Page 215 - English for Writing Research Papers

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12.1 What's the buzz?

1) Match each title (all fictitious) with one or more of the typical complaints by
referees. If you think the title is acceptable as it is, then mark it d).
Titles:

1. An in-depth investigation into the overall possibilities of becoming an Olympic medal
holder vs getting a well-paid position in academia
2. Inside the right-wing brain: the right hemisphere fails to fulfill abstract reasoning skills and

focuses exclusively on self promotion rather than empathy

3. In-car cellular phone usage as a car accident determinant measurement

4. Measuring the sense of humor of various nations as revealed by feedback and comments
left on Facebook

5. Observations on the correlation between post office queue length and a country's GDP

6. A novel approach to spam-content determination
7. Should anyone 'own' the world? Is mass emigration a crisis or an opportunity for global
integration and understanding?
Referee complaints:

(a) The title is too generic – it should be more informative of the content of the manuscript

(b) Much of the title is redundant: remove non-essential words to allow the key words to stand
out. In this way the paper will be more searchable.

(c) As it stands, the title is just a sequence of nouns. I only understood the meaning of the title
after I had read the abstract and introduction.
2) Which of the titles above would inspire you to read the whole paper? Which
paper do you think would be the most interesting?
3) What is the main finding of your research? Invent a title that encapsulates this

finding. Make sure your title is as specific as possible by using the key words that

make your research unique. Remember that the more specific your title is, the
greater chance that it will be found by indexing and abstracting services.
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Browsers on the Internet looking for a paper may read hundreds of titles before they
select an Abstract to read. According to one of Britain’s top editors, writing good
headlines represents about 50% of the skills vital to article writing. For this reason
the gurus of research writing tend to dedicate more pages to discussing the impor-
tance of the title than they do to any section in the paper itself.