A recent Facebook article post and discussion may be of interest to those of you who are unsure about whether to use 'first person', such as "I", "me", and "we".

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158494010665757&id=771660756

My own comment on that discussion was: "I have always supported first person usage where appropriate, both for TG papers and for my students. However, I find some authors, mostly anthropologists, who go way overboard, IMO, to the point where it seems like the paper is simply an overblown ego trip. To me, that is annoying. But I know that each discipline has its own view of reality, so I try to respect that."

Some of the other comments are more insightful for the full range of tourism articles and author experiences.

The article that prompted this is: https://theconversation.com/amp/we-should-use-i-more-in-academic-writing-there-is-benefit-to-first-person-perspective-131898

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.

Maybe about a quarter of the papers that I receive have some degree of this problem, although in only about 10% is it significant enough that I need to send the paper back to the author(s) to fix it. 

As long as I can remembers, the rule has been that the title or caption, along with the footnotes, to a table or figure should provide enough information so that a reader can determine what the table or figure is showing without having to look for additional information in the text of the article. 

This means that all symbols and abbreviations need to be defined either in the table itself or in the notes under the table, and the title needs to be very clear. And this needs to be repeated separately for each table and figure in a paper.

I have often asked colleagues at my university about this when serving on graduate student committees. The vast majority have responded that yes, this is a rule that they know about. However, it is apparently not one that they always think about when advising students (until I mention it) or when writing their own papers.

To me, this should be right up there with the formal referencing of sources that have influenced and informed an academic paper.  Well, OK, may be right after referencing sources...

This post is #1 is a possible future series of Journal Editor Pet Peeves!  -- Alan