Journal likes our paper but editor wants to change our distinctive, slightly quirky title to one that aligns with "house style". Have told editor I will die on this hill. IT IS NOT THE EDITOR'S JOB TO MAKE ALL TITLES EQUALLY BORING. #academicsky
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To this day, I remain bitter that a journal made us change the title of a paper into the effect of weather on tuberculosis notifications from “Don’t blame it on the sunshine”
My best ones have included "Why national e-health programs need dead philosophers" and "Desperately seeking intersectionality in digital heath disparities research". But this trend towards *standardized* titles - ugh!
This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what titles are for—which is, first, to interest readers and then to be memorable enough for readers to find the paper again! Standardization undercuts both but is deadly for the latter.
It’s good for a series (the problem with…) but an inappropriate use of editorial power otherwise. It’s not a newspaper! (I sometimes adapt magazines titles but in collaboration.)
Journal editor here: always a fan of a quote or catchy title, followed by the more standardised one with a semi colon - it means people will know what the study is about and help for searchability
Journal invites a paper on Subject X.
Substance of paper agreed and title agreed.
Paper written and submitted.
Reviewer 2 thinks title is ‘inappropriate’.
Title made boring.
When I was an editor I often suggested changes to improve searchability. You want keywords in 1st 65 characters (including space) to help Google find your work.
Same experience. Often, the justification is to maximise the potential of the title to appear in search engines. Yes, bland titles might appear more often, but I tend to skip them, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who does so.
True but there are 3 issues. 1) massive overuse of titles like “a tale of two [x]”, etc. 2) titles that give no idea about the argument, & 3) searchability. Most articles are found via Google searches, & so there are ways to make them very findable, hence read, which is what we want.
Ours is also a 'declarative title' which conveys the topic, study design etc, and is precision-indexed with key words. It's possible to tick all the boxes AND have an interesting, eye-catching, unusual title.
Or unequally boring?
I confess that in our journal, we propose changes in the titles with the intention of making them clearer and catchy ... but not guaranteed that it works all the time!
Well some examples are "shortening it if too long!", dropping limiting Info that are best for the abstract (city, year) unless absolutely necessary, and also toning down if claiming too much. For sensitive topics avoiding no ambiguity in the title to prevent journalistic interpretations
Attended a “how to write” workshop from EIC of Acta Scandinavica 20 yrs ago:
* Most people will only read the title so make it interesting
* Only a few of these will read the abstract but make it comprehensive
* Those few that read the paper really want to know the methods so make them replicable
The problem is 99% of interesting titles sacrifice clarity for an obscure pun or cryptic reference. I have commented “the joke in the title is not as good as authors think it is” before. We need rules to help the 99%, but agree - shame to penalise true wordsmiths like @trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social
Love these! My fave, I got Joni Mitchell in: "You Don't Know What You've Got Til It's Gone: Police Retention of Investigative Materials." (All about police losing evidence!) As long as the title reflects the paper, where is the harm? Can still see what paper is about.
This just happened to me and the editor decided to change the title without my permission. And I can’t change it back. As if I’d write a title starting with “factors affecting”.
Comments
Substance of paper agreed and title agreed.
Paper written and submitted.
Reviewer 2 thinks title is ‘inappropriate’.
Title made boring.
in my head.
I confess that in our journal, we propose changes in the titles with the intention of making them clearer and catchy ... but not guaranteed that it works all the time!
* Most people will only read the title so make it interesting
* Only a few of these will read the abstract but make it comprehensive
* Those few that read the paper really want to know the methods so make them replicable
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-020-01754-z
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.04.04.24305355v1
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29632743/
I’ll do it again I tell ya!!
This just happened to me and the editor decided to change the title without my permission. And I can’t change it back. As if I’d write a title starting with “factors affecting”.
😁
Proud of that.
You go! Editor stupid, boring or both...