Framing research in Food Science: the state of the art on research article, short communication and poster presentation titles

Abstract

Titles are the first point of contact with readers and are encoded to provide concise information on the paper’s contents. Data from available surveys show that the structural construction conforms to four different layouts, namely nominal, compound, full-sentence and question, with a prevalence of the former two formats and an increase in the use of the latter ones. The aim of this paper is to discuss the state of the art of title encoding practices in three written genres commonly employed in Food Science: research articles, short communications and poster presentations. Findings indicate the prevalent occurrence of nominal and compound layouts and the lack of question titles in the three genres analysed. Results also show that titles have a mean length of 15.3 words in research articles, of 14.6 words in short communications and of 12 words in poster presentations. The data are shared to offer a framework of current praxis in Food Science and to inform teachers and authors on how to shape informative titles for their research.

Keywords

• Titles
• food science
• research article
• short communication
• poster presentation