Quirks, neologisms, provocations and the mundane: Titles and interpretations

As editor, I get to read a lot of titles, the vast majority of which, alas, we do not end up publishing. In this editorial, I would like to reflect briefly on the nature of titles and their effectiveness in conveying a quick message to a potential reader. Throughout the course of my career, I cannot ever recall seeing any advice about how to create a title for a research paper. Titles in general are meaningful and give some clues as to the content of the article that follows. Sometimes we see a title that really catches the eye, that inspires, or even that disgusts, depending on our individual taste. Here is an example of a title of a paper that, regrettably, we did not publish: ‘Rat Swarm Pelican Based Deep Learning And Sequence Mining For Web Page Recommendation’. How do you feel about that? The first three words alone may suffice to turn you on or off. Why the authors thought that the article might be suitable for the ISJ is another matter, but the title alone has a certain unique quality that might seduce or repel you. Thus, just as the creation of a title is a subjective process, so too is the interpretation of a title. But there are some aspects of a title that are worth examining a little more carefully. For instance, we can look at length, depth, comprehensibility, suitability and so forth. In the paragraphs below, I offer some recent ISJ titles and my own analysis. My purpose is to alert readers to the potential for value in a title, and to gently suggest that the creation of a title is itself an art that is worth examining and practicing carefully. At one extreme, I have seen titles that are almost as long as the abstract. These often tend to mundane description rather than creative quirkiness. The longer titles often have two parts, separated by a dash or colon. It seems that the authors want to cram into the title as many parts of the study as possible, including in some cases a list of all the moderating and mediating variables. This is probably effective both in conveying the substance of a paper to potential readers, and in lengthening one's cv by a line or two. But is it really necessary? Could one devise a more frugal title that is nevertheless attractive to potential readers? The longest I can see at the ISJ in recent years is Kranz et al. (2016) ‘Understanding the influence of absorptive capacity and ambidexterity on the process of business model change: The case of on-premise and cloud computing software’. It is quite comprehensive and certainly provides very clear information to the reader on what to expect in the article. In contrast, the shortest title at the ISJ (excluding editorials) is Clarke's (2016) ‘Big Data, Big Risks’. Not only is this short and pithy, but it is also quite provocative and controversial. It may be disliked by those who are enamoured of big data for instance. It seems to embed the personal stance of the researcher. As a title, I think it is quite attractive and it certainly conveys the essence of the article itself. Sometimes, a title has a quirky flavour to it that borders on the catachrestical, that is, it uses a turn of phrase or a combination of words that seems somehow out of place. It may invite a new interpretation. For instance, Gerlach et al. (2019) ‘Flamingos on a Slackline: Companies' Challenges of Balancing the Competing Demands of Handling Customer Information and Privacy’. Why Flamingos? It is a puzzle that is only resolved in the very last sentence of the conclusion (Gerlach et al., 2019, p. 567), where the authors write: ‘As they are standing on “wobbling slacklines,” companies have to become flamingos and learn to maintain a balanced stance without falling over’. Will the metaphor of the organisation as a flamingo take off? The limited evidence available so far suggests that it has not yet happened: this article is the only one in the entire Wiley Online Library where the word ‘flamingo’ appears in the Accepted: 28 July 2023