropriate). It should address the primary objective and be restricted to the main qualitative and quantitative results (generally including not more than six key results). The outcomes included should be selected on the basis of which are most likely to help someone making a decision about whether or not to use a particular intervention. Adverse effects should be included if these are covered in the review. If necessary, the number of studies and participants contributing to the separate outcomes should be noted, along with concerns over quality of evidence specific to these outcomes. The results should be expressed narratively as well as quantitatively if the numerical results are not clear or intuitive (such as those from a standardized mean differences analysis). The summary statistics in the abstract should be the same as those selected as the defaults for the review, and should be presented in a standard way, such as ‘odds ratio 2.31 (95% confidence interval 1.13 to 3.45)’. Ideally, risks of events (percentage) or averages (for continuous data) should be reported for both comparison groups. If overall results are not calculated in the review, a qualitative assessment or a description of the range and pattern of the results can be given. However, ‘vote counts’ in which the numbers of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ studies are reported should be avoided.

Authors’ conclusions: The primary purpose of the review should be to present information, rather than to offer advice or recommendations. The Authors’ conclusions should be succinct and drawn directly from the findings of the review so that they directly and obviously reflect the main results. Assumptions should generally not be made about practice circumstances, values, preferences, tradeoffs; and the giving of advice or recommendations should generally be avoided. Any important limitations of data and analyses should be noted. Important conclusions about the implications for research should be included if these are not obvious.

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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• Published: 02 April 2024

How do we study misogyny in the digital age? A systematic literature review using a computational linguistic approach

• Lara Fontanella   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5441-0035 1 ,
• Berta Chulvi 2 , 3 ,
• Elisa Ignazzi 4 ,
• Annalina Sarra 5 &
• Alice Tontodimamma 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  478 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies

Nowadays, despite centuries of striving for equality, women still face higher levels of discrimination compared to men in nearly every aspect of life. Recently, this systemic inequality has manifested in cyberspace through the proliferation of abusive content that is even more aggressive than what one would expect in the 21st century. Various research disciplines are now attempting to characterise this new manifestation of misogyny. The endeavour to comprehend this phenomenon has resulted in a significant increase in publications from several fields, including Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Psychology, and Computer Science. This paper presents a systematic review of multidisciplinary research on misogyny from the years 1990 to 2022, encompassing a total of 2830 articles retrieved from the Scopus database as of December 31, 2022. The literature is thoroughly analysed using three approaches: bibliometric analysis, topic detection, and qualitative analysis of the documents. The findings suggest that the analysis of online misogyny has been the primary driver behind the exponential growth in publications in this field. Additionally, the results of the topic analysis and topic interaction reveal a limited connection between the areas of knowledge that are necessary to fully grasp this complex phenomenon.

Introduction

Nowadays, regardless of centuries of fighting for equality, women continue to face a disproportionate amount of discrimination compared to men across various contexts. Women and girls encounter prejudice, sexist attitudes, open discrimination, and violence throughout their lives, while the extent of these experiences varies by location, identity, and culture. Disgust, intolerance, or entrenched prejudice, serving to legitimise women’s oppression, persist even in countries often alleged to be post-patriarchal, like the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Manne, 2017 ). The all-pervasive form of hostility and aversion against women and girls is referred to as misogyny, a term derived from the Ancient Greek word “mĩsoguniã”, which means hatred of women. According to Allen ( 2021 ), misogyny has a disputed definition. Some authors offer a definition of misogyny that, in some respects, overlaps with the concept of sexism. For example, Code ( 2000 ) defines misogyny as any of the following acts or feelings: sexual and physical violence against women, exclusion of women, promotion of patriarchy, belittlement, and marginalisation of women. In this approach, the promotion of patriarchy, broadly conceptualised as a system or systems producing and reproducing gendered and intersectional inequalities, is clearly the spread of a sexist mentality. Here, sexism is linked to the acceptance of sex-role stereotypes and can manifest at various levels: individual, organisational, institutional, and cultural (VandenBos, 2015 ). In the same line of reasoning, Jukes ( 1993 ) states that misogyny can be obvious and explicit at times, but it can also be subtle and insidious. However, the subtle expression of misogyny is more linked to sexist attitudes than to the expression of hate. Other authors, such as Manne ( 2017 ), set out a clear distinction between sexism and misogyny. In her book, “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny”, Kate Manne ( 2017 ) describes misogyny as the patriarchal order’s “law enforcement” branch, which rewards “good” women who adhere to social norms while punishing those who disobey. Sexism, on the other hand, is viewed as the “justificatory” branch, which rationalises and justifies male dominance through beliefs, theories, stereotypes, and cultural narratives that portray women as naturally inferior. This conceptual debate is due to two reasons. First, the fact that misogyny is strictly linked to the concepts of patriarchy and sexism, and second, the evidence that our societies are facing new ways of conveying misogynistic content in the form of open denigration of women.

Focusing on the link between concepts that describe women’s discrimination, it is evident that the powerful dynamics of a patriarchal society contribute to the development of a sexist culture, and this leads to the oppression of women both in their personal lives and within societal institutions (Millet, 1970 ). Additionally, hostile and benevolent sexism (Glick and Fiske, 1997 ) functions to preserve patriarchy and conventional gender norms. Benevolent sexism manifests through subjectively positive attitudes towards women in traditional roles, encompassing protective paternalism, idealisation, and a desire for intimacy. On the other hand, hostile sexism is expressed in a blatant and resentful way toward women who violate traditional roles and includes the negative equivalents of each dimension of benevolent sexism: dominant paternalism, derogatory beliefs, and heterosexual hostility. The aforementioned patriarchal culture legitimises openly misogynistic expressions, which represent the most extreme manifestation of aggression against women.

In this complex dynamic, studies from different disciplines tend to use different terminology when examining hostility towards women. Specifically, research in psychology is more inclined to use terms related to sexism, especially in distinguishing between hostile and benevolent sexism, and the notion of patriarchy is extensively examined in social science, particularly in sociological studies. The concept of misogyny is more commonly used in communication studies and computational science. The findings reported in the Supplementary Material provide evidence of the emphasis of different disciplines on different concepts.

Regarding the emergence of new ways of transmitting misogynistic content, the rise of interactive social media has been widely considered (Moloney and Love, 2018 ; Rubio Martìn and Gordo Lòpez, 2021 ; Tranchese and Sugiura, 2021 ).

Misogyny on the internet is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, legislation pertaining to women’s online safety dates back to the Beijing Declaration in 1995. However, it was not until the events of Gamergate Footnote 1 (Massanari, 2020 ) in August 2014 that the mainstream media and academic research took notice. In fact, in the gaming community, 2014 saw the emergence of the controversy and online movement known as “Gamergate”. It started out as a reaction to questions about ethics in video game journalism, but it soon turned into a harassment campaign directed at female journalists. The movement brought attention to misogyny, sexism, and the need for diversity in the gaming industry.

With the development of social networks, the historical aversion to women has become articulated through new modes of communication and social interaction. While digital spaces have amplified female voices, online platforms have notoriously facilitated the spread of misogynistic content: women’s systematic inequality and discrimination have been replicated in cyberspace in the form of abusive content much more aggressive than we would have expected in the 21st century (Bates, 2021 ). The online realm provides ample opportunities for misogyny to be linguistically expressed in various ways, ranging from subtle forms such as social exclusion and discrimination to more severe forms like sexual objectification and violent threats (Anzovino et al., 2018 ). Studies examining online misogynistic discourse have employed different terminology, such as “gender cyber hatred” (Jane, 2017 ), “cyber harassment” (Citron, 2014 ), “technological violence” (Ostini and Hopkins, 2015 ), “gender trolling” (Mantilla, 2013 ), “e-bile”, and “gender hate speech” (Jane, 2015 ). Other scholars (see, for instance, Ging and Siapera, 2018 ) chose to use a broader definition of misogyny which almost always results in some form of harm, either directly, in the form of psychological, professional, or physical harm, or indirectly, making the internet a less equal, less safe, or less inclusive space for women and girls.

Our study aims to investigate the current state of research on misogyny. For this purpose, we focus on the scientific literature on this subject during the period between 1990 and 2022. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first systematic review on misogyny which combines three approaches: bibliometrics, topic detection, and qualitative analysis of the documents.

For the bibliometric research, we first analyse the existing literature extracted from the Scopus database within the misogyny research field by exploiting bibliometric tools. Bibliometric analysis provides a systematic, transparent, and replicable manner to investigate extant literature in a given field and discover the progress of disciplinary research from a macro perspective, supporting future research directions. Using bibliometric methods, we explore the main lines of research in the scientific literature on misogyny and offer a summary of the research activity in terms of the volume of work and evolution over time, as well as in terms of the social, intellectual and conceptual structures of this research area.

Although bibliometric tools provide a broad overview of current research, they cannot deliver detailed insights into studies in the literature based on semantic content analysis. In order to conduct an in-depth semantic analysis, it is necessary to supplement bibliometric methods with text-mining techniques (Hu et al., 2014 ). In accordance, our work employs topic analysis based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation method (LDA; Blei et al., 2003 ) in order to identify the most prevalent latent themes in misogyny literature. LDA is gaining popularity among scholars in diverse fields (Alghamdi and Alfalqi, 2015 ). Two important findings emerge from a topic model: a list of topics (i.e., clusters of words that appear frequently together) and a list of documents that are strongly associated with each topic. As a result, this method offers a probabilistic quantification of relevance for both the identification of topics and the classification of documents, making it useful for locating interpretable topics with semantic meaning and assigning these topics to literature documents (Tontodimamma et al., 2021 ). According to Suominen and Toivanen ( 2016 ), the main innovation of topic modelling in categorising scientific knowledge is that it essentially eliminates the need to fit knowledge that is brand-new to the world into definitions that are already well-established.

Finally, we complement the study with a qualitative analysis aimed to discover the sociological perspective of the literature on online misogyny, on the one hand, and the computational aspects, on the other hand.

Bibliometric analyses

Bibliographic dataset.

For the analysis, we use a bibliometric dataset covering the period 1990–2022, retrieved from the Scopus database on 31 December 2022. Since we focus on the broad spectrum of scientific research on misogyny, the bibliographic dataset was extracted by looking for publications containing terms related to the generic query “misogyn*” in the content of the title, abstract, and keywords. All types of publications were included in the search, and 2830 documents were retrieved. The top publication fields include Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Psychology, and Computer Science.

Information about document distribution by research field is given in the Supplementary Material , along with the document distribution by source and the ranking of the most productive countries and authors.

Research activity

The evolution over time of the number of published documents shows remarkable growth (see Fig. 1 ). We found out that the number of published documents has increased dramatically over time. Since 1992, it has been possible to distinguish two distinct phases. A gradual increase in publications occurred during the first phase, which lasted from 1990 to 2010. The second phase, from 2010 to 2022, has a higher growth rate, indicating increased interest. This finding aligns with the three-stage development theory (Price, 1963 ) of productivity on a particular subject. Small increments in the scientific literature are documented during the precursor period when some scholars begin publishing research on a new topic. The number of papers increases exponentially in the second phase as the topic expands and draws a growing number of scientists, as many facets of the subject remain unexplored. Finally, in the third phase, the curve aspect shifts from exponential to logistic, testifying to a stabilisation in production and a consolidation of the body of knowledge.

Number of publications on misogyny per year: observed and expected temporal evolution according to exponential growth.

To verify the rapid increase, we fit an exponential growth curve to the data. The yearly rate of change in this model is 13.1%, demonstrating how research on misogyny might be cast in the second phase of development: although more research is being released, there is still space for improvement in many areas.

It is noteworthy to highlight that, as shown in the Supplementary Material , the research on misogyny from 1990 to 2002 follows a similar trend as sexism and has a slightly higher yearly growth rate compared to patriarchy. However, when considering only the five years prior to 2022, a more noticeable rise in the volume of published research on misogyny becomes evident, with a twofold increase in the number of published documents.

Social Structure of research on misogyny: collaboration network

To capture the essential characteristics of the misogyny research field, with a specific emphasis on collaborative efforts among different authors, we construct the authors’ collaboration network. We used the Bibliometrix R package, for performing network analysis and visualisation (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ). Within the collaboration network, researchers act as nodes, and the connections between them (edges) represent co-authorships on articles. The node size is indicative of the authors’ productivity, measured in terms of the number of manuscripts authored or co-authored. The edges are weighted according to the frequency of co-authorship. Figure 2 visually illustrates the collaboration network among authors, highlighting the most significant cliques, each distinguished by different colours. The term “clique” is commonly employed to identify highly interconnected groups of elements, such as nodes or vertices, within a network. In our context, a “clique” signifies a group of authors who closely and frequently collaborate with one another compared to their counterparts, thereby creating a densely interconnected structure within the network. The most central scholars, with the highest number of connections, are Elisabetta Fersini, Paolo Rosso, Bilal Ghanem and Viviana Patti, who are also among the most proficient authors in the field of research on misogyny, as shown in the Supplementary Material . The noteworthy aspect is that the densest subgraphs link authors whose research falls under the computer science category.

Authors’ collaboration network.

Intellectual Structure of research on misogyny: citation analysis

The top five documents with the highest number of citations are: “Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures” (Massanari, 2017 ), “Down girl: The logic of misogyny” (Manne, 2017 ), “Attitudinal antecedents of rape myth acceptance: A theoretical and empirical re-examination” (Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1995 ), “Post-postfeminism?: new feminist visibilities in postfeminist times” (Gill, 2016 ) and “Beauty and Misogyny Harmful Cultural Practices in the West” (Jeffreys, 2005 ). These works investigate misogyny from various angles.

Manne’s book explores the logic of misogyny, which “primarily targets women because they are women in a man’s world ” (Manne, 2017 , p. 64). Manne argues that misogyny still exists in alleged post-patriarchal cultures and has taken different forms since legal equality, requiring women to be moral “givers” and validating a sense of entitlement among privileged men. Misogyny often takes the form of taking from women what they supposedly owe men and preventing women from competing for positions of power and authority traditionally held by men. In addition, Manne examines various examples of rape culture, including online harassment.

Considering attitudes toward sexual violence, Lonsway and Fitzgerald investigate the relationship between misogyny and rape myth acceptance. Here, rape myths can be defined as “attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but are widely and persistently held, and that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression against women” (Lonsway and Fitzgerald, 1994 , pag. 134).

From a feminist perspective, Jeffreys argues that some Western beauty practices (e.g., makeup, high-heeled shoes, breast implants) should be included in the United Nations’ definition of harmful traditional/cultural practices due to the damaging effects they have on women’s health, the creation of sexual difference, and the enforcement of female deference. Gill’s article contends that it is crucial to examine how the media portrays feminism and to delve into the complexities of a cultural moment that seems to be characterised by a range of feminist ideologies (both contemporary and traditional), as well as a resurgence of anti-feminist attitudes and prevalent misogyny.

Massanari’s research centres on online misogyny and is based on a long-term participant-observation and ethnographic study of Reddit’s culture and community. The research specifically focuses on the #Gamergate and The Fappening cases. The Fappening involved the illegal distribution of nude photos of celebrities via anonymous image-board 4chan and Reddit, while #Gamergate was ostensibly about ethics in gaming journalism but became a campaign of harassment against female and minority game developers, journalists, and critics. The study highlights how Reddit’s design, algorithm, and platform politics implicitly support toxic technocultures, providing a fertile ground for anti-feminist and misogynistic movements to flourish. Online misogyny is also discussed in the papers with the highest number of local citations (i.e., citations from other documents within our bibliographic dataset): “#MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, structure, and networked misogyny” (Banet-Weiser and Miltner, 2016 ), “Back to the kitchen, cunt: Speaking the unspeakable about online misogyny” (Jane, 2014 ), and “Drinking male tears: language, the Manosphere, and networked harassment” (Marwick and Caplan, 2018 ).

Conceptual Structure of research on misogyny

To understand the conceptual structure of the research on misogyny, we initially performed an exploratory analysis of the textual content of the keywords chosen by the authors.

Figure 3 shows the most used keywords, after removing the term “misogyny”. Besides the extensive terms gender, feminism and sexism, we find keywords related to the phenomenon of violence against women, to the emerging theme of the Manosphere and to the classical theme of patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. It is also worth noting the presence of several keywords strictly linked to the online diffusion of misogynistic content.

Most used keywords.

To deepen the analysis, a conceptual structure map (see Fig. 4 ) of the literature on misogyny was created using the Bibliometrix R package (Aria and Cuccurullo, 2017 ), which enables performing multiple correspondence analysis (MCA, Greenacre and Blasius, 2006 ) and hierarchical clustering. MCA, in particular, allows the generation of a low-dimensional Euclidean representation of the original data matrix by performing a homogeneity analysis of the “documents by keywords” indicator matrix, which is constructed by taking into account a dummy variable for each keyword. The words are plotted on a two-dimensional plane, where closer words have a more consistent distribution across the documents.

Conceptual map of research on misogyny.

The two dimensions of the maps that emerged from the MCA can be interpreted as follows. The first dimension separates keywords emphasising the problem of misogyny in general and on social media platforms (on the right) from those related to the methodological aspects of the automatic detection of misogynistic language (on the left). The second dimension separates keywords emphasising the problem of misogyny from a general point of view (on the upper) from those related to the Manosphere and Incels ( involuntary celibates ) and their presence on the Reddit platform (on the bottom). Figure 4 also displays the results obtained through a hierarchical cluster analysis carried out adopting the method of average linkage on the factorial coordinates obtained through MCA. Five clusters emerge from the conceptual structure map. The orange cluster refers to publications related to the automatic detection of misogynistic content through machine learning and deep learning techniques. The green cluster displays the connection between misogyny and hate speech and the exploitation of Natural Language Processing (NLP) methodologies to investigate these phenomena. The blue cluster refers to the intersectionality of research on misogyny. The red cluster is strictly linked to studies of the presence of misogynistic content on social media. Finally, the purple cluster is related to publications dealing with the topics of the Manosphere and the Incel phenomenon.

Research themes in misogyny literature

A topic modelling approach is exploited to investigate the textual content of title, abstract and authors’ keywords to give extra insight into multiple latent themes emerging from the literature on misogyny. To reveal the themes, research interests and trends of studies in the existing misogyny literature, we rely on the LDA model.

Topic analysis: LDA model

LDA is an unsupervised machine-learning-based algorithm allowing to discovery of latent (unobserved) “topics” in large unstructured text datasets (Blei et al., 2003 ). Previous research applied LDA to bibliometrics as an efficient tool for understanding a field’s rich underlying topical structure (see, among others, Suominen and Toivanen, 2016 , Tontodimamma et al., 2021 ). The idea behind LDA is that documents contain multiple topics, and each topic is represented as a probability distribution over terms in a fixed vocabulary, with different topics represented by different probabilities of words in the vocabulary. LDA generative process specifies a joint distribution of hidden and observed variables. The algorithm aims to estimate the posterior distribution of the hidden variables given the observed data, but exact inference is intractable, requiring approximate inference algorithms like sampling-based and variational algorithms (Blei et al., 2003 ; Steyvers and Griffiths, 2006 ). To employ LDA, the user needs to specify the number of latent topics in the corpus and two hyperparameters that control how documents and words contribute to topics. A detailed explanation of the LDA algorithm can be found in the studies by Blei ( 2012 ) and Steyvers and Griffiths ( 2006 ).

In our analysis, we use LDA to model a corpus with each document consisting of the publication title, abstract, and keywords. LDA analysis was performed through the Fitlda Matlab routine, available in the Text Analytics Toolbox (MATLAB, 2022 ).

Topic interpretation

The themes generated by LDA are hidden variables that require proper interpretation, typically done by examining the top keywords associated with each topic (Steyvers and Griffiths, 2006 ). To this end, Figs. 5 and 6 show the most important words for each topic, with importance determined by normalising the posterior word probabilities for each topic by the geometric mean of the posterior probabilities for the word across all topics. The topics are ranked based on their estimated likelihood of being observed in the entire dataset. Section 2 of the Supplementary Material contains the list of the most significant terms and their relevance measurements. The twelve selected topics address crucial areas of research on misogyny and can be summarised as follows.

Word clouds for topics 1–6.

Word clouds for topics 7–12.

Topic 1 revolves around a comprehensive discussion on the feminist perspective of the misogyny phenomenon and addresses the root causes of misogyny and gender-based discrimination. The primary focus is on patriarchal male gender privilege and its role in perpetuating misogyny. This topic covers a range of issues related to gender inequality, such as the leadership gap between men and women, women’s rights, and the intersection of misogyny with other forms of oppression.

Topic 2 focuses on how misogyny is expressed in literary works from the early and medieval periods to the modern era. Overall, this topic highlights the role of novels, prose, tales, and fiction in shaping societal attitudes and beliefs about gender and how this has influenced the treatment of women throughout history.

Along similar lines, Topic 3 centres on the study of misogyny in relation to the representation of women in films and on how it influences the portrayal of women on visual media.

Topic 4 is focused on the study of misogyny within the realm of politics and examines how misogyny can be perpetuated within political systems and movements. In particular, the inclusion of terms like “American”, “white”, and “altright” suggests that research included in this topic might focus on the ways in which misogyny is manifested in American politics, particularly within white nationalist and alternative-right movements.

Topic 5 is centred on the study of masculinity and how it relates to misogyny. In particular, the word “hegemonic” suggests that this topic may focus on how dominant forms of masculinity reinforce misogyny and gender-based discrimination.

Topic 6 pertains to the research on women’s rights, including reproductive rights, family law, and access to healthcare, particularly within legal and political systems and on how these systems can either promote or hinder gender equality.

The latent theme of Topic 7 seems to refer to a broad subject area that encompasses issues related to education, sexuality, and sexual identity. Additionally, the related terms suggest a focus on the ways in which sexuality is addressed within educational institutions, including schools and universities.

Topic 8 is a subject area that focuses on the study of digital misogyny, which refers to the ways in which sexism and gender-based discrimination are perpetuated through online and digital media platforms.

The set of words linked to Topic 9 clearly indicates studies focusing on the subject of sexual violence and harassment.

Research included in Topic 10 is related to the investigation of misogyny in the context of music and religion.

Topic 11 appears to be focused on the intersection of misogyny and racism, particularly as it relates to the misogynoir phenomenon.

Finally, Topic 12 deals with the identification and classification of online misogyny.

Topic interactions

By modelling each document as a mixture of several topics and each topic as a combination of words, the LDA technique assigns topics to documents. In our analysis, we awarded the top three document-topic probabilities to each document in this study as long as the probabilities are greater than 0.2. We developed a topic relationship network by considering the topic co-occurrence matrix. The topic network is depicted in Fig. 7 , along with node centrality measures. The nodes are coloured according to their degree, and the edges are weighted depending on co-occurrences. The stronger the link, the thicker the line. Edges with weights less than the average number of co-occurrences have been omitted. The investigation of the linkages reveals relationships between research fronts, emphasising the multidisciplinary character of research on misogyny. The highest degrees are associated with the first three topics, which encompass broader themes dealing with the feminist perspectives of patriarchal society (Topic 1) and the representation of women in literary works (Topic 2) and cinema (Topic 3). Moreover, the latter two topics show the strongest interconnection. Lower degrees are associated with more specialistic research fronts related to the presence of misogyny in music and religion, the misogynoir phenomenon, and the recent field of misogyny detection in computational sciences. In particular, the theme of automatic identification of misogynistic content (Topic 12) is only linked to the research dealing with digital misogyny (Topic 8). A high betweenness, measuring the extent to which the node is part of paths that connect an arbitrary pair of nodes in the network, is associated with Topics 5 and 6, dealing with the study of masculinity and how it relates to misogyny and to research on women rights, respectively. These findings suggest that those research areas are more effective and accessible in the network and form the densest bridges with other nodes.

Topic co-occurence network for the publications on misogyny and nodes’ centrality measures.

Topic temporal evolution

The temporal evolution of the scientific productivity for each topic can be captured through Fig. 8 . The temporal trend of most topics agrees with exponential growth. However, looking at Topic 2, related to studies of misogyny in literary works, we notice how the number of publications in the last period falls below the number expected according to the exponential law. Conversely, the number of published documents for Topics 8 and 12 shows a sudden rise starting from 2018. This trend testifies to the increasing interest in the study of online misogyny and the related techniques for automatic detection and identification. A relatively more contained rise in the size of publications is recorded for Topics 10 related to the investigation of misogyny in the context of music and religions.

Number of publications on misogyny for each topic: observed and expected distributions according to exponential growth.

The appearance and development of new fields of interest and innovative ideas in the research activity on misogyny are confirmed by the heatmaps provided in the Supplementary Material , which show the number of documents, by years, assigned to the identified topics.

Sociological research on online misogyny

To improve our comprehension of the ongoing research on the online dissemination of misogynistic content, we utilised a more specific selection query in our search of the original set of documents, which targeted terms associated with the online environment. We limited our search to articles published in journals categorised under the Social Science subject area. After analysing 277 articles, we identified 187 that were suitable for our study.

Among these documents, four articles provide a review of the literature on online misogyny from different perspectives. Moloney and Love ( 2018 ) review the way online misogyny is conceptualised in the social scientific literature within feminist media studies. The authors identify four different terms that are used to describe different types of online misogyny: online sexual harassment, gendertrolling, e-bile, and disciplinary rhetoric. They also examine the sociological perspective and introduce the concept of “virtual manhood acts” (VMAs), which is situated within the broader context of critical gender theory. VMAs are examples of technologically facilitated misogyny that occur in online social spaces: textual and visual cues are exploited to signal a masculine self, enforce traditional gender norms, oppress women, and restrict men to predefined gender roles. Bosch and Gil-Juarez ( 2021 ) conducted both a systematic review of 33 articles found in Web of Science and a traditional review of academic, institutional, and feminist-activist publications. Their findings show that the majority of aggressors in online gender-based violence are cis-hetero-patriarchal men, who are mostly known to the victims and are often partners or ex-partners. The types of violence range from sexual insults and threats to sexual and high-tech violence. Rubio Martìn and Gordo Lòpez ( 2021 ) provide an overview of the most recent academic literature within the feminist technosocial literature, specifically related to sexual and gender-based violence in digital environments. In addition to discussing the contemporary antecedents of this perspective and presenting current positions and the most representative studies on topics related to online misogyny, the authors demonstrate the potential of the feminist technosocial approach for analysing digital environments and their designs. The main conclusion drawn is that both the values of a misogynistic culture and the possibilities for its reproduction and dissemination are embedded in the design and architecture of digital platforms. The article also highlights the increasing relevance of hybrid realities that result from the synergies between the physical and digital realms, as they enable amplified discourses and actions of online misogyny. Faith ( 2022 ) investigates how gender, technology, and development are interconnected by analysing various works from different fields, including feminist technology studies, gender and development, feminist criminology, and ICT for development. The study also draws data from sources such as civil society, news reports, and international organisations, like the UN, to examine online violence. The author argues for a critical research approach to better understand the complex and opaque power dynamics that shape the digital economy and how it affects gender and development goals.

The articles on online misogyny, which were found in the Social Science category, underwent a manual annotation process to extract various pieces of information. Regarding the different methodologies and techniques used to investigate online misogyny, our findings indicate that discourse analysis and content analysis are the primary methodologies employed in social science literature. Several studies utilise in-depth interviews and surveys to examine the individuals targeted by and responsible for online misogyny. Additionally, digital ethnography, corpus linguistics, and network analysis are also employed. The most analysed social media platforms include Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. Further details on the methodological approaches and the social networks are provided in the Supplementary Material . The subsequent sections delve into details regarding target victims, misogynistic groups, and potential measures to counteract online misogyny.

Targets of online misogyny

Scholars studying online misogyny have identified various target groups that are particularly vulnerable to misogynistic content. These groups include female politicians, journalists, celebrities, influencers, musicians, gamers and developers, YouTubers, university students, and women who have been sexually assaulted. By focusing on specific target groups, research helps in achieving a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which online misogyny manifests and the specific harms that it causes.

Studies on online misogyny directed towards female politicians have concentrated on analysing the experiences of women from various countries, examining the types of misogynistic content directed towards them and the platforms on which it is disseminated. Silva-Paredes and Ibarra Herrera ( 2022 ), using a corpus-based critical discourse analysis, explore abuse received by a Chilean right-wing female politician. Phipps and Montgomery ( 2022 ) conducted an investigation into the portrayal of Nancy Pelosi as the monstrous feminine in the deeply misogynistic attack advertisements of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential re-election campaign. In light of the prevalent misogynistic and anti-feminist depictions of Senator Hillary Clinton across all types of media, Ritchie ( 2013 ) examines how online media continues to have the power to create harmful representations of female politicians and the consequences for the political campaigns of women and for the democratic process as a whole. Focusing on Canadian politicians, Wagner ( 2022 ) discusses how online harassment is a gendered phenomenon. The study, drawing upon interviews with 101 people from diverse genders, racial/ethnic identities, sexual orientations, and partisan affiliations, shows that women are more aware of online harassment than men and how it succeeds in making women feel they are in a hostile political environment. Saluja and Thilaka ( 2021 ), analysing the Twitter discourse referring to three well-known female politicians in India, reveal similar findings, emphasising how female politicians are subjected to a different and distinct pattern of reception compared to their male counterparts. Instances of misogynistic or sexist hate speech and abusive language against female politicians in Japan are investigated in Fuchs and Schäfer ( 2021 ).

The research conducted by Chen et al. ( 2020 ) through in-depth interviews with 75 female journalists from Germany, India, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the USA revealed that those journalists frequently encounter online gendered harassment. The harassment, which includes sexist comments that criticise, attack, marginalise, stereotype, or threaten them based on their gender or sexuality, has led to some female journalists being subjected to misogynistic attacks and even threats of sexual violence. The study suggests that this kind of harassment limits their level of interaction with their audience without being attacked or sexually undermined.

By examining the findings of the qualitative in-depth interview of 48 female journalists, Similar findings are reported by Koirala ( 2020 ), whose study, based on the qualitative in-depth interview of 48 female journalists in Nepal, highlights how some of them tolerate harassment by being ‘strong like a man’, while many avoid social media platforms to keep free of such abusive behaviour. Along the same lines, Rego ( 2018 ) analyses Twitter conversations with Indian journalists and argues that social media platforms constitute convenient havens of harassment against assertive women.

Ghaffari ( 2022 ), analysing user-generated comments on the Instagram profile of a female American celebrity, shows how women are required to suppress their feelings and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind. The research conducted by Döring and Mohseni ( 2019 ) supports these findings, focusing on video producers on YouTube. Their study found that female video producers are more likely to receive negative comments compared to male producers, but only if they display their sexuality or address feminist topics. However, if they conform to traditional gender role expectations, they do not experience this kind of negative feedback.

The emergence of female gamers in video game communities has led to a rise in misogynistic attacks against those who challenge the traditional hypermasculine culture of gaming. The 2014 #gamergate incident is a prime example of this, where a group of gamers opposed “Social Justice Warriors” who highlighted discrimination and exclusion in the gaming industry. Female gamers were subject to death threats, rape threats, and doxxing, where their private information was shared online (Tomkinson and Harper, 2015 ). The video gaming community has a long history of gender-based attacks on women, which serve to create a toxic environment for them when making and playing video games. According to Jenson and De Castell ( 2021 ), who approach the subject from a feminist perspective, video games have been predominantly masculine and gendered spaces. Repeated displays of aggression, referred to as “shock and awe”, perpetuate and legitimise gendered hostility. These displays also help to preserve exclusionary media practices designed to maintain the status quo.

The Manosphere

Numerous articles on online misogyny examine the Manosphere, a collection of websites and social media groups that endorse misogynistic beliefs. These networks are not uniform but consist of multiple misogynistic groups with differing perspectives and degrees of violence, which are associated with far-right, homophobic, and racist ideologies (Dickel and Evolvi, 2022 ). Despite their variations, all these groups portray feminism as innately discriminatory and threatening to men (Farci and Righetti, 2019 ). The Manosphere adheres to the beliefs of a ‘gynocentric order’ and the Red Pill ideology, a metaphor derived from the movie The Matrix, in which the protagonist’s eyes are opened to reality upon taking the “red pill”. Although these groups may have distinct beliefs, many members use the term misandry, referring to the hate against men, which has ideological and community-building functions. It reinforces a misogynistic belief system that portrays feminism as a movement that hates men and boys (Marwick and Caplan, 2018 ). The use of misandry caters to both extremist misogynistic subcultures and moderate men’s rights groups. It enables these groups to adopt the language of identity politics, positioning men as the silenced victims of reverse discrimination in all aspects of political, economic, and social life and solidifying their sense of entitlement (Farci and Righetti, 2019 ).

Men’s rights activists employ a personal action frame to construct a plausible but fictional narrative of men’s oppression (Carian, 2022 ). The movement against feminism revolves around advocating for men’s rights while denying that gendered violence exists (Garcìa-Mingo et al., 2022 ). The Manosphere engages in a crucial ideological effort that normalises, trivialises, and legitimises sexual violence against women in various forms (Garcìa-Mingo et al. 2022 ). Some of the primary themes of this ideology are: criticising and verbally abusing women, downplaying or not taking seriously accusations or reports of rape, depicting #MeToo as a feminist plot, portraying men as victims, and advocating for the restoration of patriarchal values (Dickel and Evolvi, 2022 ). Hopton and Langer ( 2022 ), analysing Twitter content to understand how the Manosphere constructs masculinity and femininity, identify three discursive strategies: co-opting discourses of oppression, naming power, and disavowal by disaggregation. These strategies are used to position men as victims, portray women as monstrous others, and re-establish gendered power hierarchies through continuous references to rape in their discourse.

One of the main groups in the Manosphere, the Incels, believes in a hetero-patriarchal racial hierarchy and justifies their lack of sexual activity through ideas rooted in biological determinism and victimisation by women and feminism (Lindsay, 2022 ). Scotto di Carlo’s analysis of Incels (Scotto di Carlo, 2023 ) reveals a conflation of apparently sarcastic metaphors, dark humour, and misogyny to describe women, as well as unique self-representations of forum participants that do not conform to typical ‘us vs them’ identity pattern (van Dijk, 1998 ): instead of highlighting the positive qualities of their in-group, the Incels describe themselves in a derogatory manner, leading to a spiral of self-pity and self-contempt that can foster a sense of brotherhood within the community. These findings stem from a content-discourse analysis of posts from threads specifically discussing women on an incel forum and from the study of nominations and predications of self-representations used in the ‘Introductions’ thread of the same forum. Halpin ( 2022 ), drawing on a qualitative analysis of comments made on a popular Incel discussion board, demonstrates how the group uses its perceived subordinate status to justify their misogyny and legitimise its degradation of women. Conducting an ethnographic content analysis of incel-identified subreddits and using femmephobia as a lens, Menzie ( 2022 ) examines how Incels employ heteropatriarchal conceptions of femininity to devalue women and to describe the social conditions that force them to remain celibate. The study focuses on the symbolic actors constructed by Incels, namely Stacy, who represents the most attractive women, Becky, who represents women of ordinary or moderate attractiveness, and Chad, who represents dominant alpha males. Five themes emerge from the analysis. First, Incels use these symbolic gendered actors to describe a sex deficit most men suffer, implying their own undesirability. Second, Incels’ femmephobia towards hyper-feminine women for not fitting heteropatriarchal requirements is evident in “Stacy”.Third, “Becky” shows a more flexible femmephobia towards women of different appearances who uphold “unrealistic standards” and date men more attractive than themselves or rely on feminism to cope with not attracting the same men as Stacy. Through “Chad”, the fourth topic examines the idea of masculinity, incorporating feelings of jealousy and recognition of victimisation under societal conditions that allow women to exploit men financially or emotionally. Finally, the analysis reveals how Incels prioritise partner display as a symbol of wealth. Along the same lines, Koller and Heritage ( 2020 ) analysed a textual corpus created from threads posted and commented on by Incels. The study examined keywords, word frequencies, and concordance lines to explore the representation of gendered social actors. The findings suggest that Incels position different groups of men in a hierarchy in which conventionally attractive men occupy the top position. Female social actors are not placed in a similar hierarchy. Furthermore, an additional appraisal analysis of the most frequently occurring male and female social actors reveals that men are judged as unable to function, while women are viewed as immoral, dishonest, and capable of causing harm to men.

Chang ( 2022 ), analysing the discourses circulating on a Reddit forum for self-proclaimed Incels, explores the perceptions created by the term “femoid”, a derogatory term generated by Incels to refer to women, constructing them as an abject “monstrous-feminine”, serving a dehumanising function and thus justifying the violence enacted upon them. Tranchese and Sugiura ( 2021 ) focus on the similarities between the language used in pornography and that of Incels, arguing that both are different manifestations of the same misogyny. Their study involves a linguistic analysis that compares a collection of posts from an Incel subreddit community with a reference collection of posts from 688 subreddits covering other subjects. From a different perspective, Byerly ( 2020 ) investigated news media language in the coverage of Incel behaviour associated with sexual aggression. The study employs qualitative textual analysis on a sample of 70 articles obtained using keyword combinations ‘incels and violence’, ‘incels and social media’, and ‘incels and sexism’ from 29 distinct news sources across 6 countries throughout the years 2018 and 2019. Research findings indicate that news stories emphasise the role of social media in helping Incels find each other and form online communities. Additionally, specific social media sites served as locations to amplify misogynistic attitudes and to boast about their murders. Speckhard et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a study that involved gathering information on Incels’ social and personal lives, adherence to incel ideology, opinions on incel-related violence, support for violent actions, and beliefs regarding the classification of Incels as violent extremists. The data was collected through a Google Forms survey that was distributed to active adult members of a prominent Incel forum. The final sample under analysis comprises 272 respondents who self-identify as Incels. The findings demonstrate that while most of them do not advocate violence and are non-violent, those who strongly hold misogynistic beliefs are more likely to endorse violent actions. Participation in Incel online forums, which validate their viewpoints, could also lead to an increase in their misogyny. O’Donnell and Shor ( 2022 ) investigated how misogynistic Incels discuss mass violence committed by their peers. Through qualitative content analysis of comments related to the 2018 Toronto van attack, in which self-declared Incel Alek Minassian drove a van into pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 16, they found that a large majority of self-proclaimed Incels expressed support for such violence, as well as violence in general. Incels believed that mass violence was a means to achieve four main goals: gaining more attention, seeking revenge, reinforcing traditional masculinity, and bringing about political change.

MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), a separatist group within the Manosphere, also promotes a misogynistic agenda. Unlike Men’s Rights Activists and Incels, MGTOWs focus on individualistic and self-empowering actions, encouraging men to lead a self-sufficient life away from women. Jones et al. ( 2020 ), using content and thematic analyses of a corpus of tweets from three of the most active MGTOW users on Twitter, have linked the MGTOW ideology with toxic masculinity, showing that the online harassment it generates is deeply misogynistic and upholds heterosexual and hegemonic masculinity. The authors note that, although misogyny and violence produced by MGTOW are not extreme, the group’s appeals to rational thinking make them appear to be common sense. Wright et al. ( 2020 ) delve deeper into the structural underpinnings and nature of MGTOW debate within their discussion forums, including leadership, moderation, in-group dynamics, and the discursive form of debates, and how this contributes to the propagation of misogyny and different calls to action. The authors conducted a content analysis of comments in the official MGTOW website’s forum and a digital ethnographic approach. Their findings showed that discussions primarily revolve around women and the MGTOW community. When discussing women, users did so in an openly misogynistic way. When discussing MGTOW, conversations sought to define and rationalise it as an ideology, both for individuals and the collective. The authors also note that the communicative form was mainly communitarian, with strong group bonding, ties, and engagement.

Countering online misogyny

Strategies and tactics used by women to cope with and address gender violence online are diverse and sometimes activated simultaneously. Some of these strategies prioritise self-care and protection, while others focus on resistance and challenging such violence. From a self-care perspective, it is crucial to adopt mitigation measures that reduce harm and minimise risks, such as assessing online identities, adopting pseudonyms or collective identities, using masks, strengthening accounts, creating distance, silencing or erasing sensitive content (Bosch and Gil-Juarez, 2021 ). In the research by Chen et al. ( 2020 ), it is shown how female journalists have developed multiple strategies for coping with abuse, including modifying their social media postings, altering their reporting subjects, and utilising technological tools to prevent offensive comments on their public pages.

Merely prioritising self-care is insufficient; an active approach should be taken to resist and transform the current state of online misogyny. This involves engaging in actions that challenge the status quo and strive for meaningful change, with the ultimate goal of repoliticising the internet and social media with, for, and from a feminist perspective (Bosch and Gil-Juarez, 2021 ). From this standpoint, social media platforms can give space to the promotion of gender-based harassment but can also serve as crucial spaces for feminist education and activism and for the formation of a feminist counter-public that directly contests a misogynistic culture (Sills et al. 2016 ). In this perspective, Kurasawa et al. ( 2021 ) discuss a new form of feminist activism called evidentiary activism, which uses evidence of gender-based online violence (GBOV). Evidentiary activism engages with existing formal evidentiary cultures by advocating for legislative and regulatory reforms to address GBOV, promoting platform-based technological solutions, and challenging conventional notions of user privacy and anonymity. In addition, it involves contributing to and embracing informal evidentiary cultures, which use evidence as a tool for cultural and political mobilisation against GBOV. Strategies used include publicising instances of GBOV, highlighting the moral implications of such violence, and fostering feminist digital citizenship. As an example of online feminist activism, Kim ( 2017 ) explored the role of the 2015 hashtag #iamafeminist in promoting feminist identification and activism against misogyny in South Korea. The hashtag persisted for three months by addressing current gender issues and promoting activism both online and offline. The article by Shesterina and Fedosova ( 2021 ) examines the methods used by female bloggers to promote feminist ideas on Instagram. The authors found that while many posts are logically argued, female bloggers often use emotional manipulation and persuasion techniques to promote their ideas. The study identifies both the main topics in support of feminism, such as domestic violence and gender stereotypes, victim blaming, and the most common attitudes that female bloggers challenge in their posts (e.g., “gender roles are determined by nature”, “a woman must obey a man”, “female intelligence is worse than male”, “all women are hysterical”). The authors also describe the lexical means and rhetorical techniques commonly used in female blogs, such as metaphors, allusions, appeals, and rhetorical questions. The language used is generally colloquial, making texts easier to read, but it also includes harsh criticism and increased emotionality compared to traditional journalistic texts.

However, according to Jane ( 2016 ), taking matters into one’s own hands when faced with online harassment may have limited effectiveness and is not a sufficient solution to the problem of gendered cyber-hate. This approach shifts the responsibility from the perpetrators to the targets and the private sphere rather than addressing the broader social issue. The author suggests that a combination of feminist activism efforts, including a revised approach to collectivism, is needed to enact the necessary legislative and corporate changes to combat gendered online hate. The study by Davis and Santillana ( 2019 ) examines the potential and limitations of digital media activism in raising awareness about gender-based harassment using the case study of Las Morras, a Mexico City-based feminist media group. The study demonstrates the paradoxical role of networked digital media as an activist tool. While it rapidly circulated a critique of misogyny, it also attracted negative attention, leading to the group’s eventual demise due to doxing, trolling, and personal threats directed at its members.

Megalians, a cyberfeminist community in South Korea, utilised the technique of “mirroring” to combat online misogyny (Jeong and Lee, 2018 , Moon et al., 2022 , Yang and Lee, 2022 ). This practice involved mimicking the language of misogynistic online communities and reversing the roles of perpetrators and victims. Megalians also used parodies to subvert the humour and power dynamic that men often used to make fun of women. By appropriating and using the language of misogynists, they aimed to strip men of their ability to use misogynistic speech for their own entertainment. This approach also exposed the absurdity and ridiculousness of the misogynistic rhetoric. However, the success of mirroring is not clear-cut. In fact, while Megalians’ voices were heard in society, the strong message and crude language proved divisive and polarising (Kim, 2021 ).

An alternative strategy for addressing misogyny is to use social re-norming and appeal to the empathy of those engaging in harassing behaviour. The goal of re-norming is to challenge cultural attitudes and beliefs that tolerate or encourage violence against women and to promote new standards of behaviour that prioritise respect, equality, and safety for all individuals. One example of this approach is the experiment conducted by Whiley et al. ( 2023 ) on Twitter. Their experiment aimed to inform misogynistic offenders that their sexist language was disapproved of by the majority of people. However, this intervention did not result in a reduction in the number or frequency of sexist Tweets or users, nor did it affect the tone or emotional intensity of subsequent tweets. In contrast, research has demonstrated the efficacy of creative humour, such as that used by the IncelTears subreddit to ridicule Incels, in promoting (dis)affiliative and informative functions (Dynel, 2020 ).

Computational science research on online misogyny

In this section, we focus on documents on misogyny classified by Scopus in the “Computer Science” subject area. A total of 196 documents were found; 30 documents were excluded as they were off-topic. Two surveys were identified in the retrieved documents, which centre on the automated detection of online misogyny. In one survey, Shushkevich and Cardiff ( 2019 ) present an examination of techniques for identifying misogyny in social media through automation. Meanwhile, Sultana et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a systematic literature review of prior research to reveal different aspects of misogyny and sexist humour and to create a codebook for annotation purposes.

Automatic detection of misogyny

Manual classification of the retrieved articles reveals a wealth of valuable information regarding the automatic detection of misogyny. This includes details about the social networks that are being analysed, the primary techniques employed, and the availability of datasets.

In line with research in the social science area (see Section 4), Twitter (with 95 publications) and Reddit (with 46 publications) continue to be the most commonly used sources, even in the area of computational science. The number of studies dealing with Facebook and Instagram is very limited. Researchers frequently prioritise the study of Twitter (now rebranded X) and Reddit above other social media platforms due to their historically liberal provision of Application Programming Interface (API) access. Furthermore, Reddit, which has been described as ’a community of communities’ (Massanari, 2017 , p. 331), has a diverse array of subreddits that cater to different interests, some of which foster misogynistic beliefs. However, the new pricing plans for using the Twitter API, introduced in March 2023, are expected to significantly affect research. A survey conducted by the Coalition for Independent Technology Research Footnote 2 outlines the potential consequences of discontinuing free and affordable API access. These drawbacks include the disruption of research on the dissemination of harmful content. A similar survey on the impact of Reddit’s recent API changes Footnote 3 emphasises how researchers are concerned about interruptions in their research resulting from API modifications. It is worth noting that only one study (Semenzin and Bainotti, 2020 ) reports the results of research on Telegram, which, in fact, has become a widely used platform for the dissemination of abusive and misogynistic content due to its high degree of anonymity and limited content-moderation policies (Guhl and Davey, 2020 ).

The automatic detection of misogyny typically utilises various techniques, with pre-trained deep-learning models and multimodal models being the most commonly employed. Other techniques include machine learning algorithms such as SVM, Naïve Bayes, or Random Forest. Additionally, some documents rely on convolutional neural network models. More details on the published documents employing the different techniques are provided in the Supplementary Material .

Four articles employ the use of lexicons for automatic detection of misogyny. Attanasio and Pastor ( 2020 ) propose misogyny lexicons for automatic misogyny identification in order to improve sentence embedding similarity. Hurtlex (Bassignana et al. 2018 ), which is a lexicon of offensive, aggressive, and hateful words in more than 50 languages, is exploited for misogyny identification in the studies by Chiril et al. ( 2022 ) and Pamungkas et al. ( 2018 ). Kwarteng et al. ( 2022 ) created a specific lexicon around misogynoir.

Taxonomies and guidelines

When releasing annotated datasets, a crucial aspect is to clearly outline the guidelines for categorising misogynistic language. Four articles in the retrieved documents address this issue (Anzovino et al., 2018 , Guest et al., 2021 , Sultana et al., 2021 , Zeinert et al., 2021 ).

Sultana et al. ( 2021 ) proposed eleven categories to classify misogynistic remarks: Discredit (slurring over women with no other larger intention), Stereotyping (description of women’s physical appeal and/or comparisons to narrow standards), Sexual harassment (to physically assert power over women), Threats of violence (intent to physically assert power over women or to intimidate and silence women through threats of violence), Dominance (to preserve male control, protect male interest and exclude women from the conversation), Derailing (to justify abuse, reject male responsibility, and attempt to disrupt the conversation in order to refocus it), Victim blaming (blaming the victims for the problems they are facing), Mixed bias (gender bias might be mixed with other kinds of biases like religious or racial), Sexual objectification (evoke sexual imagery), and Damning (contains prayers to hurt women). Regarding the expression of misogyny using humour, this research proposes eight categories of jokes: Devaluation of personal characteristics, Women’s place in the private sphere, Violence against women, Feminist backlash, Sexual objectification, Excluding and/or objectifying humour, Transphobic Jokes and Cruel or Humiliation. All the categories proposed in Anzovino et al. ( 2018 ) are included in Sultana et al. ( 2021 ). The same occurs with categories proposed by Zeinert et al. ( 2021 ), except for the interesting concept of neosexism. Neosexism is a concept defined in Francine Tougas et al. ( 1999 ), and presents as the belief that women have already achieved equality and that discrimination of women does not exist. Neosexism was the most common form of misogyny present in the dataset of Zeinert et al. ( 2021 ). Guest et al. ( 2021 ) define four categories of misogynistic content: misogynistic pejoratives, descriptions of misogynistic treatment, acts of misogynistic derogation and gendered personal attacks against women.

Evaluation campaigns

A number of the documents on misogyny that fall within the Computer Science subject area were produced in connection with various evaluation campaigns. These campaigns include EVALITA (Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian), IberLEF (Iberian Languages Evaluation Forum), SemEval (International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation), and FIRE (Forum for Information Retrieval Evaluation). The EVALITA campaign includes the Automatic Misogyny Identification (AMI) task (Fersini et al. 2018 ). The IberLEF annual campaign features the EXIST task, which is sEXism Identification in Social neTworks (Rodrìguez-Sanchez et al. 2021 ). SemEval has a task called MAMI, which is Multimedia Automatic Misogyny Identification (Fersini et al., 2022 ). Lastly, FIRE includes the Arabic Misogyny Identification (ArMI) task (Mulki and Ghanem, 2022 ).

Thanks to these evaluation campaigns, datasets for automatic misogyny detection in multiple languages are now available. Specifically, the AMI task made available two datasets, in English and Italian, downloaded from Twitter. The EXIST task provided datasets of tweets in both English and Spanish. The dataset released for the MAMI challenge comprises memes that were downloaded from popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, as well as from websites dedicated to meme creation and sharing. Lastly, the ArMI task provided a dataset of tweets written in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and various Arabic dialects.

The bibliometric analysis reveals that research on misogyny has witnessed exponential growth from 2010 to 2022. This growth can be attributed to various areas of research, but one prominent factor contributing to this trend is the increased attention given to the online dissemination of hate towards women. Several findings support this initial conclusion.

Firstly, the analysis indicates that the most productive authors in the field of misogyny research come from the area of computer science. This suggests that experts in this field have been actively investigating and publishing on the topic, further driving the growth of research in this area.

Moreover, examining the topics covered in the analysed documents provides additional evidence for the influence of online misogyny. Topic 8, which is related to digital misogyny, and Topic 12, which focuses on the automatic identification of misogyny in social media, have experienced significantly higher growth compared to the broader field of misogyny research (as depicted in Fig. 8 ). This finding indicates that the study of misogyny in online platforms and the development of methods to detect misogyny in social media have gained considerable attention within the research community.

The major role that online misogyny plays in the development of the area supports the idea that the research seeks to delineate the contours of a new face of misogyny, the latest manifestation of hate towards women which is expressed more crudely and more openly on social networks because they facilitate anonymity and a greater distance from the victims.

Another conclusion drawn from the analysis of the conceptual structure of misogyny research (Fig. 4) and the interactions between topics (Fig. 7 ) is that the research focused on the automatic detection of misogyny in online platforms (Topic 12) exhibits weak connections with other conceptual areas that address different aspects of the phenomenon. This area of research only demonstrates some conceptual relation to the broader study of online misogyny (Topic 8). This presents a significant challenge, considering that qualitative analysis of sociological research emphasises the growing relevance of hybrid realities resulting from the synergies between the physical and digital realms, not just in violence against women but also in specific domains such as politics. Moreover, the lack of relationship between Topic 12, which focuses on the automatic detection of misogyny, and Topic 9, which explores violence against women and the concept of Manosphere (primarily a digital phenomenon), is particularly noteworthy. This suggests that research in the computational science domain may not be adequately addressing the most extreme manifestations of online misogyny. Furthermore, it also indicates that the tools offered by computational linguistics are underutilised in social science-led research.

In general, the absence of stronger connections between certain topics that attract the attention of various disciplines could be seen as a sign of the practical challenges encountered in interdisciplinary research. For instance, Topic 6, which focuses on the study of women’s rights within legal and political systems, exhibits very weak relationships with Topics 8 and 12, despite qualitative sociological research emphasising the need to consider the new dynamics emerging in virtual spaces. Another illustration can be found in the qualitative review of computational science literature. It becomes apparent that this research area relies on the definition of taxonomies that would benefit from clarification through collaboration with social science research. For instance, the inclusion of stereotypes against women as part of the types of misogyny raises the question of whether the concept of misogyny should be reserved for the most extreme forms of hatred or should encompass the wide range of sexist attitudes and gender symbolic constructions derived from a patriarchal culture.

The main conclusion drawn from this work is that research across different disciplines is addressing a new facet of misogyny, a revitalised version of outdated beliefs about women’s inferiority that circulate in novel forms within the online realm. Understanding the characteristics and functions of this new expression of misogyny poses a challenge that necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, leveraging the strengths of different areas of knowledge to effectively address it.

The above-mentioned lack of collaboration between different areas prevents the establishment of connections that would enrich the analysis of the way misogyny is disseminated today in both the virtual and real world. For example, social science knowledge in combination with computational discourse analysis or NLP technologies could be used to study the connections and similarities between agents disseminating misogyny online and mainstream social actors such as political parties or religious organisations. In the same way, the similarity between misogynist discourses and those of left-leaning feminists in open battle against other fractions of the feminist movement could also be monitored and would allow for a more complex view of the phenomenon. For both approaches, it is necessary that social science knowledge strongly rooted in the study of social relations be combined with the new methodologies that computer science offers for the analysis of discourse produced naturally in digital or real communicative exchanges, such as in parliaments, rallies or interviews.

Data availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this research, as no data were generated. The analysed data were retrieved from the commercial Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus databases, following the search procedure detailed in the Supplementary Material .

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Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken as part of the ICOMIC (Identifying and Counteracting Online Misogyny in Cyberspace) Project funded by EU Next Generation, MUR-Fondo Promozione e Sviluppo-DM 737/2021

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LF and BC contributed to the study conception and design, with LF leading the study supervision. LF, BC, and AS contributed to the writing of the manuscript. LF, EI, and AT developed the dataset and conducted the statistical analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Fontanella, L., Chulvi, B., Ignazzi, E. et al. How do we study misogyny in the digital age? A systematic literature review using a computational linguistic approach. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 478 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02978-7

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02978-7

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Shared decision-making interventions in the choice of antipsychotic prescription in people living with psychosis (SHAPE): protocol for a realist review

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Background: Shared decision-making (SDM) has yet to be successfully adopted into routine use in psychiatric settings amongst people living with severe mental illnesses. Suboptimal rates of SDM are particularly prominent amongst patients with psychotic illnesses during antipsychotic treatment choices. Many interventions have been assessed for their efficacy in improving SDM within this context, although results have been variable and inconsistent. Aims: To generate an in-depth understanding of how, why, for whom, and to what extent interventions facilitating the application of SDM during choice of antipsychotic drug treatment work and the impact of contextual factors on intervention effectiveness. Methods: This review will use realist review methodology to provide a causal understanding of how and why interventions work when implementing SDM during choice of antipsychotic treatment. The review will take place over five stages; (1) Locating existing theories, (2) Searching for evidence, (3) Selecting articles, (4) Extracting and organising data and (5) Synthesizing evidence and drawing conclusions. An understanding of how and why interventions work will be achieved by developing realist programme theories on intervention effectiveness through iterative literature reviews and engaging with various stakeholder groups, including patient, clinician and carer representatives. Discussion: This is the first realist review aiming to identify generative mechanisms explaining how and why successful interventions aimed at improving SDM within the parameters outlined work and in which contexts desired outcomes are most likely to be achieved. Review findings will include suggestions for clinicians, policy and decision-makers about the most promising interventions to pursue and their ideal attributes.

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I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

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