Just writing my thesis abstract but would like to reference a paper in it. I've been told an abstract is basically a CV of your thesis. I'm trying to write how my topic can be used by other areas and would like to cite a paper showing this. The paper is not on my topic so I cant really put it in the literature review.

Any thoughts on this? I've never read an abstract that has cited a paper.

I'm never sure on this either! I've read a few articles that just cite it as normal, some that give the full reference in square brackets and some that just don't cite anything at all. I normally go for the latter though because where the abstract is essentially an overview, no-one really expects you to back up every statement you make as you'll probably get to this later on in the paper. This might not be the case outside of psychology though!

Maybe you could just state that your topic has wider applications, something like 'comments/discussion indicate the ways in which this topic may be of use/have application in other areas such as ...' and then try and fit the paper you want to include into another section, maybe where you are discussing your results?

I've done it in an abstract submitted for a conference paper but I didn't do it as a full reference. It was something like: Jo Bloggs in his 1996 article 'Blah blah blah' has drawn attention to... I don't know then if you'd add the full thing to your bibliography but I'd have thought that would work!

Thanks everyone! I really thought this would be the easiest part of the thesis but I've wasted my whole day trying to write it. I cant really cite the paper after my results because the work in the paper would relate to the topic in general, not my specific work. I just wanted to talk about how the topic has been applied in other fields.