Q: Why do some researchers and teachers say that keywords should not be taken from the title?
Asked on 17 Oct, 2020
Some researchers, teachers/professors, and journals stipulate this for a couple of reasons.
- Titles and keywords have different purposes. Titles are meant to communicate the core of the research. Keywords are meant to make the research paper searchable.
- Titles, being of limited length (and purpose, as we saw above), do not typically have all the key or important words and concepts of the paper. That’s where keywords come in: to supplement the information in the title.
If you were to take the keywords only from the title, you would have a limited number of keywords, thus reducing the chances of your paper being discovered.
Hope that helps. For more insights into keywords and titles, you may refer to these articles: