Over the years, I've learnt (the hard way) that the title of our articles is more important than we like to admit. I'd love to go back and change a few of my own. Here are some tips
1) state the finding ("The mPFC is engaged..."), not the question ("The neural basis of...") 1/7
1) state the finding ("The mPFC is engaged..."), not the question ("The neural basis of...") 1/7
2) don't get too clever - jokes/sayings are cute but they (likely) don't affect how many will end up reading the paper, so you are sacrificing valuable word space 2/7
3) think about keywords that speak to your intended audience. To appeal to neural AND cognitive folk, use "neural", "brain", etc, AND "cognitive control", "semantic memory", "episodic memory", etc 3/
4) beware of keywords that differ across subfields. Personal eg: I used "meta-analysis" in the psychology sense (statistically modeling factors of fMRI decoding), but the fMRI use (which brain areas light up?) meant it went largely unread by my target audience 4/7
5) when there's a clear direction to an effect, say it ('Greater response slow-down for...'). Why? I've had someone (prestigious journal/PI) describe one of my findings as the exact opposite of what I found, in a paper's discussion! (I let 1st-author know, they said sorry 🤷) 5/7
6) run it by someone in your area who is unfamiliar with the work. You're too close to it. Don't have anyone there? Reach out to someone on Twitter - feedback on a title in exchange for hearing about cool new work is a great deal for them! Fwd them this thread if it helps 6/7
7) finally, don't be afraid to change it during major revisions. The reviewers usually don't care (as long as it's accurate) and neither will the Editor 7/7
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