Transcript TITLE, BYLINE, ABSTRACT, AND KEYWORDS FOR SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES

TITLE, BYLINE, ABSTRACT,
AND KEYWORDS FOR
SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES
Mien A. Rifai
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
c.o. “Herbarium Bogorience”, Puslit Biologi LIPI, Jalan Juanda 22, Bogor;
“Tang Lebun”, RT 03/RW 15, Kotabatu, Ciomas, Bogor 16610
THE GOLDEN RULE being always upheld in
preparing scientific articles is briefly
acronymized as ABC
A(ccurate) – highly precise
 B(rief) – compact and to the point
 C(lear) – unambiguous, single interpretation

But please bear in mind the saying that ‘The
golden rule is that there is no golden rule’!
Anatomically, modern scientific writings in
general always contain the following
items: title, byline, abstract, keywords,
body of text, acknowledgement,
bibliography, appendix.
If the title, byline, abstract and keywords of a
scientific article normally cover only its first
page and hence represent only a small fraction of
the published work, the body of text may by
comparison occupy a whole book. Nevertheless
this preliminary component represents a very
important part of the work, so that they are given
a very prominent and most significant position in
the publication.
With many variations and modifications as well as nomenclatures, and
depending upon established traditions of the respective disciplines, the
body of text of current scientific writings normally arranged in the socalled IMRD pattern:
introduction = containing a statement on the problems faced (with a brief
review of the salient literature) and reasoning (theoretical background) of
the activity being reported – ideally not more than 10% of the length of
the article
methodology = approach, site location, materials and methods, frame of
thought, and any other information on what had been done –
approximately 15% of the length of the article
results = detailing all data and information gathered and unraveled, their
analyses and syntheses, as well as the possible findings that can be
developed therein – about 35% of the length of the article
discussion – elaboration and argument to explain the meaning and
significance of the novelties and findings being discovered, with special
reference to their scientific position in relation with current theories or
opinions among fellow scholars and scientists, as well as the
generalization and conclusion achieved – also about 35% of the length of
the article
To this is always added bibliography – references cited which should be less
than 5% of the length of the article
*TITLE
In scientific articles, titles represent the
kernel, essence, interiority, soul, or image
of their contents
Therefore a title is more a label rather than a
statement, which succinctly encapsulates
the whole subject matter being dealt with
A title should be considered as an advertisement
useful to capture all potential readers and
possible users of the articles
It should also function as a beacon or ‘neon
light’ to attract the attention of others to its
possible use as a source of inspiration for
furthering one’s work
Please remember that:
1. The title represents the part of the article
which is most read by people
2. Hence the title determines the fate of a
scientific article – be read and cited, or
ignored and dismissed
3. If unlucky, it will represents the only part of
the whole article ever read by people outside
its authors and editors
Therefore the title should be
prepared very carefully in order to:
be immediately comprehended, wholly
understood, and grasped by all readers
 adequately describe the whole content of the
article
 draw the notice of casual readers
 stimulate the interest of information seekers

Select only strong, positive, informative,
important words from the familiar vocabulary
and appropriate scientific terms in accordance
with traditions and jargons of the respective
scientific disciplines
Be simple and concise, by employing fewest
possible words through omission of
unnecessary ones
Good titles ideally should consist
of not more than
8 words (German)
 10 words (English)
 12 words (Indonesian)
 90 strokes (including space) on the keyboard
Because of the development of more detailed
specifications in modern scientific researches,
many journals nowadays allow longer titles

Avoid clichés such as
Observation on . . .
Investigation of . . .
Reinvestigation of . . .
Study on . . .
Analysis of . . .
Opening such as A . . ., An . . ., The . . .,
Another . . .
When preparing a title, do not use:
Abbreviation and acronym
Complete sentences using verbs
Trade marks
It has been said that



Bombastic title . . .NO
Artistic title . . . YES
Provocative title . . . OK
Beware that short title often becomes too general
and conveys an impression that the subject
presented will be a review article rather than an
original research
Pseudoaneurism
Antibiotic and typhoid fever
Study of bacteria using electron microscope
Samples of artistic titles which have appeared in
scientific literature:
Does Hirneola auricula-judae occur in Indonesia?
That was a Dayak day that was
As the bountiful leafage marches on
Artistic titles are more commonly encountered
in review articles, in articles containing the
exposition of opinions, and in articles dealing
with social sciences and humanities
Too long title is often difficult to understand
immediately, and liable to be skipped out in
quick searching of articles using search
engine.
Although permissible, avoid subtitle (except
in serial articles) as it will unnecessarily
lengthen the title.
Observation on the etiologic relationship of achylia
gastrica to pernicious anemia: The effect of the
administration to patients with pernicious anemia of
beef muscle after the incubation with normal human
gastric juice
Control study of comparative efficacy of isoniazid,
streptomycin-isoniazid, and streptomycin-paraamninosalycilic acid in pulmonary tuberculosis
therapy. III. Report on twenty-eight-week
observations on 649 patients with streptomycinsusceptible infection
To obtain a wholly appropriate title that meet all
the requirement stipulated above, it is highly
recommended that the title of an article be
prepared after the whole article has been
completely written up. Based on personal
experience, it is useful to write an article in
the following order: 1) material and methods,
2) conclusion, 3) result, 4) discussion, 5)
introduction, 6) abstract, and the last but not
the least 7) title.
*RUNNING TITLE AND
INFORMATION DATES
Besides the title of the article, some journals ask
their contributors to submit a ‘running title’ to
appear on top of the right hand pages of the
printed article in the journal. The running title is
an abbreviated title consisting of 3–5 words or
not more 50 strokes on the keyboard, often
presented together with the abbreviated name of
the author of the respective article.
Example of title of a serial article with its
subtitle, and its running title:
M.A. RIFAI. 1965. Discomycetes flora of
Asia, Precursor III: Observations on Javanese
species of Trichoglossum. Lloydia 28:113–
119.
Running title:
RIFAI: Discomycetes Flora III
[prepared by the editors, whereas the author
originally supplied ‘RIFAI: Javanese
Trichoglossum’]
*INFORMATION DATES sometimes appear in the
opening part of published articles. They are provided by
the editors of the journal to show the genesis of the
manuscript
1.
2.
3.
Many journals report the date the manuscript
received in the editorial office, sometimes
followed by the date(s) of its revisions, and
especially the date of its acceptance for
publication
In case of later disputes, these dates can help in
establishing exactly who was the first to reveal
something new
These dates give also a kind of indication when
the research was done, which may be important if
there has been a long delay in getting it published
*BYLINE
Byline is part of an articles which indicates its
authorship (rests with the author), and its
ownership (belongs to the institution where the
work reported was undertaken).
[Remember that the copyright holder of an
articles is the journal where it is published]
Dictionary definition of author is ‘the writer of a
literary work’.
But what is an author in scientific world? Who is
this elusive person? What criteria to be met with,
in order to make one qualifies as an author?
Nowadays, an “author” is generally
considered to be someone who has made
substantive intellectual contributions to a
published study.
 Since scientific authorship has had important
academic, social, as well as financial
implications, convention and ethical
considerations have been developed to be
used as guideline in clarifying this difficult
topic.

The Vancouver Convention on Co-Authorship stipulated
that authorship credit should be based on
1.
2.
3.
substantial input to the conception and design,
or acquisition of data, or analysis and
interpretation of data
drafting the article or revising it critically for
important intellectual content
final approval of the version to be published
Authors should meet all conditions 1, 2, and 3.
Therefore acquisition of funding, collection of
data, or general supervision of the research
group, alone, does not justify authorship.
Similarly persons who provided purely
technical help (such as caring for
experimental organisms throughout the study,
preparing illustrations), writing assistance, or
a departmental chair who provided only
general support, are not qualify for
authorship, as are participating investigators
who may have contributed materially but only
performing the task of serving as scientific
advisors or providing critical review of the
research proposal.
In an article jointly written by many authors, whatever
else they may have contributed each one of them
should have participated sufficiently in the work to
take public responsibility for appropriate portions of
the content. In other words, all individuals listed as
co-authors in a work conducted by large multicentre group should fully meet the criteria for
authorship. All persons designated as authors should
qualify for authorship, and similarly all those who
qualify should be listed.
Authorship of a multi-centre trials can be
attributed to a group. All members of the
group who are named as authors should fully
meet the above criteria for authorship. In
conjunction with this new development, the
term ‘guarantors’ has been introduced to
indicate one or more authors who take the
responsibility for the integrity of the work as
a whole, from inception to published article.
When submitting a group author manuscript,
the corresponding author should clearly
indicate the preferred citation and should also
clearly identify all individual authors as well
as the group name.
The order of authorship in the byline should be
a joint decision of the co-authors, best
decided before the study begins. For the sake
of their own scientific integrity, authors
should be prepared to explain the order in
which authors are listed.
Most scientific journals nowadays omit the title,
academic degree, and official position from
the author’s name
To conform with archival requirement,
author’s name as appear in the byline
should be consistently spelt, bearing in mind
the existence of different customs in many
countries.
M. A. Rifai (the accepted form in Europe)
Mien A. Rifai (acceptable in Indonesia and the
USA)
Mien Ahmad Rifai (used by Indonesian book
publishers)
Indonesians often face difficulty
because in international scientific
journals the last name or surname of
an author is not to be abbreviated, so
that the following form is not permitted
Mien A. R.
M. Ahmad R.
Mien Ahmad R.
All contributors (especially agencies which
provide funding) who do not meet the criteria
for authorship should be listed in the
acknowledgment section
Can the question of the quantity and quality of
contribution that qualify for authorship be
resolved? Attempts to produce some sort of
scoring system for determining the authorship
and co-authorship of a scientific article have
been made, one of them published in Nature
352: 187. 18 July 1991 is modified here.
In line with the criteria to qualify for authorship
specified above, intellectual contributions to a
published study can be broken down into
several kinds of inputs (namely intellectual,
physical, data processing, expertise,
scientific, and literary inputs), each of which
can be scored according to the relative
amounts provided by individuals.
1. Intellectual input
(problem identification, approach adopted,
planning, designing)
No significant contribution
Twice or three times discussions
Several times discussions
Lengthy and prolong discussions
Indepth and continuous discussions
0
5
10
15
20
2. Physical input
(organizing and setting up apparatusses,
observations, data collecting, recordings,
and extracting)
No significant involvement
Twice or three times involvement
Several times involvement
Lengthy and prolong involvement
Continuous involvement
0
5
10
15
20
3. Data processing input
(organizing, processing, analysing,
synthesizing)
No significant involvement
Short involvement, twice or three times
Several times involvement
Lengthy and prolong involvement
Continuous involvement, from the
beginning to the end
0
5
10
15
20
4. Expertise input
(consultation, advise, opinion, view – from
other field or discipline)
No significant contribution
Routine short advise
Significant opinions
Contributed views especially prepared
Opinions which become the bases of
approach and conclusion
0
5
10
15
20
5. Scientific input
(concluding, summarizing, generalizing,
formulating the theory)
No significant contribution
0
Concluding certain parts of results
5
Summarizing major parts of results
10
Generalizing the whole part of the article 15
Formulating the general theory
20
6. Literary input
(contribution to the first completed draft)
No significant contribution
Read and improve other’s contribution
Assist in writing two or three parts of the
draft
Writing up several parts of the draft
Writing up almost the whole draft
0
5
10
15
20
The highest score that can be achieved by a person is
100 (because point 4 is performed by an outsider).
Theoretically, the number of person that can become
the coauthor of an article is unlimited, but anyone
may only claim the authorship of an article if he/she
manages to accumulate a score of at least 30. The
ordering of the authorship is based on the amount of
score achieved, and when two persons have similar
score alphabetical sequence should be used, with a
note that the one who launch the idea should be
given preference.
Almost all scientific periodicals nowadays incorporate
in the byline the name of the institute as the owner
of each article they publish
In writing down the byline,
therefore
1.
2.
3.
4.
Name and postal address of the institution where
the research reported had been performed should
be attached to the principal author.
Name(s) and address(es) of all cooperating
institutions should be given attached to the
appropriate authors.
Some journals like to include a full postal address
and e-mail address, at least the corresponding
author, so that readers can write (ask) for more
information
If the author moved to another institution, the
main entry should give the name of the institution
where the work was done, followed by the
author’s current address (between brackets or in
footnote).
*ABSTRACT
Abstract is a concise presentation of the
whole article, so that it gives the research
problem or main objective of the research,
indicated the methodology used, presents
the main findings and discussion together
with its conclusion (IMRD). Non research
articles abstract should contain brief and
comprehensive resume of complete articles
UNESCO recommends that an abstract should
consist of not more that 200 words.
Sometimes some journals use the term
‘summary’ for it, but it is generally
understood that a summary represents an
extended abstract consisting of about 400
words and rendered in many paragraphs,
whereas abstract should be presented in one
paragraph.
In recent years, more and more medical journals
prefer to use a structured abstract divided into
several subheadings/paragraphs.
In order to conform with that recommendation,
prepare abstracts which are not:
too long (because one forgot to count the
words used)
 too short (often due to insufficient
treatment of the new finding)
 too exhaustive (resulting from detailed
explanation of methodology)
 too scanty (unbalanced, important
information inadequately presented)

Informative abstract presented quantitatively
(‘It was shown that the fertilization of peanut
took place at 04:30 . . .’) is preferable to
indicative abstract presented qualitatively
(‘The fertilization processes in peanut were
observed continuously throughout the night . .
.’).
Abstracts should not contain:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sentences that can be gleaned from the title of the
article, or sound like an introduction to the whole
article (‘The aim of this research is to find out the role
of human resource strategy on the market performance
. . .’)
Lengthy background information
References to other literature
Abbreviations or terms that may be confusing to
readers
Any sort of illustration, figure, or table, or references to
them.
Some journals––especially those with tearout abstract service––instruct their
contributing authors to include the title of
the article in the respective abstract. This is
highly commendable for abstract rendered
in language different from that used in the
article itself.
Example of one paragraphed abstract,
with the title of the article included
RIFAI, M.A. 2008. Another note on Podoconis
megasperma Boedijn (Hyphomycetes). Reinwardtia
12 (4): 277–279. –– Exosporium megaspermum
(Boedijn) Rifai and Exosporium ampullaceum
(Petch) M.B.Ellis are transferred to Neopodoconis
Rifai, a newly created genus extracted from
Exosporium Link based on the nature of the true
septation of their rostrate conidia. Two new
combinations, Neopodoconis ampullacea (Petch)
Rifai and Neopodoconis megasperma (Boedijn)
Rifai, accordingly are proposed.
Example of one paragraph abstract, title of the article
omitted
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease caused by the lack of
insulin in the human body. This disease caused many various
kind of complication, including in the oral cavity known as
toothache like pulpits. This study aimed to know the influence of
blood glucose level toward diabetes mellitus’s dental pulp nerve
sensitivity. In this study was used the electric pulp tester (EPT)
equipment to measure the dental pulp nerve sensitivity on both
groups of sample. The statistical analysis shows that blood
glucose level is effecting the diabetes mellitus’s dental pulp
nerve sensitivity (R2 = 0.327). The result of the study shows
increasing of the dental pulp nerve sensitivity on Blood Glucose
Level 2 hour PP (2hPP) 150 mg/dl and reaches the peak level
on BGL 2hPP between 250 – 300 mg/dl, but on BGL 2hPP 350
mg/dl decreasing of dental pulp nerve sensitivity is happened.
From this study can be concluded that diabetes mellitus’s dental
pulp nerve sensitivity can be influence by the level of blood
glucose in diabetes mellitus patient.
Example of structured abstract, title of the article omitted
BACKGROUND – Extrapulmonary tuberculosis prevalence in New York
City is still high in the last decade (45-60%).
OBJECTIVE - To analyze the factors associated with survival in patients
with pulmonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis in New York City.
DESIGN - Observational study of a citywide cohort of tuberculosis cases.
Setting- New York City, April 1991, before the strengthening of its control
program.
SUBJECTS - All 229 newly diagnosed cases of tuberculosis documented by
culture in April 1991. Most patients (74%) were male, and the median
age was 37 years (range, 1-89 years). In all, 89% belonged to minority
groups. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection was present in
50% and multidrug resistance in 7% of the cases. Twenty-one patients
(9%) were not treated.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE - Follow up information was collected
through the city tuberculosis registry; death from any cause was verified
through the National Death Index.
CONCLUSION – HIV and poverty are the main cause of extrapulmonary
tuberculosis in New York.
Example of structured abstract, with the title of the article
included
YULIDAR HAFIDH, DWI HIDAYAH, SUNYATANINGKAMTO. Factors affecting
mortality of neonatal sepsis in Moewardi Hospital, Surakarta. Paediatrica
Indonesiana 47(2): 74–77. 2007.
BACKGROUND Mortality of neonatal sepsis is still a significant problem. It may be
affected by many factors.
OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine factors which affect
mortality of neonatal sepsis at neonatal ward of Moewardi Hospital, Surakarta.
METHODS Data of neonatal sepsis was obtained from medical record at neonatal
ward of Moewardi Hospital from December 2004 to November 2005. We recorded
data from 97 neonatal sepsis consisted of 46 males and 52 female babies.
Statistical analysis had been performed using univariate Chi-square and
multivariate multiple logistic regression analysis.
RESULTS Overall neonatal sepsis mortality was about 40%. There were no
significant difference in factors associated with mortality of neonatal sepsis such
as gender, referral patients, and bacterial growth culture, except for birth weight
which affected mortality (OR=6.29; 95% CI 2.57; 15.42)
CONCLUSION Birth weight affects mortality of neonatal sepsis in Moewardi
Hospital. Patients with positive bacterial growth culture has two times higher risk
of death, however it is not statistically significant.
*KEYWORDS
Dictionary explanation of keywords are ‘a selection of
significant words from a document that can be used
as indices to its content’.
Beside useful for preparing index, keywords can also
be employed in scanning the content of scientific
articles through computer, so that they are useful for
readers in hunting for articles related to problems
they are facing by inputting them to a search
machine. Therefore in recent years keywords are
becoming familiar feature in published scientific
articles.
In published articles, keywords are mostly
presented under the abstract
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Normally consist of 3-8 words (may be
organized in short in phrases)
Prepare by not repeating words used in the title
May even use words not appearing in the
whole article
Some journals prepare list of keywords to be
selected by their contributors
In medical journals MeSH (Medical Subject
Heading) Terms are used.
TERIMA KASIH