English 5390: Writing for Publication Weekly Blog Post - Titles and Abstracts

Question: After completing the in-class exercise, what revised title(s) and abstract will you use for the article? Write a post that includes your title(s) and abstract.

The original form of the paper that I plan to rework and revise is currently linked under the Scholarly Article tab in the Navigation toolbar. The title under which it was graded in English 5384 was "Changes in Phenotype of Primary Research Papers Published in The Journal of the American Chemical Society since 1880" and the original abstract is as follows:

This paper examines the changes in the writing style and format (phenotype to borrow a term from genetics) in primary research papers published in The Journal of the American Chemical Society in its 130 years of publishing chemistry research. Sixteen total papers were selected from the 1880s, 1920s, 1960s, and 2000s (four papers from each time period). There have been significant changes in the level of personal involvement of the authors, their critiques of others, and in data presentation.

In the class exercise, I postulated 3 possible titles, which are Jessica says, (1) Phenotype changes of scholarly articles published in The Journal of the American Chemical Society over the past 120 years. (2) Changes in scientific writing style through time: 120 years of JACS (3) How chemists write: A tour through writing style in 120 years of published work.

None of the new titles are truly acceptable for a Journal article. One of the flaws of my original work was its relatively small sample size that provided a general survey of changes in papers from those published in the 1880s, 1920, 1960s, and 2000s. Perhaps this could be the new working title, while not one of the three options from class it may be more descriptive of the work.

Survey of changes in papers published in JACS in the 1880s, 1920s, 1960s, and 2000s

Perhaps not the most eye-catching title, but at least it is honest. Now for the new Abstract...

In the 1880s, "I" was not a dirty word in scholarly publication in Chemistry. In fact, in all four of the 1880s papers surveyed herein, authors used the word "I" or one of its other forms "me," "mine," "we," "our," etc. In addition, the 1880s authors were much more likely to admit investment and personal interest in the work than later authors. Somewhere between the 1880s and the 1920s, the concept of disinterestedness begins to take hold as authors step away from their work, at least on the written page. In the 1960s, disinterestedness reigns supreme, with personal pronouns used only in statements like "...further complicated by our complete ignorance of..." In the 200os, the personal pronouns started to reappear, used in the context of "We did this or that procedure." The vigorous investment and personal is not there. As the field of Chemistry matured, authors distanced themselves from their work to bring objectivity to the results. Perhaps now that the field has matured, chemists have begun to admit involvement in the actual experiments, and perhaps in future, they will admit interest in their own work.

I fully admit that the title and the abstract need lots of work, as do the content and research behind the work.