Abstract Formatting Best Practices and Guidelines

Perfecting Your Abstract Title

Keep it concise, limited to a maximum of 100 characters (excluding spaces), summarizing the essence of the abstract and incorporating key terms.
Avoid using abbreviations, acronyms (pronounced as words), or initialisms (pronounced letter-by-letter). In other words, write out each word (except for "vs" instead of "Versus").
Whenever "health care" functions as a noun or adjective, write it as two separate words.
Capitalize and single-space the first word after a colon or em/en dash.
In a hyphenated compound that is recognized as a single word in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, avoid capitalizing the second word after the hyphen. For example: "Double-blind."
If the hyphenated compound is not recognized as a single word in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, capitalize the second part of the compound. For example: "All-Cause Mortality of Cardiovascular Disease."

Utilize title case:

Capitalize prepositions and conjunctions with four or more letters (e.g., from, than, etc.).
Capitalize nouns, pronouns, verbs (including those with fewer than four letters, such as "is," "are," "was," "be"), adjectives, and adverbs.
Capitalize the first and last words of the title.
Do not capitalize articles, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, or words with fewer than four letters unless they are the first or last word. Note: In case of uncertainty, follow this general rule: "Capitalize all major words in titles, except a, an, the, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, or, and nor."

Authors and Aﬃliations

Specify the primary affiliation for each author.
Write out the full name of the primary institution for each author.
Avoid using abbreviations such as "Univ." for "University."

Structuring Your Abstract

A structured abstract is mandatory and should consist of the following four sections.

Background: Introduce the research question in an engaging manner with the first sentence of the introduction. If space permits, provide a concise overview of the existing knowledge, remaining gaps, and how your research project addresses these gaps. The final sentence of the introduction should describe the study's purpose or a priori hypothesis.
Methods: For most clinical research abstracts, include specific details on research design, research setting, number of enrolled patients, patient selection criteria, intervention description (if applicable), and outcome variables with measurement methods. Additionally, describe the statistical methods employed for data analysis.
Results: Commence with a description of the study subjects, including both inclusion and exclusion criteria. Provide reasons for excluding participants. Present frequency distributions of the most significant outcome variables. If possible, compare outcome variables among various subgroups within the study. Numeric results should include standard deviations or 95% confidence limits, along with the level of statistical significance. If results are not statistically significant, indicate the power of the study (beta-error rate) to detect differences.
Conclusion: Concisely state the implications and conclusions supported by the data presented in the abstract. Avoid presenting personal opinions without substantiating them. If space allows, discuss the generalizability of the results to populations beyond the study and highlight any study limitations.

Important "Don'ts"

DO NOT add custom headings such as Background, Methods, Results, or Conclusion as these headings are automatically added.
DO NOT use/add bold, italicized, or unique fonts.
DO NOT include illustrations, images, or graphs.
DO NOT use hard returns or code for justification, hyphenation, line height, line centering, margins, spacing, fonts, page centering, page numbering, suppression, tabs, underlining, boldface type, italics, subscripts, superscripts, headings, spaces between paragraphs, references, or footnotes.
DO NOT use bulleted lists.
DO NOT employ abbreviations on first mention; spell out the full name followed by the abbreviation in parentheses. Abbreviations can be used subsequently.

Please Note

Noncompliance with these guidelines may result in the submission being returned for revision.
SAEM reserves the right to modify abstract titles to align with our formatting specifications.
The author or submitter is responsible for rectifying any spelling, grammatical, typographical, or content errors before submitting; abstract content will be published as submitted.