A good title is a simple sticky statement
Without a doubt, the part of your paper that will get read the most often, and by the widest audience, is your title. Ideally, your title will be successful at signalling to your primary intended audience that this paper is for them, as well as signalling to everybody what the main message of your paper is.
A good title is a straight-forward statement that communicates a simple message. My general advice for titles is:
- Make your title the single sticky message that you want your readers to remember; if you can, avoid using a super general statement about the overarching topic of your paper.
- Don’t use jokes, puns, and references to pop culture; these can confuse - or even deter - potential audience members, as many people (especially those from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds) may not ‘get’ the reference.
- Two-part titles can be effective - as long as you ensure that both parts of the title directly reflect your main message, but are not redundant. Don’t over-use two-part titles (consider that it’s possible that one part of your two-part title is actually completely unnecessary).
I think that the following passage, from Mensh & Kording 2017, does a great job of explaining why a good title is so important, and how considering your title early on can actually help you to write a better paper overall:
“The title not only transmits the paper’s central contribution but can also serve as a constant reminder (to you) to focus the text on transmitting that idea. Science is, after all, the abstraction of simple principles from complex data. The title is the ultimate refinement of the paper’s contribution. Thinking about the title early — and regularly returning to hone it — can help not only the writing of the paper but also the process of designing experiments or developing theories.”
— Mensh & Kording 2017; pg. 2
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This passage highlights two important points:
- Your title should be a distilled statement of your paper’s main message, i.e. it is the “ultimate refinement” of the main message/idea that your paper is all about.
- You can use the exercise of thinking about and writing your title as a means to help you focus your thinking and your writing of the paper as a whole. Don’t leave writing your title until the very end, instead have it be the first thing you write, and then come back to rethink and refine it as often as necessary as you write the rest of your paper.
Some good examples
Strandburg-Peshkin et al. 2015
An excellent title:
Shared decision-making drives collective movement in wild baboons
Why it’s so good: It clearly communicates the main, and exciting, finding (“shared decision-making drives collective moment”) and the study system (“wild baboons”), including the main topics/components of the study (“decision-making,” “collective movement,” and “wild baboons”). It’s short, straight-forward, and sticky: audiences can easily understand and remember this as the main finding of the paper. It also gives insight into not only the study system (“baboons”) but also the approach - the inclusion of the word “wild” suggests to readers that this paper is likely be based on field observations under natural conditions.
Less good alternatives: I can imagine a few other, less ideal, titles that the authors could have chosen…
Ex 1: How do wild baboons decide where to go? While this captures the main topics/components of the study (“decision-making,” “movement,” “baboons”), it doesn’t actually give the reader any new information. Question titles can be catchy, especially if they ask a question that everybody is already thinking, but what is even better is to actually answer that question up-front—not make the reader comb through the paper to find the answer.
Ex 2: Collective decision-making in wild baboons. Again, this title captures the main topics/components of the study, and it’s also quite simple. However, it fails to convey anything about the study’s findings, and so suggests that the study’s results will be anything but straight-forward. While it absolutely can be the case that a study’s results are impossible to condense into a single sticky statement, and a general topic title such as this one may be the best choice, it should only be used as a last resort - after every effort is made to conceptualize and collect results into a single key message.
Ex 3: Collective movement in a group-living wild primate: baboons exhibit shared decision-making when choosing when and where to move. While this captures all of the main topics/components, as well as the main finding of the study, it’s not simple… because it’s so long and wordy, it’s more challenging for the audience to parse and to remember: it’s not sticky. This use of the two-part title also includes a lot of redundancy: “a group-living wild primate” and “baboons,” “collective movement” and “when and where to move,” and “decisions-making” and “choosing.” The real title of the paper conveys essentially all of the same information as this alternative but in 9 words instead of 20.
Ehmann et al. 2021
An excellent title:
Immature wild orangutans acquire relevant ecological knowledge through sex-specific attentional biases during social learning
Why it’s so good: It clearly communicates the main, and exciting, finding (“ecological knowledge is acquired through sex-specific attentional biases”) and the study system (“wild orangutans”), including the main topics/components of the study (“immature orangutans,” “ecological knowledge,” “attentional biases” and “social learning”). It’s straight-forward, and pretty sticky: audiences can easily understand and remember this as the main finding of the paper. It also gives insight into not only the study system (“orangutans”) but also the approach - the inclusion of the word “wild” suggests to readers that this paper is likely be based on field observations under natural conditions. It’s not a particularly short title, but I think in this case that’s ok: it’s long because stating the main finding requires several words, and not because it is unnecessarily wordy. I think you could argue, though, that the “during social learning” at the end of the title could maybe have been left off without losing any vital information or obscuring the overall message.
Less good alternatives: I can imagine a few other, less ideal, titles that we could have chosen…
Ex 1: Growing up in the trees: Immature wild orangutans acquire relevant ecological knowledge through sex-specific attentional biases. This two part title is hardly any longer than the original title, but - rather than emphasizing that these attentional biases occur during social learning, it emphasizes that orangutans are arboreal. Although this is not incorrect, the fact that orangutans are arboreal is not at all important for the framing or main findings of this study. The study does not discuss or analyze the influence of orangutans’ arboreal adaptations or lifestyle on immatures’ attentional biases, so although “growing up in the trees” is true, and maybe gives some contextual information about orangutans’ ecology, it’s not a main point/topic of the study and thus does not belong in the title.
Ex 2: Attentional biases among wild immature orangutans. Like example 2 above, this title captures the main topics/components of the study and is simple, but it fails to convey anything about the study’s findings. It’s not very informative, nor exciting, and as such, is not sticky.