What’s in a Title? A Descriptive Study of Article Titles in Peer-Reviewed Medical Journals

Objectives. Titles of journal articles should effectively convey to readers, editors, and reviewers basic topics of the articles and, within topics, specific aspects. To increase our understanding of the current practices of authors and editors in the use of titles, we analyzed article titles from a sample of general medical journals and queried editors in the United States and England. Design and Outcome Measures. We examined the titles of articles published as original contributions in four peer-reviewed medical journals during July-December 1995. Using an explicit typology developed for this study, we classified each title according to elements present: methods, dataset, results, conclusions, or topic only. We also queried editors of selected journals about policies regarding titles published in their journals. Results. Of the 420 titles we reviewed, 168 (40%) were classified as “Topic only” because they reflected the subject of the paper but did not include information in other categories or appeared too ambiguous to classify. The second most common classification was “Methods” (33%); “Results” accounted for nearly one fifth (18%) of the titles, and only two (1%) of the titles presented a conclusion. The ambiguity of some titles precluded determination of whether they described studies or review articles. Of the journals we queried, only one had a published policy regarding titles, and that policy addressed only the length of the title. Conclusions. Most titles lack information about study design, methods, and results. We recommend that research be conducted on the interests of authors, readers, and editors regarding the content of titles. Introduction The purpose of the title of an article in a biomedical journal should be to convey effectively the topic of the report and the design of the reported investigation while attracting the attention of and informing the primary target audience, editors, and reviewers. Substantive treatment of titles in the biomedical literature is limited,1,2 and titles are addressed only incidentally in a perspective on communication through research papers.3 In 1994 the editors of one journal suggested that the three key sections of an article were the abstract, tables and figures, and methods section; the title was not addressed even superficially.4 Only recently have monographs about writing scientific papers begun to stress the importance of titles. These sources5-8 provide helpful suggestions based on expert opinion but lack an evidence base. We studied the practices of authors and editors in the use of titles. To assess practices, we analyzed a sample of titles of papers in selected general biomedical journals, in part to determine whether the titles included information about methods, results, and conclusions. In addition, to assess editorial policies, we queried editors of a different set of journals about their policies regarding titles of articles. Methods and Data Our study examined the titles of articles in four peer-reviewed medical journals published in the United States and England: the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). These journals were selected to ensure that a broad range of subject matter would be represented in articles for readers interested in basic and clinical biomedical research and in public health. We restricted our study to articles that were published during July-December 1995 and that could be considered original contributions (“papers” in BMJ, “original contributions” in JAMA, “articles” in Lancet, and “original articles” in NEJM); articles labeled as brief reports in these sections were excluded. 75 • Science Editor • May – June 2001 • Vol 24 • No 3 RICHARD A GOODMAN is an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is completing work on a JD degree at Emory University’s School of Law. He is a physician board-certified in internal medicine and preventive medicine. He served as editorin-chief of CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) in 1988-1998, is the author or coauthor of over 80 scientific publications, trains public-health practitioners in scientific writing, and is coauthor of a book on golf. STEPHEN B THACKER is director of CDC’s Epidemiology Program Office, where he leads programs in the training of epidemiologists, program managers, and preventive-medicine residents in the United States and internationally. He is a physician board-certified in family medicine and preventive medicine, has a master’s degree in epidemiology, and is an assistant surgeon general in the US Public Health Service. He has overall responsibility for CDC’s MMWR, has served as an editor of Epidemiologic Reviews since 1990, and has published over 150 scientific articles. PAUL Z SIEGEL, director of the Field Epidemiology Activity at CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, is board-certified in preventive medicine and holds an MPH degree in epidemiology. A Fulbright Teaching Fellow to the Russian Federation in 1999, he has conducted training in scientific writing for public-health practitioners and epidemiologists since 1987. Correspondence may be directed to Goodman at [email protected].