Not really a question here but attempting to initiate a discussion on a problematic issue that is getting widespread across various journals. I see more and more papers in my field (Geology) that use and abuse of the words "evidence" and "inference" without having the slightest idea of what these words actually mean. If you use "Evidence" in the title of your article, please precise Evidence for what. An evidence is a proof of something. If you use evidence in your title without precising the fact or the hypothesis that it supports, then your title is a nonsense.
Similarly for inference, it may be expected to either add an adjective to that word or to use "inference from (...)" in order to precise what kind of inference is referred to with respect to, for example, the adopted methodology (chemical, biological inferences) as well as to where these inferences lead to, i.e. the fact or hypothesis which is the main conclusion of the paper.
In the past 6 months, I have seen at least 5 papers in well-established journals in Earth Sciences that use either one of these words in their title without making any sense at all, some either use these two words without the actual fact. I understand that non-English native authors have a hard time writing their manuscript but the least we can expect is to provide a comprehensive title. I understand that Editors and Reviewers are worked up and do this job for free, but the least we can expect from a well-respected journal is for them to focus on ensuring that papers are published with a comprehensible title.
P.S.: I will not provide evidence for such grammatical inferences of a decreasing quality of language in high IF journals
Agree with you completely.
I presume, part of the problem rests with the reviewer/editor who, mostly take for granted the title part of the manuscript, while reserving their energies on body of the manuscript.
I am not saying title is not at all reviewed, but mostly escapes the rigorous review process than the body of the manuscript.
Hi Kenneth, I understand your point here but I certainly don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or be prosecutor by pointing out directly at these papers. My post may sound like babbling when not providing any examples but I hope I'm not the only one out there who has noticed that there is more and more papers that make it to well-established journals despite being written in an absolutely incomprehensible english. And that trend is now so bad that even the titles themselves make no sense sometimes. And I find that outrageous for articles that went through peer-review process. That's a long chain of responsibility from author to reviewers to editor. So since I've noted that, in particular, "evidence" and "inference" have somewhat become a bit trendy and misused, I thought that maybe this post could help out a little.
Thanks a lot for this link, Sania, this is very useful.
I acknowledge your experience in editing, Kenneth, and your long experience as a scientist too but despite having myself only around 17 years of experience, I review between 5 to 8 papers a year and I really feel that, besides seeing the multiplication of online peer-review journals, some of which have questionable peer-review process, and some others publishing papers of very poor interest, I've also observed in the past 4/5 years a general decrease in the quality of scientific writing within high IF and/or well-respected journals. When it starts to spread out to the title of the study itself, I find it a bit concerning. Maybe I'm being pessimistic but I feel like the "publish or perish" trend is truly dragging down the quality of papers.
Nicolas has brought an interesting point. "Sexy" paper titles ARE IMPORTANT but need to be grammatically correct and fit the paper content and conclusions. A few hint regarding this and other issues on scientific publishing can be found in the link below. Regarding titles we have:
https://eos.org/editors-vox/getting-your-paper-published-part-1-dont-annoy-the-reviewers
Titles and Abstracts
Title and abstract are the first things a reviewer will see.
First impressions count. The title and abstract are the first things that a reviewer will see. They are more likely to decide to review a paper that starts off with a clear scientific message. Here are some simple things to avoid.
Titles need to be about the science and findings, and not about how you did the science. For example, avoid titles with “Disentangling Impacts of …” or “Analysis of …” or “Revisiting …” or “Study of …” or “On the …” or “Insights into …” or “Toward the …” or “Assessing …”.
Abstracts should not have sentences such as, “The results of the analysis are discussed” or “the impacts are studied quantitatively.” Give the actual new science, and not a description of what you will discuss in the paper. You have to explain your methods, but then tell what you found.
I agree with your question and I have observed number of very good research articles but the style of explanation is very poor. Sometime it happened because of non-native English speaking but some time it seemed that editor or reviewers have some favors on particular articles.
Nicolas, it is difficult to understand what you have written. For example I am not sure about your use of the term "comprehensive". It is difficult for a title to be comprehensive.
Don't make a fuss please, Nicolas probably wanted to say" comprehensible"
No but Brian has a very good point here and this is exactly what the discussion is about. As non-native, I will always try to make an effort to write a comprehensible article but there is no doubt that there will always be some words with a meaning that I confuse for another and that's where, among other things, I expect either reviewers or the editorial team to intervene, especially if such inaccuracies are in the title or in the abstract. Now we've reached a point where some title are simply impossible to understand also in well-respected journals. The question is whether or not it is acceptable ? I think it's not. So thank you Brian for pointing this out, I have subsequently corrected the thread.
Not making a fuss, but it is interesting when a person complains about poor expression in other people, but cannot express what he means. I guess he proves his own point.
Except that this is a discussion thread, not a peer-reviewed paper, read my comment above.
Dear Nicolas and all: This is a wide focused issue since a high IF Journal should check before final publication each paper. In all journals titles are a main peers/editorial team goal. The problem maybe is related with a misunderstood of proper grammatical meanings of such words, beyond "practical use"...of words...
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