Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

Title metrics
Title: the face of your paper
Paper structure and purpose

✓(+) The words representative of your contribution are upfront.

✓(+) The title has 2+ search keywords, covering different sections on the inverted pyramid.

✓(+) Your title has attractive words (non search keywords).

✓(+) No noun phrase exceeds three words.

✓(+) All your title search keywords are found in your abstract.

✓(+) Your title is read in less than two seconds and is clear at first reading.

✓(+) No search keyword present only in the abstract appears with a frequency higher than any title search keyword found in the abstract.

✓(+) The impact or outcome of your contribution is identifiable in the title.

✓(+) Your title clearly sets the scope of the research.

✓(−) The words representative of your contribution are back and front, or at the back.

✓(−) All your keywords are in the same inverted pyramid section.

✓(−) The title has only one search keyword.

✓(−) Your title has ambiguous prepositions (and, with).

✓(−) Your title has no attractive words.

✓(−) Your title contains ’a,’ ’an,’ ’study,’ ’Investigation’.

✓(−) Nouns phrases have 3+ words (e.g. Metastable transition metal nitride coatings).

✓(−) Some title search keywords are missing from your abstract.

✓(−) Your title requires more than two seconds to read.

✓(−) Search keywords repeatedly found in the abstract are not in the title.

✓(−) Your title creates diverging expectations about its contents.

✓(−) Your title does not set the scope of the research, or does so partially.

AND NOW FOR THE BONUS POINTS:

✓(+++) The title creates only one expectation about its contents, and fulfills it.

© Jean-Luc Lebrun 2011

¹ Dr. Li Qingfa, Dr. Keith William, Dr. Ian Ernest Pinwill, Dr. Choy Chee Mun and Ms. Zhang Suxia, Gas-Assisted Powder Injection Moulding (GAPIM), ICMAT 2001, international conference on materials for advanced technologies, Symposium C Novel and Advanced Ceramic materials, July 2001.

² KeZhing Lu, LiuSheng Huang, YingYu Wan, HongLi Xu, Energy-efficient data gathering in large wireless sensor network, second International Conference on embedded software and systems (ICESS’05), Dec 2005, pp. 327—331.

³ Siew Poh Lee, Han Boon Lee, Eng Wah Lee: Web Services — An Enabling Technology for Trading Partners Community Virtual Integration. ICEB 2004: pp. 727—731.

⁴ Our survey here again finds fascinating results. Over hundreds of sessions, about one third prefer the first title while two thirds prefer the second title. This just goes to show how damaging compound nouns are to reading clarity!

⁵ L. Cheng, T.F. Guo, 2003. Vapor pressure assisted void growth and cracking of polymeric films and interfaces, Interface Science, 11(3): 277.

⁵ A. H. Wyllie Glucocorticoid-induced thymocyte apoptosis is associated with endogenous endonuclease activation, Nature 284: 555—556 (10 April 1980).

⁶ Brusic, V., Wilkins, J. S., Stanyon, C. A. and Zeleznikow, J. (1998a). Data learning: understanding biological data. In: Merrill G. and Pathak D.K. (eds.) Knowledge Sharing Across Biological and Medical Knowledge Based Systems: Papers from the 1998 AAAI Workshop pp. 12—19. AAAI Technical Report WS-98—04. AAAI Press.

⁷ Reprinted from journal of biomechanics, vol 39, Hai Gu, Alvin Chua, Bien-Keem Tan, Kin Chew Hung, nonlinear finite element simulation to elucidate the efficacy of slit arteriotomy for end-to-side arterial anastomosis in microsurgery, pages 435— 443, copyright 2006, with permission from Elsevier.”

⁸ Madisetti, A. Willson, A.N., Jr., “A 100 MHz 2-D 8× 8 DCT/IDCT processor for HDTV applications”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Apr 1995, Vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 158—165.

⁹ Wee Kheng Leow (1994). VISOR: Learning Visual Schemas in Neural Networks for Object Recognition and Scene Analysis, PhD Dissertation; Technical Report AI-94— 219, June 1994.

¹⁰ Martyn Edwards, Software acceleration using programmable logic : is it worth the effort, Proceedings of the 5th international workshop on hardware/software codesign, IEEE computer society, p. 135, March 1997.

¹¹ H. He and A. Aendenroomer, “Diner-Waiter Pattern in Distributed Control”, Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Industrial Informatics, (INDIN’04), Berlin, Germany, 12—16 June 2004, Vol. 2, pp. 293—297.

¹² Duffield JS., The inflammatory macrophage: a story of Jekyll and Hyde, Clin Sci (Lond). 2003 Jan; 104(1): 27—38.

¹³ In the book, Dr Jekyll suffers from a personality disorder. He is a medical practitioner by day who helps and heals people, but an evil character by night who harms others and commits a murder.

¹⁴ T Hayashi, Koichiro Kawashima, 2002. Multiple reflections of Lamb waves at a delimitation, Ultrasonics, 40(1—8): 193—197.