An Analysis of Move Patterns in Abstracts of Social Sciences Research Articles

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A rhetorical segment in traditional abstract displaying a sign of particular function is frequently referred to as a move. One of the most common moves is the Background, Aim, Method, Results, and Conclusion (BAMRC). The objective of this paper is to investigate the move patterns of research article abstracts in the field of social sciences based on BAMRC moves. Using the Scopus bibliographic database, a total of 467 abstracts from 298 research journals in the field of social sciences were analyzed. The result showed a wide range of move patterns. The implication of the result of this study suggests the existing traditional abstracts in social sciences might not be sufficiently “informative” due to missing moves and due to various move orders. To this end, automatically mapping moves in traditional abstracts to sub-headings in structured abstracts can be a more challenging task, requiring additional procedures to resolve these types of compatibility issues. Future studies can compare this study’s result to other fields or disciplines within social sciences in order to find a more precise nature of abstracts in the field of social sciences.

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