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Now let's discuss why the abstract in your article is so critical.

Although the abstract is one of the last elements of an article to be written, it is one of the first elements that will be read by your peers. You should treat your abstract as a shop window. As the contents of a shop window entice buyers to look inside, so does your abstract! It entices readers to open your article and read it.

Before your article is even published, it needs to be peer reviewed. Potential reviewers will decide to review your article, based on the title and abstract only. Your abstract sets the reviewers' expectations about your article. So if it lacks vital information, and is dull or poorly written for example, a reviewer may decline to review your article and prefer to spend time on articles that appear to have more potential or tackle more interesting research.

Once published, your article will end up in a search and discovery database like ScienceDirect. Unless your article has been published under an open access license, only the title and abstract are freely available to everyone. Your abstract needs to be strong enough to stand out from the crowd and entice your readers to want to know more about your research.

Most readers of scientific articles will tell you that they first read the title. If the title is of interest to them, they will then read the abstract. While reading the abstract the reader will decide if the rest of the article is of interest to them. This means the value of your abstract is the difference between your article being read or not. It could even be the difference between your article being cited or not.

Therefore, the quality of your abstract could decide whether your article is reviewed or rejected, read or ignored, cited or not cited. It stands to reason that a good researcher will spend a lot of time writing the best abstract they can.