Content and Phrasing in Titles of Original Research and Review Articles in 2015: Range of Practice in Four Clinical Journals

Abstract

Abstract:Reporting guidelines for clinical research designs emerged in the mid-1990s and have influenced various aspects of research articles, including titles, which have also been subject to changing uses with the growth of electronic database searching and efforts to reduce bias in literature searches. We aimed (1) to learn more about titles in clinical medicine today and (2) to develop an efficient, reliable way to study titles over time and on the fly-for quick application by authors, manuscript editors, translators and instructors. We compared content and form in titles from two general medical journals-the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the British Medical Journal-and two anesthesiology journals (the European Journal of Anaesthesiology and Anesthesiology); we also analyzed the inter-rater reliability of our coding. Significant content differences were found in the frequencies of mentions of methods, results (between general and subspecialty titles), and geographic setting; phrasing differences were found in the prevalence of full-sentence and compound titles (and their punctuation). NEJM titles were significantly shorter, and this journal differed consistently on several features. We conclude that authors must learn to efficiently survey titles for form and content patterns when preparing manuscripts to submit to unfamiliar journals or on resubmitting to a new journal after rejection.

Neutral, risky or provocative? Trends in titling practices in complementary and alternative medicine articles (1995-2016)

“…However, the only significant genre difference was found between RP title length and RV title length (p = 0.001). This cross-generic difference in title average length corroborates the findings of previous research on scholarly article titles in CONV medicine and in related disciplines, where RP titles have also been found to be longer than those in RV (Soler 2007(Soler , 2011Wang and Bai 2007;Kerans et al 2016), and in CR (Salager-Meyer et al 2013). It should be pointed out, though, that titles of papers published in highly prized, elite CONV general medicine journals (e.g., the NEJM and the British Medical Journal) were found to be shorter than those of articles published in less prestigious specialist journals (Kerans et al 2016).…”

“…3 This yielded a corpus of 360 titles, the journal and genre distribution of which is displayed in Table 1. We consider that our corpus size is large enough since, as Kerans et al (2016) The determination of genres was problematic. First of all, each journal has its own label for research articles (e.g., 'original articles') or the author's own title did not match what was actually in the article.…”

“…Mabe and Amin (2002), for example, found that scientists read on average 97 articles per year, twice as many abstracts (204), and 10 times as many titles (1,142). Similarly, Lowes (2016) reports that most PubMed users do not read beyond the abstract, while Kerans et al (2016) assert that today's clinical researchers are content with reading the title only before discarding the article. Even more surprising is evidence that doctors sometimes make clinical decisions based only on the titles of journal articles (Haynes et al 1990;Goodman 2000).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Researching, Teaching, and Supporting Research Publication—Issues for Users of English as an Additional Language

“…I have chosen the last of these for what follows. We have two papers from the perspectives of those supporting EAL authors at the level of individual manuscript (an author's editor [4] and a translation specialist [5], two that analyse aspects of the written texts themselves, titles [6] and abstracts [7], to gain insights of value across the community, and two that focus on how novice research authors learn their craft [8,9]. However, across these groupings additional themes are highlighted.…”

“…What processes and players are key in helping EAL authors gain acceptance for their research articles and how can their contributions be strengthened [4,5,8,9]? How can close analysis of the written text open windows onto successful practices [4,6,7]? How does the pressure to publish in English impact the working and writing lives of researchers who use English as an additional language (all papers)?…”