Is there a range of the number of key words in writing an article?
Thank you in advance for your cooperation
Kind regards
Raid
Farid is correct. Kindly also see:
https://www.editage.com/insights/how-to-create-keywords-for-a-research-paper
In my own view, keywords should be about 5-6 words or phrases that are germane to the study and occur most frequently in the entire publication. Also, depends on the specifications of the journal publisher concerning maximum number of keywords.
Add in as many relevant keyphrases as the journal will let you get away with. That way you are optimising the chances of someone finding your research.
Use keyphrases rather than keywords. Do not include any that are subsets of others. For example, "Neck surgery" and "Surgery".
Yes. Dr. Farid is right. Five keywords. They must be carefully chosen to attract a lot of traffic in search terms online.
Four and above. sometimes, your target journal specifies the number of keywords. But most journals don't.
Depends upon the title of the manuscript and format of the journal...Usually 3 to 5 keyword are good
Five to seven key words should be provided at the bottom of the abstract arranged alphabetically. However, it is very important that you stick to the specific “Guide for Authors” of the journal you are submitting to. These publication guidelines are usually based on the standards of the American Psychological Association (APA) style.
Five is very ideal. However, most journals limit authors between four and eight.
How many key words are preferable when you write a scientific article?
Think there is no fixed restriction. However, some journals do restrict certain no. of key words e.g. not more than 5. Think around 5 is good gauge. Reason being too few you can't cover all the needed key words & too many you might put in those less important key words. I'm not sure other researchers / scholars do this that I did - if requirement is max 5 key words & I wanted to put 7, I will to a word search of all the 7 key words for their frequencies & choose the top 5.
It depends on the article topic and the specific requirements of the scientific journal. Normally, one should use 5-6 keywords (or key phrases) which should not repeat the article title.
How many key words are preferable when you write a scientific article?
Usually 5-6 .....journals mention this in authors guide ..
Regards
Dear Raid,,
The best preferable range is between 6-8 keywords (According to the journal), they are used by the indexing service. My advice is, try to use words other than that in the title. In addition, use the words that explore your work for better visibility of your work in the search engines.
Regards,
I agree with 5 words. They must represent the work and be widely used in the academic field. Because, as has been said, it is important to attract search engines to your work.
Five keywords may be the standard; however, most journal accept four (4) keywords.
As most of the researcher have already mentioned that key words should remain between 4-6. Most of journals prefer 5, you can see about it in Author Guide Line section of your planned targeting journal. As the objective of key words is to increase the visibility of the article during search, try to write those words which are widely searchable and popular.
Dear Raid
In my opinion, the number of keywords is proportional to the length of the abstract and the scope of the study area.but as others tell it maybe depends on the journal and the paper format.
Usually up to 5 is good and add more if the journal demands. But the most important thing is the keywords should be relevant.
The Standard is from 2 Minimum and 6 Maximum, and also try to assign the keywords which you already use in Abstract. i am still learner, may be you can guide us more but that's i learned till now.
Given below is the IEEE’s list of suggested keywords . I hope it will help us to find the best keywords to fit our article.
https://www.ieee.org/documents/taxonomy_v101.pdf
Dear Riad
1. It depends on the journal, and
2. Generally, five is suitable.
Regards,
Zuhair
The article title is very important as it represent the short presentation of the article and may tell you very fast the main content of the article. Thus, many authors including myself emphasize to use as descriptive as possible article titles, i.e. also using several descriptive words in the article titles.
A similar argument may also be used for the keywords, except most people will regard the keywords as less important than the article title, and the keywords are chosen as stand-alone words and/or short word phrases which don't need to be connected into a longer complete text phrase as the article title must.
Searches on the web and in various data bases may be carried out on only the title, only the keywords or a combination of these, and also typically e.g. the abstract and complete article text. Hence, to be sure to include the important words (also for the various searches) I often use many of the same words both in the article title and in the keywords, depending on how many extra words I think are so important that I want to include them as keywords and which aren't included in the article title.
So then it's a prioritizing between what important words you want to include in both the article title and in the keywords, and what extra (and important) words you want to include as keywords which aren't included in the article title. If the article title "says it all" then most or all of the words in the keywords are also included in the article title, i.e. and not necessary (not important) to use more keywords. If your article covers a lot of important stuff which isn't (and can't be) included in the article title, then you may beneficially add several more (important) words as keywords which aren't included in the article title.
Different journals and conference proceedings have different requirements for how many keywords are to be used, some may be rather strict and some may not have any strict limits. Nevertheless, typically, the number of keywords are between 5-7 words, although sometimes both fewer and more keywords are used. In addition, many journals are also using longer text phrases called e.g. highlights.
Between 3-5 is enough, of course, the minimum keywords in the most prestigious journals are 3.
3-5 depending on the publisher's instructions, and sometimes up to seven depending on the content of the search.
There are no specific numbers. It depends on the minimum number required by the journal in question. However, most seems to be between four and six.
Thank you Dr. Raid for asking this question. I have benefited from the useful advices and discussions. Thanks to all.
There are not , No limitation, this is depend or the fields of the research subject, but no less than 3.
thank you for this great discussion
regard
Raad
Hello RG Colleagues,
Generally, the key words are:
- minimum is 3
- most commonly is 5
- little is 6 or 7
I think it depends on the rules of the publishers.
There is not strict rules and between 3 to 7.
Thanks a lot!!!
Best regards
This is an exemple of 11 keywords from ADANSONIA:
bft.cirad.fr/cd/BFT_306_7-15.pdf
de R Edmond - 2010 - La dispersion des semences de baobabs malgaches, Adansonia spp., semble ne jamais avoir été étudiée de manière formelle, à ce jour. Elle relève d' hypothèses que cette synthèse bibliographique a pour objet de réunir.
Regards,
MTT
This depends on the journal publisher and the factors studied in the search, and generally the fewer the keywords were the better if the function is sufficient on the subject of research .
Here are a few tips that will help you create relevant and effective keywords for your paper:
1. Think from the point of view of the reader. What keywords would the reader search for that would help retrieve your article?
2. Keywords should ideally be phrases of 2-4 words; single word keywords are acceptable, but they may lead to many false matches.
3. Keywords should contain words and phrases that suggest what the topic is about. Also include words and phrases that are closely related to your topic. (For example, if the paper is about heart diseases, use words like stroke, circulatory system, blood, etc.
4. Also use variants terms or phrases that readers are likely to use (For example, if the paper is about spine disorders, use words like spinal cord, vertebral column, backbone, etc.)
5. The full forms of shortened words or acronyms and abbreviations should be included as well.
Journals ask for anywhere between 3-8 keywords. However, I would say it is good to have 4-5 keywords ready, and add more depending on the journal requirement.
You might also find the following articles interesting:
https://www.editage.com/insights/why-do-journals-ask-for-keywords
https://www.editage.com/insights/how-to-write-an-effective-title-and-abstract-and-choose-appropriate-keywords
I think It depends on the article topic and should be about 4-6 keyword.
Less than 8. These are important for searching keywords that are relevant to specific speciality.
No hard or fast rule as regards the number of keywords. It always depends on the Journal's style. Meanwhile, five is a modest number.
Key words are used by Internet search engines to locate the article. Somewhat between 5 and 10 key words are normally required and they should be the words which most closely reflect the content of the scientific article.
Dear Dr. Raid M. Al-Ani , it is an interesting issue and important component of a scientific article helping your article to be accessed easily. Most of the journals allow up to 5 key words arranged alphabetically. As it varies among journals, it is better to look at the limits in the Instruction to authors part of your target Journal.
Five to seven key words should be provided at the bottom of the abstract arranged alphabetically. However, it is very important that you stick to the specific “Guide for Authors” of the journal you are submitting to. These publication guidelines are usually based on the standards of the American Psychological Association (APA) style.
Normally, 5 key words, for extraordinary or innovative or long article, may be 7 key words
Dear it depends on the Journal but 5 keywords are good as the keywords.
However many keyword you need to represent the variables under study, something for methods, and something for population/sample.
it is range of words from three to seven,,,, or you follow the guidelines written by the journal under the title instructions to authors.
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