Writing a research paper with innovative and groundbreaking findings might be a difficult task in itself, but a carefully formulated title is also just as important.
By its sheer positioning at the top, the title occupies a pristine position in your research paper and readers, reviewers, and editors are inadvertently drawn to it first. This makes it imperative on your part to give considerable time and thought to go through several iterations before finalizing the title of your research paper. The title needs to be clear, concise, and indicative of the research topic.
Often, readers consider the title as the primary parameter to check the suitability and importance of a research work. Hence, the title should be enticing without being verbose, so that the reader is persuaded to read the abstract that follows the title. Much like the cover of a book, it is the main heading of a research paper that leaves an indelible imprint in the reader’s mind. Besides, in this age of Internet search queries, the title can technically act as a metadata string that highlights the aim of your research and helps other researchers locate your paper when they use a web crawler.
The following are some tips for making your title more meaningful and easily discoverable by search engines:
- Use proper sentence structure in the title.
- Consider the target audience of your paper before selecting words for the title and structure them accordingly.
- Think of a short title that best expresses the salient features of your paper.
- Avoid descriptive, interrogative, or rhetoric titles for scientific research papers.
- Try to include the fine points of the subject population (e.g., children with autism and alcohol-withdrawn patients, etc.).
- Focus of the title should be on the outcome of the study.
- Restrict the use of abbreviations unless they are exceptionally common.
- Never construct the title on the basis of statistical findings of the paper.
- Use punctuations wisely.
A title of an article or a paper, irrespective of its type and genre, should be able to express the main objective of the paper in order to be useful for readers or researchers. That will lead more web searches to your research paper and increase the chances of it being cited in other research work.