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The title is, arguably, one of the most important parts of a paper. The title is not only printed first (or very close to the top) in an article; it is the part that will be read by most people. These readers must then decide whether the paper contains information that is relevant or interesting for them. The main requirements of a good title can be formulated briefly and sharply: be precise, simple, and short. The best title is one that gives the most accurate information about the content of the paper with the fewest possible words.

When formulating the title, one should also consider that many potential readers will only see the title in the different abstracting journals and services, and this constitutes the information on which they will have to decide whether to obtain a copy of the paper. Abstracting and information retrieving services, as well as Internet search engines, also use the words in the titles.

Loose or imprecise words in the title generate inexact search results. The rules that readers follow are very simple: they will pass over loose, ill-defined, or overly general titles. They will not be intrigued by cryptic titles, jokes, or vague promises. They will know that there cannot be a “Theory of everything” (Laughlin and Pines, 2000). Having an informative title is mandatory, otherwise the paper will never reach the intended readership.

In earlier literature, overly general and imprecise titles occur often. The results presented in a paper in 1957 under the title, “The influence of some cations on an adenosine triphosphatase from peripheral nerves” © Gábor L. Lövei, CC BY 4.0  https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0235.05 (Skou, 1957) eventually earned its author a Nobel Prize. However, it is impossible to judge from the title what was novel in the paper, or even what was studied precisely. It would certainly not be considered an effective title today. The Nobel Prize was probably not given for the excellence of the title!