Objectives. Titles of journal articles should effectively convey to readers, editors, and reviewers basic topics of the articles and, within topics, specific aspects. To increase our understanding of the current practices of authors and editors in the use of titles, we analyzed article titles from a sample of general medical journals and queried edi-tors in the United States and England. Design and Outcome Measures. We examined the titles of articles published as original contributions in four peer-reviewed medical journals during July-December 1995. Using an explicit typology developed for this study, we classified each title accord-ing to elements present: methods, dataset, results, conclusions, or topic only. We also queried editors of selected journals about policies regarding titles published in their journals. Results. Of the 420 titles we reviewed, 168 (40%) were classified as “Topic only” because they reflected the subject of the paper but did not include information in other categories or appeared too ambiguous to classify. The second most common clas-sification was “Methods ” (33%); “Results” accounted for nearly one fifth (18%) of the titles, and only two (1%) of the titles pre-sented a conclusion. The ambiguity of some titles precluded determination of whether they described studies or review articles. Of the journals we queried, only one had a pub-lished policy regarding titles, and that policy addressed only the length of the title. Conclusions. Most titles lack information about study design, methods, and results. We recommend that research be conducted on the interests of authors, readers, and edi-tors regarding the content of titles.

to use informative titles for newly submitted articles. Setting – JCE provides timely, authoritative studies developed from the interplay of clinical medicine, epidemiology, and biostatistics. Articles are oriented toward epidemiological methodology, clinical research, or both. Methods – An associate editor is responsible for ensuring that article titles are informative. Authors are instructed to submit titles that are simple declarative statements summarizing the message of the article as succinctly as possible. The informative titles should include the “answer ” within the title (the main mes-sage of the conclusion), be no longer than 15 words, and state verbs in the past tense for individual studies (whose re-sults might be overruled by later studies or meta-analyses) and in the present tense for systematic reviews (whose results are unlikely to be overruled by later studies). Results – The new criteria were partially implemented in early 2003 with full implementation in 2004. Due to the editorial process, new journal issues with declarative titles started appearing in the fall of 2004. Conclusion – It is hoped that informative titles will help JCE readers to better assess the content of the information in the article. McGowan and Tugwell 84 The Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (JCE) is a monthly

How to write a good title