This page describes how and why to write a “capsule summary” of your research project. It was written for researchers who have reached a point where there is enough work done to begin writing a paper; presenting the results at a poster session, and/or doing a lunchtime seminar. The capsule summary should be written before, or at least in conjunction with, writing the paper; poster; and/or seminar slides. The goal is to focus and refine your exposition of your project and your results.
Instructions: Write one paragraph per bullet point, with 4-6 sentences in each paragraph. Avoid highly specific technical jargon as much as possible. This is much, much more difficult than it sounds. You will need to refine your material until you can convey the important parts of your research in a very short amount of time and space. A quote attributed to Mark Twain attests to the difficulty of writing a brief, informative document: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
The capsule summary can be used as the basis for a poster, where each section will need to be even more condensed. It can also be used as the basis for the macro lunch talk, where you would have 1-4 slides per bullet point, for a total of about 15-18 slides for a 30 minute talk.
· Introduction/hook: What important, open question does this project address?
· Contribution, preview: What is your paper’s specific contribution(s) to the literature?
· Literature: What major field does this paper contribute to, and what are the paper’s closest relatives in the existing literature?
· Data and methods: What data and methods does your paper use?
· What are your main results? (technical component; estimation results; simulation results…)
· Discussion of results: How do your results fit into the literature (or not)?
· Conclusion/next steps: Are your results surprising? What do your results suggest for next steps in this research program, or how does it alter what other people should be doing in related fields?