37.4 Writing scientifically: Title
Titles are important: they can easily discourage a reader from engaging with an article. A title should be a clear description of the main purpose of the article, and be:
…accurate, specific, concise, and informative, must not contain abbreviations, and must never be dull.
Peat et al. (2002), p. 93.
Titles sometimes pose questions (‘Does asthma reduce linear growth?’) or answer questions (‘Linear growth deficit in asthmatic children’; Peat et al. (2002), p. 98).
Example 37.1 (Article title) A good example of a title is:
Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people
— Axelsson et al. (2010)
Example 37.2 (Article title) A poor example of an article title is:
The nucleotide sequence of a 3.2 kb segment of mitochondrial maxicircle DNA from Crithidia fasciculata containing the gene for cytochrome oxidase subunit III, the N-terminal part of the apocytochrome b gene and a possible frameshift gene; further evidence for the use of unusual initiator triplets in trypanosome mitochondria
— Sloof et al. (1987)
A very poor example of an article title is:
This article was also retracted due to unethical conduct of one author (Hijazi et al. 2013b).Reaction of a bidentate ligands (4,4’-dimethyl 2,2’-bipyridine) with planar-chiral chloro-bridged ruthenium: Synthesis of cis-dicarbonyl[4,4’-dimethyl-2,2’-bipyridine- \(\kappa\) O1, \(\kappa\) O2] \(\lbrace\) 2-[tricarbonyl(\(\eta\) 6-phenylene- \(\kappa\) C1)chromium]pyridine- \(\kappa\)N \(\rbrace\) ruthenium hexafluorophosphate
— Hijazi et al. (2013a)