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3 Basic tips on writing a good research paper title

Let us discuss the most basic and important aspect of a research paperโ€”the title. Writing a research paper title may seem a simple task, but it requires some serious thought.ย It might come as a surprise to most people that an author, having successfully written a detailed account of his/her research study, experiences a block while attempting to title the research paper. However, most authors, by virtue of possessing comprehensive details of the research paper, are perplexed with regard to how to makeย their research paperย title concise without sacrificing any relevant elements.

When writing a research paper title, authors should realize that despite being repeatedly warned against it, most people do indeed fall prey to โ€œjudging a book by its cover.โ€ This cognitive bias tends to make readers considerably susceptible to allowing the research paper title to function as the sole factor influencing their decision of whether to read or skip a particular paper. Although seeking the professional assistance of a research paper writing service could help the cause, the author of the paper stands as the best judge for setting the right tone of his/her research paper.

Readers come across research paper titles in searches through databases and reference sections of research papers. They deduce what a paper is about and its relevance to them based on the title. Considering this, it is clear that the title of your paper is the most important determinant of how many people will read it.

A good research paper title:

  • Condenses the paperโ€™s content in a few words
  • Captures the readersโ€™ attention
  • Differentiates the paper from other papers of the same subject area
Scroll to the end of the article for a 3-minute interactive video on tips for writing an effective research paper title

So here are three basic tips to keep in mind while writing a title:

1] Keep it simple, brief and attractive:ย The primary function of a title is to provide a precise summary of the paperโ€™s content. So keep the title brief and clear. Use active verbs instead of complex noun-based phrases, and avoid unnecessary details. Moreover, a good title for a research paper is typically around 10 to 12 words long. A lengthy title may seem unfocused and take the readersโ€™ attention away from an important point.

Avoid: Drug XYZ has an effect of muscular contraction for an hour in snails of Achatina fulcia species

Better: Drug XYZ induces muscular contraction in Achatina fulcia snails

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2] Use appropriate descriptive words:ย A good research paper title should contain key words used in the manuscript and should define the nature of the study. Think about terms people would use to search for your study and include them in your title.

Avoid: Effects of drug A on schizophrenia patients: study of a multicenter mixed group

Better: Psychosocial effects of drug A on schizophrenia patients: a multicenter randomized controlled trial

To submit a publication ready manuscript without errors and mistakes that commonly go unnoticed by authors, check out Editageโ€™s professional editing services.

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    ํ•ด๋‹น ๊ธฐ์‚ฌ๋ฅผ ์Šคํฌ๋žฉํ•ด๋ณด์„ธ์š”!

    ์ง€์‹์€ ๋ชจ๋‘์—๊ฒŒ ํ•จ๊ป˜ ๊ณต์œ ๋˜์–ด์•ผ ํ•œ๋‹ค๋Š” ๊ฒƒ์ด ์—๋””ํ‹ฐ์ง€ ์ธ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์˜ ์ด๋…์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ํ•ด๋‹น ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์—์„œ ์ œ๊ณต๋˜๋Š” ๋ชจ๋“  ๊ธฐ์‚ฌ๋Š” Creative Commons license๋กœ ์žฌํฌ์ŠคํŒ… ๋ฐ ์Šคํฌ๋žฉ์ด ๊ฐ€๋Šฅํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์•„๋ž˜์˜ ๊ฐ€์ด๋“œ๋ผ์ธ๋งŒ ์œ ๋…ํ•ด์ฃผ์‹ ๋‹ค๋ฉด ์–ธ์ œ๋“ ์ง€ ๋ฌด๋ฃŒ๋กœ ์—๋””ํ‹ฐ์ง€ ํ•™์ˆ  ์ „๋ฌธ๊ฐ€์˜ ์ง€์‹์„ ๊ฐ€์ ธ๊ฐ€์‹ค ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค!


    • ์ฃผ์˜ : ์—๋””ํ‹ฐ์ง€ ํ•™์ˆ  ์ „๋ฌธ๊ฐ€๋“ค์€ ํ•ด๋‹น ์ฝ˜ํ…์ธ ๋ฅผ ๋งŒ๋“ค๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด ๋งŽ์€ ์‹œ๊ฐ„๊ณผ ๋…ธ๋ ฅ์„ ์Ÿ๊ณ  ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ๊ธฐ์‚ฌ๋ฅผ ์Šคํฌ๋žฉ ๋ฐ ์žฌํฌ์ŠคํŒ… ํ•˜์‹ค ๋•Œ๋Š” ๋ช…ํ™•ํ•œ ์ถœ์ฒ˜๋ฅผ ๋‚จ๊ฒจ์ฃผ์‹œ๊ธฐ ๋ฐ”๋ž๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.
    • ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€ ์žฌ์‚ฌ์šฉ: ์ด๋ฏธ์ง€๋ฅผ ์›๋ณธ์ด ์•„๋‹Œ ํŽธ์ง‘ ์žฌ์‚ฌ์šฉํ•˜์‹ค ๋•Œ๋Š” ์—๋””ํ‹ฐ์ง€ ์ธ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์˜ ํ—ˆ๊ฐ€๊ฐ€ ํ•„์š”ํ•ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.

    ์ฝ”๋“œ๋ฅผ ๋ณต์‚ฌํ•˜์…”์„œ ๊ธฐ์‚ฌ ๊ณต์œ ๋ฅผ ์›ํ•˜์‹œ๋Š” ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ์— ์ ์šฉํ•˜์‹œ๋ฉด ์—๋””ํ‹ฐ์ง€ ์ธ์‚ฌ์ดํŠธ ๊ธฐ์‚ฌ๋ฅผ ๊ฐ€์žฅ ์‰ฌ์šด ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ•์œผ๋กœ ๊ณต์œ ํ•˜์‹ค ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค.
     
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