The DOI matches its Crossref record; 14 of the 15 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What's in a name? Word inflation, punctuation, abbreviation and cloud formation
Open accessAbstract
The title of a journal paper offers a crucial portal into any scientific field. It determines whether interested readers locate the paper and whether others have enough interest sparked to lead them to read the abstract. This article looks at authored journal paper titles in Medical Education over its first 50 years ( n = 6357) of publication and Medical Teacher over its first 35 years of publication, revealing both trends in areas of interest and how those interests are worded. Word clouds per decade showed a shift from teaching to learning and from examination to assessment, and new foci on learning, patients, research and feedback in both journals. The average length of title in Medical Education peeked in the 2000s, dropping to 70 characters in the 2010s, with no titles being longer than 140 characters (the length of a tweet) in this last decade. Abbreviations were used sparingly. The use of humorous titles, although not common, has increased in recent years. The use of the colon showed a marked increase in the 1980s, dropping a little in the 2000s but resurging in the 2010s. Titles posed as a question increased steadily, appearing to plateau in the 2000s at 11%. The use of humour and questions suggests that the authors of these articles are submitting papers to be selected by the human rather than just the virtual eye. We also hypothesise that the use of humour may indicate a maturation of medical education as a subject.
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As a rule of thumb, 10-12 words may be the ideal length of a paper title, and the title should not be more than 12 words.
“As the rule of thumb, 10 - 12 words may be the ideal length of a paper (41) and the title should not be more than 12 words (31).”
From The Principles of Biomedical Scientific Writing: Title (2019) · cites this paper as [41]
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Citations
Cites
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Article title type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations
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The objective structured clinical examination: can physician‐examiners participate from a distance?
Chan, J. W. T., Humphrey-Murto, S. M., Pugh, D., Su, C., & Wood, T. J. (2014) · Medical Education · doi:10.1111/medu.12326 · Cited by 24
de Saintonge, D. M. C., & Pavlovic, A. (2004) · Medical Education · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2923.2004.01771.x · Cited by 12
Enough rope to hang yourself: word limits in Medical Education
Eva, K. W. (2010) · Medical Education · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03668.x · Cited by 7
‘This thorough, tedious, expensive and disappointing study…’
Walsh, K. (2010) · Medical Education · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03855.x · Cited by 6
If you want the surgery done well, get a woman to do it!
Searle, J. (2000) · Medical Education · doi:10.1046/j.1365-2923.2000.00735.x · Cited by 4
Gardner, M. J. (1969) · Medical Education · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.1969.tb02083.x · Cited by 2
Flagged first, then by citations
1 of the 15 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Bem DJ, 1987, The Complete Academic: A Practical Guide for the Beginning Social Scientist, 171
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Sorted by citations
The Principles of Biomedical Scientific Writing: Title
Bahadoran, Z., Mirmiran, P., Kashfi, K., & Ghasemi, A. (2019) · International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism · doi:10.5812/ijem.98326 · Cited by 61
“(41) and the title should not be more than 12 words (31).”
BackgroundKou, Y., Gray, C. M., Toombs, A. L., & Nardi, B. A. (2018) · CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA) · doi:10.1145/3170427.3188409 · Cited by 15
Philip, R. K. (2020) · Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health · doi:10.1111/jpc.14760 · Cited by 14
Citations—be sure to have a good title
Villar, R. (. (2017) · Journal of Hip Preservation Surgery · doi:10.1093/jhps/hnx025 · Cited by 3
Simplifying education scholarship: new format requirements for publication success
Eva, K. W. (2016) · Medical Education · doi:10.1111/medu.13218 · Cited by 2
Data Security and Privacy Research Trends: LDA Topic Modeling
Zhao, B., Wang, H., & Zhou, J. (2025) · Architecture Engineering and Science · doi:10.32629/aes.v6i3.4374 · Cited by 1
Lainez, M. F. V., Bonifaz, M. A. T., Matías, J. L. R., Alban, M. A. T., & Mora, B. E. M. (2026) · Revista Científica Multidisciplinar G-nerando · doi:10.66473/rcmg.v7i1.1205
Metadata
- Authors
- Schofield, S. J., & Schofield, P. G.
- Affiliations
- University of Dundee (GB)
- School of Life Sciences University of Dundee Dundee UK
- Corresponding author
- Schofield, Susie J
- ORCID
- Schofield, Susie J
- Venue
- Medical Education
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-11-22
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1264-1268
- ISSN
- 0308-0110 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2923
- OpenAlex
- W2553471364
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 6.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- Locations
- Medical Education (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Discovery Research Portal (University of Dundee) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Keywords
- journal article titles, title length, word clouds, abbreviations, punctuation, colon, medical education journals
- MeSH terms
- Education, Medical, Humans, Periodicals as Topic, Publishing, Vocabulary
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