1
00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:05,400
Choosing a strong title for your research paper is very important because the title of your paper is

2
00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:11,220
the first thing that potential future readers are gonna see before they decide whether to look further

3
00:00:11,220 --> 00:00:12,800
at your paper or not.

4
00:00:12,810 --> 00:00:14,780
So what does a strong title look like?

5
00:00:14,940 --> 00:00:17,870
And here are some major properties of a strong title.

6
00:00:18,180 --> 00:00:24,930
First, a strong title has to include the research question or the answer. If every possible answer to

7
00:00:24,930 --> 00:00:27,200
your research question would be interesting

8
00:00:27,270 --> 00:00:31,740
then it can make sense to state the research question in your title to keep the suspense.

9
00:00:31,770 --> 00:00:35,310
So for example for the question "what causes depression?"

10
00:00:35,310 --> 00:00:37,740
almost every possible answer would be interesting.

11
00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:42,960
But if in your case not every possible answer is interesting but actually the answer that YOU found

12
00:00:42,960 --> 00:00:44,720
is particularly interesting,

13
00:00:44,760 --> 00:00:48,030
it can make more sense to state the answer in the title.

14
00:00:48,050 --> 00:00:53,760
So an example for this would be a title such as "insulin causes impotence".

15
00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:59,340
The question here would be "does insulin cause impotence?" but probably nobody would be interested in that.

16
00:00:59,490 --> 00:01:04,320
But if you tell them that the answer is "yes", people may be very interested in your research.

17
00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:09,720
In any case, you want to include either the research question or the answer in the title.

18
00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:16,980
Second, a strong title is short. And it should use maximally 15 words. If less even better.

19
00:01:17,010 --> 00:01:22,590
Third, a strong title should also use the relevant key words. Words that are commonly used in your field

20
00:01:22,980 --> 00:01:28,120
and that other researchers are likely to use as search terms to find your paper.

21
00:01:28,170 --> 00:01:34,050
Fourth, a strong title should be attention-grabbing when researchers see your title among several research

22
00:01:34,050 --> 00:01:35,160
paper titles,

23
00:01:35,160 --> 00:01:41,490
they should be drawn towards your title. And fifth, a strong title should communicate what's new.

24
00:01:41,550 --> 00:01:41,760
Okay.

25
00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:47,250
When you look at this you may realize that this is a lot of stuff for something that is basically just

26
00:01:47,250 --> 00:01:53,460
one sentence and there's the danger that if you cram all of this in one title the title gets very messy

27
00:01:53,460 --> 00:01:56,640
and ends up being more confusing than effective.

28
00:01:57,240 --> 00:02:01,560
So first of all I want to show you a little trick that can help you to prevent that, which is the colon

29
00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:02,550
trick.

30
00:02:02,550 --> 00:02:07,680
Now I'm not saying that you necessarily should use the colon trick but I'm saying that it can be a useful

31
00:02:07,680 --> 00:02:13,590
trick to bring more order to your title. And the colon trick basically means that you split your title

32
00:02:13,590 --> 00:02:16,830
into two parts separated by a colon.

33
00:02:16,950 --> 00:02:20,130
So for example your title could be a general description,

34
00:02:20,260 --> 00:02:23,180
colon, and then a specific description.

35
00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:31,450
Or it could be an attention grabber, colon, and then a description of your research. Or it could be the

36
00:02:31,450 --> 00:02:33,040
topic, colon,

37
00:02:33,700 --> 00:02:35,970
and then again a description of your research.

38
00:02:36,190 --> 00:02:41,470
So this can be a very useful trick to get more into your title without confusing the reader.

39
00:02:41,650 --> 00:02:46,410
So let's have a look at some examples of real titles of research papers.

40
00:02:46,480 --> 00:02:54,020
So the first one is: Agent-based modelling: a new approach for theory building in social psychology.

41
00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:59,920
This is a paper from obviously social psychology and as you can see here it starts by stating the general

42
00:02:59,920 --> 00:03:05,050
topic and then narrows it down and makes clear what's new in this paper.

43
00:03:05,050 --> 00:03:13,010
Another example is: Learning quickly when irrelevant attributes abound: a new linear threshold algorithm.

44
00:03:13,030 --> 00:03:18,760
This is a computer science paper I believe and it starts with a description of what the question of

45
00:03:18,760 --> 00:03:20,060
the research was:

46
00:03:20,080 --> 00:03:25,180
How do you learn quickly when irrelevant attributes abound? And then they communicate clearly what the

47
00:03:25,180 --> 00:03:27,010
contribution of their research is.

48
00:03:27,010 --> 00:03:30,650
It's a new linear threshold algorithm.

49
00:03:30,690 --> 00:03:30,940
Okay.

50
00:03:30,940 --> 00:03:38,730
Another example: Is the face a window to the soul? Investigation of the accuracy of intuitive judgments

51
00:03:39,210 --> 00:03:41,880
of the trustworthiness of human faces.

52
00:03:41,940 --> 00:03:46,830
So this is a very long title and in my opinion it's a bit too long. But nevertheless there are some interesting

53
00:03:46,830 --> 00:03:47,810
things going on here.

54
00:03:47,820 --> 00:03:53,730
So they start with an attention grabber: is the face a window to the soul?

55
00:03:53,800 --> 00:03:58,890
That's a very captivating way of introducing their research. And then they describe dryly what their

56
00:03:58,890 --> 00:04:01,230
research paper is actually about.

57
00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:04,680
And as I said already, in my opinion this title is too long.

58
00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:06,410
But I like the first part of the title.

59
00:04:06,420 --> 00:04:09,790
I think the first part of the title is very well thought through.

60
00:04:10,500 --> 00:04:12,170
Okay one more example.

61
00:04:12,510 --> 00:04:15,320
The strength of weak learn ability.

62
00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:19,140
This is a very influential paper and I think it has an amazing title.

63
00:04:19,170 --> 00:04:22,460
And the reason is because it is a very short title,

64
00:04:22,620 --> 00:04:27,990
it makes clear what the research is about, and it is captivating. And it is captivating mainly because

65
00:04:27,990 --> 00:04:34,560
of the conflict between strength and weak: the strength of weak learn ability.

66
00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:37,510
This title puzzles me and makes me want to read the paper.

67
00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:38,310
It is short.

68
00:04:38,310 --> 00:04:44,280
It is clear it has a lot of things that a good title has. And that might be part of the reason why this

69
00:04:44,280 --> 00:04:47,140
was a very successful research paper.

70
00:04:47,160 --> 00:04:51,480
So as you can see there are many ways to construct titles but they generally have in common that they

71
00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:58,000
clearly state what their research is about. So they either state the question or the answer of the research.

72
00:04:58,170 --> 00:05:00,160
They include relevant keywords.

73
00:05:00,210 --> 00:05:02,230
They are often attention grabbing.

74
00:05:02,280 --> 00:05:06,460
They communicate what's new and if possible they are also short.

75
00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:10,020
So try to check off as many items as you can possibly can.

76
00:05:10,020 --> 00:05:12,810
And if you find that your title gets too confusing.

77
00:05:12,810 --> 00:05:13,890
Use the colon trick.