Are Titles of Chemical Papers Becoming More Informative?

The efficiency of key-word-in-context (KWIC) permuted-title indexes and their numerous variations is highly dependent upon authors' choices of titles for their papers. Titles are important not only in commercial services, such as Chemical Titles, BASIC, Current Contents, and CA Condensates, but also in scanning primary journals, and in traditional library services, such as bibliographies. It is generally believed and often stated that titles of chemical papers are becoming more informative as authors become increasingly aware of the importance of titles as "carriers" of information. The present study was undertaken to test whether (1) titles of chemical papers are becoming more informative and (2) whether uninformative titles of chemical papers are being eliminated since the advent of the KWIC index in 1958. The first hypothesis was tested by comparing titles published in 1948, 1958, and 1968 by the following criteria: (1) a count of substantive words in the title; (2) a count of all word matches between title and abstract, with and without the use of a thesaurus; and (3) a count of word matches between title and 10 leading substantive words selected from the abstract, with and without the use of a thesaurus. The second hypothesis was tested by comparing a count of short titles (with 3 or less substantive words) published in 1948, 1958, and 1968. Results confirm that uninformative titles of chemical papers are being eliminated and that informative titles are becoming more informative since the advent of the KWIC index.