Most readers pay attention and read a research paper when its 'Title" generates interest. However, exact statement of the main finding as 'Title' educates the 'in-field' researcher.
The title must present a clear idea of what the reader can expect from the article. Whether it is narrow or broad, depends on the context/content of your report. If you work with mice, you should place mice in your title. If you work with mice and elephants, mammals might be a better choice.
Anyway, a good editor will be part of the process to state a catchy but truthful title for your paper, since they are interested in generating citations.
Agree with Michael and Ahed. A 'catchy' title always draws an audience - even if the article itself is not that good. If you include exact keywords - that helps as well.
All combinations are possible. Make a list and try a number of titles, take a break from the paper for a while and then select the final one according to your feeling. Whatever you choose, you can always rework and retitle it at some point later.
My impression is that scientists tend to be more indirect, thus opting for a more general/indirect title which points to the finding while journalists prefer the key finding to be in the title. I am not sure to what extent you should adhere to this trend. It depends on the criteria of the journal/book where the paper will be published. If you are not sure what to do, look at the previous editions/articles published there. These resources may help you:
http://www.authoraid.info/resource-library,
http://www.nasw.org/articles/online-resources-science-writers, http://www.amwa.org/toolkit_new_med_writers#Resources,
http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/HLWIKI_International,
http://libguides.com/community.php?m=s&it=0&search=medical+writing
There is no simple answer, because all titles are in 'competition' for reader attention in e.g. google scholars. I would suggest "a title is attractive enough to make the reader want to read the abstract." Then the title should ideally convey the novelty, advance, difference, or benefit of the work versus actual knowledge. The title should be composed of a mix of general words that appeal to a large audience, and some specialized words to describe the discovery.
See also the book "Scientific Writing for Impact Factor Journals" (Nova Publishers)
http://fr.slideshare.net/lichtfouse/scientific-writing-for-impact-factor-journals
Hello all,
Interesting discussion, well, it would be great if your research had coined a new concept - that this would make it to the title - and people would be interested to see what this is this new concept.
So, this would be part of the new findings of your research, and if you can include some more (very specific) will be great.
Regards
Theodora Issa
Hi Rakesh, I think it is a convention in Medical Science, and it may be in other science based disciplines to exactly describe the content of the article in the title. This is because clarity of topic is essential, especially in clinical areas. It also helps retrieval in two ways: 1) scanning a list of results from a database search you know, more or less which titles you would want to investigate further, 2) it may be useful in some circumstances to search databases for words in title, a good way of narrowing a search if you have too many hits. It only works, however, if you know there is a convention to have precise titles. In other words if a word occurs in the title then it usually describes some part of the contents of the article.
I think that this convention is enforced by editors in any case. Just to make the point again though in some circumstances the accuracy of the title will aid discovery, for example in large databases.
I should say that this convention is not true in humanities and social sciences where "clever" titles are accepted. Usually the title is an allusion to a quote or a theory or a person. Those who know the topic will get it, those who don't will probably have to read the book to find out! Best Wishes, Matt
I fully agree with Matt. Various fields of research have developed their own publishing traditions relating paper structure, citations (numbers vs. names+year of publication), referencing styles, and just stating the title of the paper.
One more thing: in case you are publishing with co-authors, make sure they appreciate the title of your common work.
The title should reflect the content and result of the work presented in the paper.
The title should be interesting, no doubt , but has to also reflect the exact contents in the paper. No point in having just an interesting title with no correlation with the contents!!!
The title of the manuscript is usually the first introduction readers have to in any published work. Therefore, the author must select a title that grabs attention, accurately describes the contents of the manuscript, and makes people want to read further.
An effective title should:
-Convey the main topics of the study
-Highlight the importance of the research
-Be concise and Attract readers
I feel the title of a research paper should be apt or quite relevant to the objective of the study rather than grabing attention or making it interesting. Also it will help the readers to get easy access to the paper when they search on that particular topic.
What ever the used for either
in a question's form, its answer must be clearly addressed in the conclusions.
Or an informative phrase in relation to the key words and the objectives.
It must not be long ( not more than a maximum of 15 words.) do not use any abbreviations.
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