Here are few tips:

1. check the journal you plan to submit for the guidelines. In medicine, most of the journals suggest MeSH terms

2. what is the topic of your research? defined in one word

3. perform a keyword search before deciding on yours

4. avoid overlapping between keywords and with the terms used in the title

5. what is that you want the readers search you for? what are other key points of your paper?

Here are few tips:

1. check the journal you plan to submit for the guidelines. In medicine, most of the journals suggest MeSH terms

2. what is the topic of your research? defined in one word

3. perform a keyword search before deciding on yours

4. avoid overlapping between keywords and with the terms used in the title

5. what is that you want the readers search you for? what are other key points of your paper?

If the paper is ready, what are the main ideas and referents in the paper? Represent these with words used to express them in the paper. Use the search feature on the software used to word process the paper. The software would count the number of times each word searched occurs. That would indicate to you how seminal the word is to your paper.

Peter, I do not believe that you are not able to do it :) In my point of view, there will be a key words used in my article, but I must admit that sometimes I have many difficulties in doing this, many general problems with it, then I do my best ;) To sum up, I do not know, wheter it is good or not, I think that reviewers have to check it and make a final decision.

I can always learn from others and in effect do it better :)

:) I agree with you! Best regards :)

I've found interesting clues here:

https://www.editage.com/insights/how-to-create-keywords-for-a-research-paper.

Keywords are words that capture the essence of your paper. Keywords make your paper searchable and ensure that you get more citations. Therefore, it is important to include the most relevant keywords that will help other authors find your paper.

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.

Hi Piotr T. Nowakowski,

I read the article you suggested above. I think this question should have the answer from two aspects. One is apparently the words that can represent your research manuscript the best. Another is looking for the words that can help reach your manuscript to the researchers of the similar domain for better readership and citation. Can you please discuss little more from both of these aspects?

Hi Nazmus,

I agree with you 100%. It's very important comment. However, my experience is that authors often make mistakes in constructing key words and in effect don't achieve these goals, especially the second one.

Thnx.

As Dr. Vinturache said above,

It will help you if you verify the existence of the term in Mesh at pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh), for medicine/life sciences/biological sciences.

Another source maybe can help you it is the website: http://decs.bvs.br/ (clicking on "Consulta ao DeCS").

This website will perform a search in the WHO (world health organization) database for the term that you searching for, in English, in Spanish or in Portuguese. If you cannot find a given keyword for these fields (medicine/life sciences/biological sciences) in none of this websites, probably it is not a good descriptor (keyword) in your field.

I hope that it helps you.

Pedro

Thnx, Pedro. Based on these answers, I will probably write an instructional paper on this topic for young scholars.

Piotr

I wish you success Professor!

Grateful,

Pedro