Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2015 June 5

= June 5 =

Who writes abstracts for a scientific paper?
Are scientists responsible for writing the abstract for their papers? Does the publisher write it? Are editors specialized in writing abstracts? --Llaanngg (talk) 11:32, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The author of the paper writes the abstract. --catslash (talk) 11:47, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Yup. It's usually the last thing you write, after the rest of the paper is done. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 11:52, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * For me it's usually the first thing I write -- and then rewrite over and over again as the paper progresses. The abstract is going to be read by far more people than look at the paper, so I like to spend serious time on it, and leaving it to the end is not conducive to that. Looie496 (talk) 12:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure, I think most authors finalize the abstract at the end, though I also often start a draft at the beginning. Another important thing is that in some fields, papers published in conference proceedings are a big part of the literature. In some cases, the abstract is submitted alone for review, before the entire article is submitted. Academic_authorship can be sort of convoluted - in a high-energy physics paper with ~100 authors, we can safely assume that they have not all specifically contributed to the abstract. In a math paper with one or two authors, we can safely assume that all authors at least reviewed and approved the abstract. We also have an article on Abstract_(summary). SemanticMantis (talk) 13:57, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * In every submission I've done that was not an invited paper, I've had to submit an abstract first. Then, if it was accepted, I had to submit the entire paper. Then, if that was accepted, I had to update the paper to meet requests of the editors. So, in answering the question (again), the author(s) of the paper writes the abstract. 209.149.115.214 (talk) 19:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * That may depend on the field. For biological and biomedical journals, the usual process is to submit the entire manuscript, with abstract, to the journal.
 * A letter querying the editor before submission – a 'presubmission inquiry' – is occasionally done, but not compulsory and not, in my experience, particularly common. Such a letter will probably contain the abstract or abstract-like content, in addition to an explanation of why the proposed manuscript is likely to be important and of interest to the particular journal at hand&mdash;information that is typically part of the covering letter to the editor which usually accompanies a full manuscript submission.
 * I suspect that the presubmission inquiry with abstract, followed by full manuscript submission later, is largely a historical labor-saving artifact from the era when reformatting one's references and figures for a new journal submission – following a new journal's house style – was a complex and time-consuming process. And, for that matter, when it actually required the submission and redistribution of multiple hard copies of a manuscript.  (Way back in 2003, I remember that I submitted a paper electronically, but I had to mark up the page proofs by hand and fax(!) them back to the editors.  I think that's the last time I had to deal with that kind of hard-copy nuisance.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:06, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've never had to pre-submit just an abstract. Unless you mean for a conference of course. I've done both the full manuscript submission and the presubmission, although not many journals do the latter. Like said above, the presubmission is generally just a combo of the abstract and letter to the editor anyway. My personal per peeve is journals requiring headings and subsections in abstract, what's the point? (Biomedicine here) Fgf10 (talk) 21:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting to see how different people approach this. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:07, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Try Googling "guidance for authors  abstract": (example result (see page 4)) --catslash (talk) 12:00, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Lightning-saturated funnel clouds?
I have been unable to find any records, photographic or textual, of lightning-saturated tornados, such as this one from Commerce City, Colorado yesterday June 4th. Is it a first? 2001:558:1418:31:F5D1:395C:EC9F:3553 (talk) 21:45, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * That picture is pretty spectacular. Here's the result of an image search for "lightning and tornado" for pictures from 1980 until May of this year.  Some of them seem like photoshop jobs, and none exactly match what you've posted. μηδείς (talk) 22:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)


 * "Kinda terrifying ... but also kind of freaking out" seem to be typical of what people were saying today at work. Indirect yet completely insane video. 2001:558:1418:31:F5D1:395C:EC9F:3553 (talk) 23:20, 5 June 2015 (UTC)