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12.17 What is a running title?

Many journals require that a running title, also known as a running head or short
title, be included in submitted manuscripts. This shortened form of the main title,
usually cited at the top of each published page of an article, serves to guide readers
browsing a print journal, shuffl ing loose printed pages, or toggling between multi-
ple papers in PDF form. The running head may also be used in RSS feeds and
mobile applications instead of the frequently more unwieldy main title.

Requirements for running titles vary between journals, but generally, they must be
50–60 characters long at most, often including spaces. To achieve brevity, these titles
typically include abbreviations, even if the main title does not (or cannot, based on
journal guidelines). Articles (the, a, an) may also be omitted to conserve characters,

and wordy phrasing, including filler phrases, should be minimized. However, if the
main title is brief enough, it can function as the running head as well.
Unlike for the manuscript title itself, being catchy is not a priority for a running title.
Rather, because it is so abbreviated, clarity and accuracy should be priorities. Some
also suggest that as much content as possible should be preserved from the main
title, although in practice, this approach is not widespread; authors instead tend to
include only what they deem most important to highlight.

The following is an example of effective title abridgment, drawn from a recently
published article (Lambert et al., 2013):

Manuscript title: Dendritic Cell Immunoreceptor Is a New Target for Anti-AIDS Drug
Development: Identifi cation of DCIR/HIV-1 Inhibitors (117 ch with spaces, 103 ch without

spaces)
Running title: Inhibitors of DCIR Limit HIV-1 Infection (40 ch with spaces, 35 ch without

spaces)
The authors combined a few strategies here to reduce the title length by two thirds,
applying the abbreviation “DCIR”, omitting articles (“DCIR” instead of “the
DCIR”), and focusing on what they judged to be the central concept (the limitation
of HIV-1 infection by the inhibitors, rather than the novelty of the target, the appli-
cation in drug development, or the identification process). Of course, this task may

be easier for papers with a narrower and more descriptive focus, such as review
articles.

I would like to acknowledge the professional manuscript information of American
Journal Experts and their excellent online resource ( https://www.aje.com/en/author-
resource ) from which this entire subsection, written by Michaela Panter, was taken
verbatim.