Dear colleagues: Please see draft abstract attached, as accepted for conference in July. Any feedback welcome and will be duly acknowledged when/if the paper sees the light of day. Thanks in advance, Marc
It would be better to shorten your abstract to about 200-250 words. Normally, do not put any references in abstracts. Just state your overall goal, briefly introduce the background of the thesis would be just fine.
Dear colleagues: Thanks for your responses and good wishes, much appreciated. However, as I said in the introduction, the abstract has already been accepted, so it clearly conforms to the length stipulations of the impending conference. So, I'm rather more interested in commentary on the content of the abstract than on the apparent shortcomings of its form at present. Many thanks again, Marc