Patterns in scientific abstracts

In today’s world, large amounts of information have to be dealt with, regardless of the field involved. Most of this information comes in written format. Computers seem the right choice for making life easier, by processing text automatically, but in many cases at least partial understanding (if not full understanding) is necessary in order to automate a process. Luhn (1958) proposed a method for producing abstracts which works regardless of the type of the document. Although further research carried out in this area is based on his work, it has become apparent that general methods are not a solution. Instead, more and more research has been done into restricted domains, where certain particularities are used for “understanding”. A well known case is that of DeJong (1982) where the structure of newspaper articles was used in order to get the gist of the articles and then generate summaries.