Tell readers what your paper is about.

A research paper typically begins with a title, which is followed by an abstract, and then the full paper itself. Consider these three items as progressive disclosure: titles are typically 10 to 12 words long; abstracts are limited to about 250 words; and a full-length paper runs to several thousand words. Assuming that you have already written an abstract, your task is to condense it to 12 words—even shorter than a tweet, which can run to 280 characters. Journalists used to be taught that their story must cover the five Ws (What, When, Where, Why, Who); as researchers writing a title, you can easily skip Who and When and Why, because the answers are not likely to be central to the research paper. That leaves us with What and Where, of which the second is easier to answer—if it is relevant. Location is irrelevant to a laboratory experiment, a review, or a theoretical paper, for example, whereas for a field experiment, it is important. That leaves us with What. Imagine someone searching for information on the topic of your paper: what words are most likely to make your paper appear in the first page of the search results? This will force you to come up with the most important words that should go into the title: all you need to do now is to arrange them in the right order and link them with the required prepositions. Here is an example of how a long research paper title can be shortened. “Projecting marine fish production and catch potential in Bangladesh in the 21st century under long-term environmental change and management scenarios” runs to 20 words. Here is a 13-word version: “Forecasting marine fish catches in Bangladesh as affected by environmental changes and management”. The idea is to write a longish title and then keep trimming it.

Examine the titles of paper in your target journals.

Some journals insist on a rigid limit on the length of titles – not more than 85 characters, for example – whereas some journals are more flexible. Therefore, be guided by the titles of papers published in the journal in which you hope to publish your paper. Some journals favour declarative sentences as “City parks offer adequate forage to the Indian honeybee (Apis cerana Fab.) round the year” whereas some journals frown on such titles (and would have preferred “City parks as round-the-year foraging sources for the Indian honeybee (Apis cerana Fab.)”. Similarly, some journals allow a title and a subtitle, which makes it easier for authors to provide some extra information; so, if your target journal allows subtitles, please make use of them. Don’t worry about not being able to come up with ‘catchy’ titles. After all, readers are scanning the table of contents of a journal because they are interested in the subject covered: it is not as though they are in a bookshop and idly scanning the display for something interesting. It is far more important for a research paper title to convey the contents of the paper accurately. Also take note of the exact format for titles preferred by your target journal in terms of alignment (left aligned, centred, or even right aligned); capitalization (title case, in which every significant word starts with a capital letter, or sentence case, which follows normal capitalization, or even uppercase, in which the entire title is set in capital letters), weight (bold or normal), and posture (normal or italics). Presenting the title just the way the journal wants it shows editors that you have prepared the article for their journal and are not merely recycling an article that has been turned down by another journal. Typically, research paper titles do not end with a full stop: even journals that prefer complete sentences as titles do not end them with periods.

Let the first word of the title be a keyword.

Most original research papers are based on a study or one or more experiments or detailed investigation. Do not, therefore, begin the title with words such as study, experiment, or investigation or with such broad and abstract concepts as ‘development’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘solution’. Start strong, using a key term, as in “Sequestration of soil organic carbon through sustainable agriculture” instead of “Sustainable agriculture: a key to soil organic carbon sequestration”.

Remember that keywords offer you a backup.

Terms that are important but cannot be accommodated in the title make good keywords: never use as keywords the terms that you have already used in the title; they are going to be indexed automatically, and repeating them is losing the opportunity to bring your paper to the attention of more potential readers. Synonyms make good keywords: for example, I may use the more common term ‘font’ in the title, and use ‘typeface’ as a keyword. You may be familiar with the term ‘elevator pitch’: a brief, well-thought-out text you use to introduce yourself as you share an elevator ride with a stranger. Titles of research papers are like an elevator pitch—you do not get a second chance to make a better first impression.