I want to summarize some articles I've read as structured abstracts. I will cover the following points:

• Rationale: Practical and theoretical background of the study, including its relevance.
• Objectives: What does the study attempt to accomplish?
• Theoretical background: Theoretical frameworks or perspectives (whether theory building or theory testing) used to accomplish the objectives.
• Key questions: What are the specific research questions addressed? This includes listing the hypotheses tested, if applicable.
• Methodology: Methodological approaches used to answer the questions.
• Variables and data sources, if any: The dependent and independent variables, including control variables; for empirical studies, some key characteristics of the data sources (brief description, sociocultural/organizational context, sample size, quantitative/qualitative, etc.)
• Key findings: Summary of objective results of methodology (other than interpretation).
• Key contribution to knowledge: Most important and novel contributions.
• Key implications: Implications for practice and for future research.
• Comments: Any comments, including why this is considered high-quality research.

I have three sources from which I derived this general format for my abstracts. The first source is the structured abstract format given in Kitchenham and Charters 2007, p. 42 (Kitchenham, B.A. and Charters, S. (2007) Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering, Version 2.3, Keele University, EBSE Technical Report, EBSE-2007-01):

A structured summary or abstract allows readers to assess quickly the relevance, quality and generality of a systematic review.

• Context: The importance of the research questions addressed by the review.
• Objectives: The questions addressed by the systematic review.
• Methods: Data Sources, Study selection, Quality Assessment and Data extraction.
• Results: Main finding including any meta- analysis results and sensitivity analyses.
• Conclusions: Implications for practice and future research.

In addition, I'd like to ask certain research questions for my theoretical interest. Thus, as a second source, I borrow the questions I used for my paper in: Okoli, C., Schabram, K. (2009). "Protocol for a Systematic Literature Review of Research on the Wikipedia," Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems, 9(65). http://sprouts.aisnet.org/9-65

• What are the research questions?
• What theoretical frameworks and reference theories have been used to investigate the question?
• What methodological approaches have been employed to answer research questions?
• What conclusions have been made? In particular, were the research questions answered, or are the results inconclusive? If you question the validity of their conclusions, state so.

A final source of items for an abstract come from the Style Requirements for Sprouts :

Abstract should be up to 250 words and cover all the following: rationale, objectives, key questions, methodology, data sources if any, key findings, key contribution to knowledge, key implications.