An abstract is a brief summary of a journal article or other any piece of work that provides an in-depth analysis of a subject. An abstract should contain:
- Some background about the subject at hand and why work was done
- A bit the work that was done
- The results of the work
- The conclusions
- Recommendations for future work (optional)
A good abstract should let give the reader enough information to decide if they want to read the entire article and can also be a decent substitute for the whole article if that's not available.