Abstract

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