The colon title in complementary and alternative medicine articles (1995–2016)
Content, context, authorship and rhetorical functions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.34990Keywords:
alternative medicine, colon titles, complementary medicine, conventional medicine, discourse analysis, journal titles, research articlesAbstract
Recent research reveals a growing tendency for busy clinicians to rely on titles only in selecting papers relevant to therapeutic decisions. The implications of this have motivated much scholarship in the study of titles in medical journal articles, but despite expanding interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), titles in this area have received very little attention. This is despite the fact that CAM’s history and present contested status ought to make the evolution of its writing of particular interest to discourse analysts. The present paper considers the role played by the colon in titles for attracting readership, based on a study of three high-impact CAM journals, and analyzing frequency of use, length and authorship patterns, as well as a range of rhetorical and lexical choices. The findings show that, while colon titles reflect local constraints such as publication requirements, thus imposing a degree of uniformity across title styles, the need to capture the attention of an increasingly busy audience encourages idiosyncratic rhetorical and lexical choices.
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Soler, V. (2007) Writing titles in science: An exploratory study. English for Specific Purposes 26 (1): 90–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2006.08.001
Van Wesel, M., Wyatt, S. and Ten Haaf, J. (2014) What a difference a colon makes: How superficial factors influence subsequent citation. Scientometrics 98 (3): 1601–1615. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1154-x
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Yadav, H. (2006) The philosophy of the medical case. Student British Medical Journal 14: 133–176.
Yitzhaki, M. (1994) Relation of title length of journal articles to number of authors. Scientometrics 30 (1): 321–332. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02017231
Bishop, F. L. and Lewith, G. T. (2008) Who uses CAM? A narrative review of demographic characteristics and health factors associated with CAM use. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 7 (1): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.1093/ecam/ nen023
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2016) Submission guidelines. Available online: https://bmccomplementalternmed.biomedcentral.com/submission-guidelines/ preparing-your-manuscript/research-article
Bothwell, L. K., Greene, J. A., Podolsky, S. H. and Jones, D. S. (2016) Assessing the gold standard – Lessons from the history of RCTs. New England Journal of Medicine 374: 2175–2181. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMms1604593
CONSORT 2010 Statement (2010) Updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomised trials. British Medical Journal 340: c1432. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c1432
Diodato, V. and Pearson, K. (1985) Source indexing in science journals and indexing services: A survey of current practices. Science and Technology Libraries 6 (1–2): 103– 118. https://doi.org/10.1300/J122v06n01_12
Duchet, C. (1973) La Fille abandonnée et La Bête humaine: Éléments de titrologie romanesque. Littérature 12: 49–73. https://doi.org/10.3406/litt.1973.1989
Eva, K. W. (2013) Titles, abstracts and authors. In G. M. Hall (ed.) How to Write a Paper, 33– 41 (5th edition). Oxford: John Wiley and Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118488713. ch6
Ferguson, G. (2015) English for medical purposes. In B. Paltridge and S. Starfield (eds) The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes, 193–213. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Fox, C. W. and Burns, C. S. (2015) The relationship between manuscript title structure and success, editorial decisions and citation performance for an ecological journal. Ecology and Evolution 5 (10): 1970–1980. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.1480
Frass, M., Strassl, R. P., Friehs, H., Müllner, M., Kundi, M. and Kaye, A. (2012) Use and acceptance of complementary and alternative medicine among the general population and medical personnel: A systematic review. Ochsner Journal 12 (1): 45–56.
Goodman, N. W. (2000) Survey of active verbs in the titles of clinical trials reports. British Medical Journal 320: 914–915. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.320.7239.914
Goodman, N. W. and Edwards, M. B. (2014) Medical Writing: A Prescription for Clarity (4th edition). New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781107279179
Gopalakrishnan, G. and Ganeshkumar, P. (2013) Systematic reviews and meta-analysis: Understanding the best evidence in primary healthcare. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care 2 (1): 9–14. https://doi.org/10.4103/2249-4863.109934
Gotti, M. (2016) Variations in medical discourse for academic purposes. In P. Ordoñez López and N. Edo-Marzá (eds) Medical Discourse in Professional, Academic and Popular Settings, 9–31. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/ 9781783096268-003
Gotti, M. and Salager-Meyer, F. (eds) (2006) Advances in Medical Discourse Analysis: Oral and Written Contexts. Bern: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0351-0396-0
Hartley, J. (2007) Planning that title: Practices and preferences for titles with colons in academic articles. Library and Information Science Research 29 (4): 553–568. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.lisr.2007.05.002
Haynes, R. B., McKibbon, K. A., Walker, C. J., Fitzgerald, N. and Ramsden, M. F. (1990) Online access to MEDLINE in clinical settings: A study of use and usefulness. Annals of Internal Medicine 112 (1): 78–84. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-112-1-78
Hudson, J. (2016) An analysis of titles submitted to the UK REF in 2014: Authors, disciplines, and stylistic details. Scientometrics 109 (2): 871–889. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11192-016-2081-4
Huggett, S. (2011) Heading for success: Or how not to title your paper. Research Trends 24. Available online: https://www.researchtrends.com/issue24-september-2011/headingfor-success-or-how-not-to-title-your-paper/
Jacques, T. S. and Sebire, N. J. (2010) The impact of article titles on citation hits and analysis of general and specialist medical journals. Journal of Royal Society of Medicine 1 (1): 2. https://doi.org/10.1258/shorts.2009.100020
Jamali, H. R. and Nikzad, M. (2011) Article title type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations. Scientometrics 88 (2): 653–661. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11192-011-0412-z
Kerans, M. E., Murray, A. and Sabatè, S. (2016) Content and phrasing in titles of original research and review articles in 2015: Range of practice in four clinical journals. Publications [MDPI] 4 (2): 11. https://doi.org/10.3390/publications4020011
Lewison, G. and Hartley, J. (2005) What’s in a title? Number of words and the presence of colons. Scientometrics 63 (2): 341–356. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0216-0
Lowes, R. (2016) PubMed asked to add conflict-of-interest info to abstracts. Medscape 4. Available online: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/861440
Mabe, M. A. and Amin, M. (2002) Dr Jekyll and Dr Hyde: Author-reader asymmetries in scholarly publishing. Aslib Proceedings 54 (3):149–157. https://doi.org/10.1108/ 00012530210441692
Mateen, F. J., Oh, J., Tergas, A. I., Bhayani, N. H. and Kamdar, B. B. (2013) Titles versus titles and abstracts for initial screening of article for systematic reviews. Clinical Epidemiology 5: 89–95. https://doi.org/10.2147/CLEP.S43118
Offit, P. A. (2012) Studying complementary and alternative therapies. Journal of the American Medical Association 307 (17):1803–1804. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2012.518
Salager-Meyer, F. (2014) Origin and development of English for medical purposes. Part I. Medical Writing 23 (1): 49–52. https://doi.org/10.1179/2047480613Z.000000000187
Salager-Meyer, F., Alcaraz Ariza, M. A. and Lewin, B. A. (2014) Abstract quality in complementary and alternative medicine papers: A structural and cross-generic analysis. In M. Bondi and R. Lórez Sanz (eds) Abstracts in Academic Discourse: Variation and Change, 221–243. Bern: Peter Lang.
Salager-Meyer, F., Alcaraz Ariza, M. A. and Zambrano, M. (2013) Titling and authorship practices in medical case reports: A diachronic study. Communication and Medicine 10 (1): 63–80. https://doi.org/10.1558/cam.v10i1.63
Salager-Meyer, F., Lewin, B. A. and Luzardo Briceño, M. (2017) Neutral, risky or provocative? Trends in titling practices in complementary and alternative medicine articles (1995- 2016). Lenguas Para Fines Específicos 23 (2): 263–289.
SJR (2016) SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Available online: http://www.scimagojr.com/ journalrank.php?category=2707&year=2016
Soler, V. (2007) Writing titles in science: An exploratory study. English for Specific Purposes 26 (1): 90–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2006.08.001
Van Wesel, M., Wyatt, S. and Ten Haaf, J. (2014) What a difference a colon makes: How superficial factors influence subsequent citation. Scientometrics 98 (3): 1601–1615. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1154-x
Vodanovic, M. (2015) Translation of titles: To be or not to be? European Science Editing 41 (4): 95.
Yadav, H. (2006) The philosophy of the medical case. Student British Medical Journal 14: 133–176.
Yitzhaki, M. (1994) Relation of title length of journal articles to number of authors. Scientometrics 30 (1): 321–332. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02017231
Published
2019-08-28
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Articles
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Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Lewin, B. A., Salager-Meyer, F., & Briceño, M. L. (2019). The colon title in complementary and alternative medicine articles (1995–2016): Content, context, authorship and rhetorical functions. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 12(3), 313-335. https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.34990
