An in-depth analysis of existing approaches to the problem of automaticautomatic summarization of text is described. Discussed in detail various methods of monographs and summary (review) abstracting, shows the historical development of this area of research in the context of natural language processing by computers are considered. Ma Made a detailed classification of existing approaches, formulated their main advantages and disadvantages is described. We analyzed, compared and identified the most important and promising areas of modern research in the field of automatic summarization. Conclusions about the current state of research in this area are drawn.