Writing a Research Paper Title Salma Ayaz M Phil English Linguistics PGD TEFL B ED
INTRODUCTION One of the most important decisions The first thing that journal editors and reviewers see The only piece of information that fellow researchers will see in a database or search engine query. Good titles that are concise and contain all the relevant terms have been shown to increase citation counts Make sure it captures all of the relevant aspects of the study, including the specific topic and problem being investigated.
How to Write a Research Paper Title in 5 Steps your research title should accurately capture what you have done it should sound interesting to the people who work on the same or a similar topic it should contain the important title keywords that other researchers use when looking for literature in databases To make the title writing process as simple as possible, we have broken it down into 5 simple steps.
Step 1: Answer some key questions about your research paper What does your paper seek to answer and what does it accomplish? Try to answer these questions as briefly as possible. You can create these questions by going through each section of your paper and finding the MOST relevant information to make a research title.
Research question One-sentence answer “What is my paper about?” “My paper studies how program volume affects outcomes for liver transplant patients on waiting lists.” “What methods/techniques did I use to perform my study? “It’s a case study.” “What or who was the subject of my study?” “I studied 60 cases of liver transplant patients on a waiting list throughout the US aged 20-50 years.” “What did I find?” “My study revealed a positive correlation between waitlist volume and negative prognosis of transplant procedure
Step 2: Identify research study keywords Now that you have answers to your research questions, find the most important parts of these responses and make these your study keywords. Note that you should only choose the most important terms for your keywords–journals usually request anywhere from 3 to 8 keywords maximum.
One-sentence answer Title keywords/phrases “My paper studies how program volume affects outcomes for liver transplant patients on waiting lists.” -program volume -liver transplant patients -waiting lists -outcomes “This is a case study.” -case study “I studied 60 cases of liver transplant patients on a waiting list throughout the US aged 20-50 years.” -US/age 20-50 -60 cases “My study revealed a positive correlation between waitlist volume and negative prognosis of transplant procedure.” -positive correlation between waitlist volume and negative outcomes
Step 3: Research title writing: use these keywords “We employed a case study of 60 liver transplant patients around the US aged 20-50 years to assess how waiting list volume affects the outcomes of liver transplantation in patients; results indicate a positive correlation between increased waiting list volume and negative prognosis after the transplant procedure.” The sentence above is clearly much too long for a research paper title. This is why you will trim and polish your title in the next two steps.
Step 4: Create a working research paper title To create a working title, remove elements that make it a complete “sentence” but keep everything that is important to what the study is about. Delete all unnecessary and redundant words that are not central to the study or that researchers would most likely not use in a database search. “We employed a case study of 60 liver transplant patients around the US aged 20-50 years to assess how the waiting list volume affects the outcome of liver transplantation in patients; results indicate a positive correlation between increased waiting list volume and a negative prognosis after transplant procedure” Now shift some words around for proper syntax and rephrase it a bit to shorten the length and make it leaner and more natural. What you are left with is: “A case study of 60 liver transplant patients around the US aged 20-50 years assessing the impact of waiting list volume on the outcome of transplantation and showing a positive correlation between increased waiting list volume and a negative prognosis” (Word Count: 38) This text is getting closer to what we want in a research title, which is just the most important information. But note that the word count for this working title is still 38 words, whereas the average length of published journal article titles is 16 words or fewer. Therefore, we should eliminate some words and phrases that are not essential to this title.
Step 5: Remove any nonessential words and phrases from your title Because the number of patients studied and the exact outcome are not the most essential parts of this paper, remove these elements first: “A case study of 60 liver transplant patients around the US aged 20-50 years assessing the impact of waiting list volume on outcomes of transplantation and showing a positive correlation between increased waiting list volume and a negative prognosis” (Word Count: 19) In addition the methods used in a study are not usually the most searched-for keywords in databases and represent additional details that you may want to remove to make your title leaner. So what is left is: “Assessing the impact of waiting list volume on outcome and prognosis in liver transplantation patients” (Word Count: 15) In this final version of the title, one can immediately recognize the subject and what objectives the study aims to achieve. Note that the most important terms appear at the beginning and end of the title: “Assessing,” which is the main action of the study, is placed at the beginning; and “liver transplantation patients,” the specific subject of the study, is placed at the end. This will aid significantly in your research paper title being found in search engines and database queries, which means that a lot more researchers will be able to locate your article once it is published. In fact, a 2014 review of more than 150,000 papers submitted to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) database found the style of a paper’s title impacted the number of citations it would typically receive. In most disciplines, articles with shorter, more concise titles yielded more citations.
FURTHERMORE Adding a Research Paper Subtitle If your title might require a subtitle to provide more immediate details about your methodology or sample, you can do this by adding this information after a colon: “ : a case study of US adult patients ages 20-25” If we abide strictly by our word count rule this may not be necessary or recommended. But every journal has its own standard formatting and style guidelines for research paper titles, so it is a good idea to be aware of the specific journal author instructions, not just when you write the manuscript but also to decide how to create a good title for it.
Tips on Formulating a Good Research Paper Title In addition to the steps given above, there are a few other important things you want to keep in mind when it comes to how to write a research paper title, regarding formatting, word count, and content: Write the title after you’ve written your paper and abstract Include all of the essential terms in your paper Keep it short and to the point (~16 words or fewer) Avoid unnecessary jargon and abbreviations Use keywords that capture the content of your paper Never include a period at the end—your title is NOT a sentence