Poor title--poor manuscript?

Area of Science:

• Medical Journal Publishing
• Scientific Communication

Background:

• Manuscript titles are crucial for scientific articles.
• Assessing if title quality correlates with manuscript quality is important for publication.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between the quality of scientific manuscript titles and their subsequent rejection rates.
• To determine if title quality serves as a predictor for manuscript acceptance in medical journals.

Main Methods:

• Developed criteria to classify titles as poor, fair, or good.
• Analyzed original and review articles submitted to the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association (2009-2011).
• Evaluated title quality using former editors and assessed rejection rates and odds ratios.

Main Results:

• Manuscripts with poor titles had significantly higher rejection rates (88% for original, 83% for review articles).
• Poor titles increased the odds of rejection by 4.6 times for original articles and 8.2 times for review articles compared to good titles.
• Title quality explained 14% (original) and 27% (review) of the variance in manuscript rejection.

Conclusions:

• A poor manuscript title is a significant predictor of manuscript rejection.
• The quality of a manuscript title often reflects the overall quality and suitability for publication.