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What's in a title? A two‐step approach to optimisation for man and machine
Author(s) -
Moore Andrew
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
bioessays
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.175
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1521-1878
pISSN - 0265-9247
DOI - 10.1002/bies.201090009
Subject(s) - curiosity , reading (process) , object (grammar) , selection (genetic algorithm) , natural (archaeology) , natural selection , point (geometry) , aesthetics , computer science , epistemology , history , genealogy , psychology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , social psychology , linguistics , mathematics , geometry , archaeology
The point about peer review should be clear, because the title and abstract are all that is usually sent to prospective peer reviewers in the invitation email. However, if you genuinely have something new to say, how to write a title that will catch other scientists’ eye, against the high background of titles with similar keywords in them? Though an article title will rarely be remembered as book titles are, at the point of first reading, the two have at least a couple things in common: placement of the most important concept at or near the beginning (where it most readily catches the reader’s eye), and a construction that stimulates curiosity and is informative. Whether or not Darwin consciously thought about this, his title ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ is arguably better than the following, possible, alternative: ‘The role of natural selection in the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, and production of new species’. The appearance of species was the riddle that he sought to explain – i.e. the object of his research and of public curiosity and controversy surrounding the origin of life on Earth – and he placed that concept first in the title. The terms ‘favoured races’ and ‘struggle for life’ added a bit of spice, as well as being informative of his thesis. With the benefit of over 100 years of research and the discovery of genes, Richard Dawkins wrote books with the both attractive and highly memorable titles ‘The Selfish Gene’ and ‘The Blind Watchmaker’, albeit for a broad public. ‘Titleology’ is quite a refined science, and publishers know all too well that the title of a book can seal its fate. Good rules of thumb for scientific article titles are to place the key concept of your paper near the beginning of the title and make your finding explicit (via a statement, with or without a verb) – e.g. rather than ‘Influence of acceleration voltage on scanning electron microscopy of human blood platelets’, try ‘Improved detail in scanning EM of human blood platelets via acceleration voltages between 2 kV and 300V’, or rather than ‘The influence of dietary status on the cognitive performance of children’, how about ‘Cognitive performance and diet in children: evidence that low glycaemic loads are beneficial’. ‘Influence of’ (and other phrases such as ‘effect of’, ‘role of’, etc.) is sometimes used to subsume a range of experimental findings, but it blunts the message if not qualified. Perhaps Darwin could also have done better than ‘On the. . .’. To be noticed, a title should state the most important new finding of