Titles in research articles: Changes across time and discipline

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Jiang, Feng Kevin and Hyland, Ken (2023) Titles in research articles: Changes across time and discipline. Learned Publishing, 36 (2). pp. 239-248. ISSN 0953-1513

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Abstract

Titles are a crucial feature of research papers and have become increasingly important with changes in publishing practices and the explosion of published research. As a result, novice writers seeking to get their work noticed in international journals might benefit from a clear understanding of the features of research titles and an awareness of the relationship between language and disciplinary context. In this study, we explore this relationship and the impact of changing contexts on titles across the last 60 years on the length, form and content of 36,000 titles from the ten leading journals from six disciplines spread along a soft-hard science continuum. Our results show a considerable increase in the length of titles coupled with more interrogative and compound titles in almost all disciplines. There has also been a growing mention of methods in the titles of hard knowledge papers with more frequent inclusion of results in the softer domains. These diachronic changes can be attributed to different characteristics of the fields and of the changing dynamics of the publishing context. Our findings have important implications for early career academics seeking to publish in English and contribute to studies of diachronic analysis of academic discourse.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Funding Information: The first author acknowledges the support of this study by the Research Project of Social Sciences in Jilin Province (2019B163), the Grant for Young Researchers in Social Sciences by Jilin University (2019FRLX04) and also by the Research Project of Humanities and Social Sciences administered by Education Department of Jilin Province (JJKH20211252SK).
Uncontrolled Keywords: academic publishing,diachronic change,disciplinary differences,research titles,communication,library and information sciences ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3315
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Language in Education
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 15 Dec 2022 04:14
Last Modified: 19 Apr 2023 01:20
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/90179
DOI: 10.1002/leap.1498

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