Many times titles consists out of claims that are being challenged in the section "limitations of this study" in the conclusion. This is a lot of times not mentioned in the astract. Should this be done in more cases? As science needs to be critical and not give wrong impressions on people that only read the abstract and title. Of course scientific people will read the whole article I assume.
A lot of research is, however, being read by a non-scientific crowd that makes its conclusion based on the abstract.
For instance some sport or health sites only use titles, and the abstract to put a short description on their sites
While I understand titles that contain words as "under certain circumstances, or with not everything taken into account" are not attracted, should it not be in the abstract? Or at least a reference to the section "limitations of this study"?
Hi Peter, I have never come across this in publishing papers or submitting abstracts in biochemistry and biomedical fields.
Is this a field specific requirement?
It is rare to see research papers of high quality these days. Many papers contain "exaggerated" claims & these claims may be located in the titles or the abstracts in an erroneous manner. Any claim has to be challenged or contested before it becomes accepted by the scientific community or even others. In my humble opinion, a claim is better placed in the discussion part after the results of research & before arrival at the conclusion(s).
Perfection belongs to God only and research is a human endeavor to reach the truth of the subject under study. This attempt will, surely, have limitations (and shortcomings).
One of my distinguished professors once described his colleague as being "excessive" in his claims of achievements as if each research topic deserved a Nobel prize !
Had the flood of published research papers been true in claims, man would have solved most of the universal problems long time ago!
Should researchers be forced or asked to use more realistic/critical titles, or describe in abstract what are the limitations of their research?
Usually reviewers / editors requesting the author to adjust their manuscript title to reflect their research findings are not a norm but sometimes do happen.
Some journals do require author to pen down their research limitation / implication in the abstract section e.g. Emerald publishing (you can refer to the link below & explore some of the sample journal articles)
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/index.htm
Alternatively, as reviewer I will browse through the following in sequence to get some clues on the manuscript whether there is a mismatch between title / abstract written & research limitation:
I think it is important to state the limitations of your study so that you don't make exegerated claims in your findings. if you clearly state you set of circumstances a reader may interpret your results in the correct context
That should have ideally be done. Reviewers and editors must ensure this because short titles that summarizes the entirety of the research as well as the abstract delineating the scope of the study will made the paper straight to the point! It would not make the paper look deceptive to readers!
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Public Health
- Health