The Very Beginning: The Title

Part III: Communicating with Journal Editors: Submission, Acceptance, Revision and Rejection – Chapter 6

6.2 Titles, Abstracts and Keywords: Sound Connections

With the exception of your covering letter, the title, abstract and keywords of your paper are the first things encountered by the editor considering your submission (and the very first things if you’re not able to submit any sort of covering letter). So although all parts of your paper demand your careful attention if your submission is to be successful, extra time and care invested in these three elements of your paper can reap a bountiful harvest. Think of your paper as dinner and its title, abstract and keywords as appetisers. You want the editor and the reviewers who will hopefully follow to be tantalised by your appetisers – to enjoy the texture and flavour of these delicacies while building a hearty appetite, and on that basis to expect good things from the dinner (paper) to follow. You do not want them to feel glutted by too much nourishment too richly seasoned or repulsed by a dull product of so low a quality that they leave the table before dinner arrives. This is to say that your title, abstract and keywords should hook the editor and inspire him or her to read on to the rest of your article.

6.2.1 The Very Beginning: The Title

Very few elements of an academic or scientific paper have to accomplish as much in as few words as the title does. The title is the first part of your paper read by the specialists who will review your article if it passes muster with the editor, and by the readers (usually more specialists in your field) who encounter it in the journal if you’re fortunate enough to succeed in getting the paper published. According to the APA Manual, ‘a title should summarize the main idea of the manuscript simply and, if possible, with style.’[1] For one, then, it should concisely inform your readers about the research you did in the study, mentioning the variables or theoretical issues you investigated in your paper and the relationship between them (e.g., ‘Effect of Changing Weather Patterns on Home Insurance Policies’), and it can also hint at what you discovered (e.g., ‘Effect of Changing Weather Patterns on Home Insurance Policies: Clients Left Out in the Cold?’). Secondly, it should do both in an interesting and engaging way that allows the language you use to carry nuances and allusions (perhaps even a little word play) while providing the necessary details with precision: the word ‘Cold’ in the second example above, for instance, not only refers to the unpleasant physical reality of those who lose their homes due to natural disasters but also implies a certain lack of warmth on the part of insurance companies who do not provide support in such situations. The subtitle as a whole hints at the nature of the results, with the question mark leaving the matter uncertain and the reader whose sympathy or curiosity has been tweaked eager (one hopes) to discover the answer and thus well primed to read on.

[1] The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed. (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2010), 23.

However, titles are also best if they’re as short as possible, and many style manuals and journal guidelines set strict word or character limits on titles. The APA Manual, for instance, recommends limiting the title of an academic or scientific article to 12 words or less, which renders the second (and to my mind more engaging) of my two examples above too long at 15 words. There are, then, both practical and creative reasons for avoiding all unnecessary words in your title: adverbs and adjectives are rarely necessary and should be used sparingly and to maximum effect (‘Changing’ in my title above, for instance, alludes to changes in both the weather and the coverage provided by insurance policies), while words such as ‘study,’ ‘method’ and ‘results’ are almost always extraneous in that they serve no useful purpose and can simply burden a title and render it more awkward: ‘Results Suggest that Clients Might Be Left Out in the Cold’ says basically the same thing as the subtitle I have above, but it uses almost twice as many words and simply isn’t as catchy. Do check the journal guidelines on this, however, as some journals aren’t averse to longer titles and a few even ask that the type of study or methodology be identified in the title as a subtitle (or even a secondary subtitle, though to be honest, using two colons in a title isn’t an English style I’d recommend) along the lines of ‘A Study Protocol’ or ‘A Randomised Trial.’

It may be tempting to use abbreviations in your title – an acronym is counted as one word, after all, no matter how many words it abbreviates – but it’s better to avoid them, and many style manuals and journal guidelines will ask that you do. With some terms, however, the abbreviations are better known than the full version (IQ, for instance, and AIDS), so in such cases they are probably appropriate for the title: few publishers would expect you to use ‘intelligence quotient’ instead of IQ in your title. If you find that you absolutely have to use abbreviations in your title, be sure that they are relatively common and will be familiar to the journal’s audience: indeed, all terminology you use in your title should be appropriate to the audience you anticipate, because I can assure you that feeling lost before you’ve even made it through the title is a frustrating reading experience. Be sure to observe any patterns of capitalisation required by the journal to which you’re submitting your paper, and the same is the case with font style and size, the use of punctuation (a colon or a dash between title and subtitle, for example), the placement of the title in relation to other parts of the paper (on a separate page, at the top of the paper or both), and the format of any running heading that may be required. Your title contains only a few of the many words in your paper, but it’s right up at the top for the world (including editors) to see, so you want to make it perfect in terms of language and format, and keep it short and interesting as well.