Previously, I wrote about the difference between case study papers and theory-based papers and how that influences your title. This blog entry is a more comprehensive complication of tips for you to follow when coming up with a title for an article.

The goal of the title is to capture the interests of potential readers so they will then read your abstract, and then read and cite your paper. As such, the title is possibly the most crucial part of your paper from a “visibility” and “citation” perspective. You really should choose your title with care.

Here are some tips based on what I have learned from various sources on this topic over my years as the TG journal editor-in-chief.

Creating Curiosity

You want to create a Curiosity Gap. This is done through a careful balance of having too much information and too little in the title. If your title is too informative, then more people are likely to decide that they do not need to read it for their purposes. If you title is too vague, however, then potential readers are more likely to decide that it is not worth reading.

There are two types of curiosity that you can try to generate: (a) novelty or newness; and (b) epistemic knowledge building. While somewhat overlapping, we can think of novelty as tapping into the human curiosity to explore unknown places, ideas and concepts. It proposes new ways of seeing or uncovers hidden realities. Epistemic curiosity taps into human interest in how our known thoughts and concepts might evolve with new knowledge. It builds and connects concepts that we are already familiar with.  

Being Clear

You know your research inside and out. However, most of the rest of the world has no clue as to what you are doing. A clear title is essential to capture the widest possible relevant audience for your paper. Here are some rules:

1. USE COMMON WORDS – the more uncommon words that are in a titles, the less the paper is downloaded
   
   
2. USE SHORT TITLES – it is generally believed that you should have no more than 12 words in your title (including the subtitle) because long titles are difficult to remember and downloaded less are less likely to be downloaded (see the Curiosity Gap comment above). Also, if you have a subtitle keep it short. Tourism Geographies does not allow more than 12 words in a title.
   
   
3. AVOID WORDS WITH LITTLE OR NO MEANING – these make title unnecessarily long (again see the Curiosity Gap comment above).
   
   In particular, do not use the words “A Study of…” or “Exploring…”  or “Understanding…” or anything like that. All journals articles are a study of something, or are exploring something. You do not need to tell your reader that you are doing that.
   
   
4. DO NOT USE ACRONYMS OR ABBREVIATIONS in your title without spelling them out. While you and your friends may understand the acronym, many potential readers will not.
   
   
5. DO NOT USE THE WORD “CASE” in your title because case study papers are downloaded and cited much less than other papers. (See: Please Avoid Using Case Study in Your Paper Title)
   
   
6. AVOID HUMOR – humor, puns and innuendos are often are culturally specific and not understood by other cultures. In addition, papers with such titles may not show up as often in search results.
   
   
7. USE DECLARATIVE TITLES – because these types of titles were found to be downloaded somewhat more than other types, which increases their alt-metric scores. However, I have not heard that they are cited more than other types. Here are the three most common types of titles:
   
   
   • Descriptive (most common) – describes the subject of the article but does not reveal the main conclusions. Example: 'Internet Mediated Representations of Ecotourism'
     
     
   • Declarative – states the main findings or conclusions in the title. Example: 'Internet Representations of Ecotourism Fail to Effectively Integrate Tourism and Ecology’
     
     
   • Interrogative – introduce the subject in the form of a question. Example: 'How Does the Internet Mediate Representations of Ecotourism?'
     
     

Who would have thought that the Title to a paper would be so important and so complicated?

That is what I have so far. I will add to this blog as I come across additional ideas.

UPDATE: 4 September 2019 - Related information on Book Titles is provided in the Taylor & Francis Author Guide to Discoverability.

(See also a more recent blog post: How to Title Your Article: Rules and Tips)

In there early days of Tourism Geographies (which was first published in 1999), there were basically no restrictions on how authors titled their papers. Some of them approached the method that is common for some thesis and dissertations of including ​every possible keyword in the title, with the apparent belief that this would be (1) the most accurate approach, and (2) attract the most (or maybe the best?) readers. After TG became accepted in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI, in 2008), however, I learned that there are some general guidelines on how to title a paper to attract the largest audience. 

I was told by my publisher that, in general, papers that review the research literature on a certain topic attract the largest audiences. Thus, Progress in Human Geography, which mostly publishes review-type articles, has the highest SSCI rating of all geography journals. On the other hand, papers with the words "case study" in their title generally have the smallest readership because only people who have a specific interest in that case study location are likely to read the paper.

Based on this knowledge, I initially implemented a policy of limiting titles for Tourism Geographies to 10 words. (I had heard of other journals that have an 8 word limit!) The goal was to make every paper sound like a literature review paper to maximize their potential for citation. After a couple of years of complaints, I changed the word limit to 12 words, which people seem to be OK with. I will also suggest alternate titles that I think will work better for people who have a hard time with the 12 word limit. 

In addition, I mostly ban the words "case study" from titles -- although occasionally they slip through because I am not always so vigilant. If there is a case study involved, it should be mentioned in the abstract and the place should be listed in the keywords (I have been even more lax on enforcing this). However, the place does not need to be in the title. (Occasionally, an author has a case study that is not mentioned it in the title, abstract or keywords, which I also think is a mistake-- although in the opposite direction.)

Most of the papers that are published in a journal like Tourism Geographies are in between the two extremes of pure literature review and pure case study. They are driven by theory, and therefore contain a well conceptualized literature review, and they are empirically based on case study field work that is trying to resolve a theoretical question. For those papers, the theoretical question is what should drive the title. The empirical place (usually) does not need to be in the title, but should be mentioned in the abstract and keywords.

On the other hand, if the paper is mostly a case study, in which theory is secondary or only used to support a critical analysis of the case, then the case study place should be in the title, along with the basic goals of the argument that is being made. This is especially true of 'Tourism Places' articles, which are a special type of article published in Tourism Geographies. These articles usually have a particular theoretical perspective or lens that is used to expand out understanding of the tourism experience, though they are usually not trying to necessarily develop new theoretical understandings.

Of course nothing is sacrosanct, and it is very possible for a case study to be very popular, and for a literature review paper to fall flat. In the end, the quality of the research and writing are more important that the title. But I think knowing these general rules can help place a paper in a proper perspective to build its readership.