Item Details

Titling and authorship practices in medical case reports: a diachronic study

Issue: Vol 10 No. 1 (2013)

Journal: Communication & Medicine

Subject Areas: Healthcare Communication Linguistics

DOI: 10.1558/cam.v10i1.63

Abstract:

This paper is a diachronic analysis of a corpus of 180 titles drawn from CRs published in the BMJ and the BMJ Case Reports between 1840 and 2009. The corpus was divided into three Blocks, and the frequency of occurrence of 69 text-internal variables was recorded in each title. Between-Block comparisons were carried out, and Student’s t-tests were applied to the quantitative results. Our findings show that CR titles have evolved over the 160-year period studied in the sense that they have increased in length, syntactic complexity, semantic richness and title type diversity. Authorship patterns and collaboration practices have changed too. Although internationalization of case reporting has increased over time, today's preferred practice is still local collaboration. The only variable that has remained constant over the years is the nominal nature of CR titles. We put forth several social and scientific factors that could account for the various shifts observed. We claim that non-informativeness of CR titles that persisted over time can be explained by the fact that CR authors are reluctant to give a generalization flavor to their findings.

Author: Françoise Elisabeth Salager-Meyer, María Ángeles Alcaraz Ariza, Marianela Luzardo Briceño

View Full Text

References :

Alley, M. (1996) The Craft of Scientific Writing. New York: Springer Verlag. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2482-0
Anthony, L. (2001) Characteristic features of research article titles in computer science. IEEE Transactions of Professional Communication 44 (3): 187–194. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/47.946464
Atkinson, D. (1992) The evolution of medical research writing from 1735 to 1985: The case of The Edinburgh Medical Journal. Applied Linguistics 13: 337–374. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/13.4.337
Berkenkotter, C. (2008) Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Use of Narrative in Psychiatry. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Berkenkotter, C. and Huckin, T. (1995) Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Biacchi, A. (2003) Relation complexity of titles and texts: A semiotic taxonomy. In L. Merlini Barbaresi (ed.) Complexity in Language and Text, 319–341. Pisa: PLUS.
Busch-Lauer, I. (2000) Titles in English and German research papers in medicine and linguistics. In A. Trosborg (ed.) Analysing Professional Genres, 77–97. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Buxton, A. B. and Meadows, A. J. (1977) The variation in the information content of titles of research papers with time and discipline. Journal of Documentation 33 (1): 46–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/eb026633
Carey, J. C. (2010) The importance of case reports in advancing scientific knowledge of rare diseases. Advanced Experimental Medical Biology 686: 77–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9485-8_5
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cohen, H. (2006) How to write a case report. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy 63: 1888–1892. http://dx.doi.org/10.2146/ajhp060182
Cronin, B. (2002) Hyper-authorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 52 (7): 558–569. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.1097
Cronin, B. (2005) The Hand of Science: Academic Writing and Its Rewards. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Cronin, B. (2012) Collaboration in art and in science: Approaches to attribution, authorship and acknowledgment. Information and Culture 47 (1): 18–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lac.2012.0005
Cronin, B., Shaw, D. and La Barre, K. (2003) A cast of thousands: Co-authorship and sub-authorship collaboration in the twentieth century as manifested in the scholarly literature of psychology and philosophy. Journal of the American Society for Science and Technology 54 (9): 855–871. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.10278
Day, R. A. (1995) How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
DeBakey, L. and DeBakey, S. (1983) The case report: Guidelines for preparation. International Journal of Cardiology 4: 357–364. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0167-5273(83)90097-9
Dietz, G. (2001) The pragmatics of scientific titles formulated as questions. Metalinguistica 9: 19–35.
Dillon, J. T. (1982) In pursuit of the colon: A century of scholarly progress: 1880–1980. Journal of Higher Education 53 (1): 93–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1981541
Fischer, B. A. and Zigmond, M. J. (2004) Components of a Research Article [http://www2.yk.psu.edu/sites/bee11/files/2011/03/Components-of-a-Research-Article.pdf]
Friedell, M. T. (1973) The case report. International Surgery 58: 225.
Gawrylewski, A. (2007) Case reports: essential or irrelevant? The Scientist. [http://classic.the-scientist.com/news/display/53192]
Goodman, N. W. (2000) Survey of active verbs in the titles of clinical trials reports. British Medical Journal 320: 914–915. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.320.7239.914
Goodman, N. W. (2010) Novel tool constitutes a paradigm: How title words in medical journal articles have changed since 1970. The Write Stuff 19 (4): 269–271.
Goodman, N. W. (2011) Fashion in medicine and language: Inferences from titles and abstracts of articles listed in PubMed. The Write Stuff 20 (1): 39–42.
Goodman, R. A., Thacker, S. B. and Siegel, P. Z. (2001) What’s in a title? A descriptive study of article titles in peer reviewed medical journals. Science Editor 24 (3): 75–78.
Gotti, M. (2001) The rise of the experimental essay. In F. Mayer (ed.) Language for Specific Purposes: Perspectives for the New Millennium Volume 2: LSP in Academic Discourse and in the Fields of Law, Business and Medicine, 459–466. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Gunnarsson, B. L. (1998) Academic discourse in changing context frames: The construction and development of a genre. In P. Evangelisti Allori (ed.) Academic Discourse in Europe: Thought Processes and Linguistic Realisation, 19–43. Rome: Bulzone Editore.
Haggan, M. (2004) Research paper titles in literature, linguistics and science: Dimensions of attraction. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 293–317. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(03)00090-0
Hartley, J. (2005) To attract or to inform: What are titles for? Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 35 (2): 203–213. http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/NV6E-FN3N-7NGN-TWQT
Hartley, J. (2007) Planning that title: Practices and preferences for titles with colons in academic articles. Library and Information Science Research 29: 553–568. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2007.05.002
Hartley, J. (2008) Academic Writing and Publishing: A Practical Handbook. Abingdon: Routledge.
Haynes, R. B., McKibbon, K. A., Walker, C. J., Fitzgerald, N. and Ramsden, M. F. (1990) Online access to MEDLINE in clinical settings. Annals of Internal Medicine 112: 78–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-112-1-78
Hunter, K. M. (1991) Doctors’ Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Huth, E. J. (1999) Writing and Publishing in Medicine. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.
Jaime-Sisó, M. (2009) Titles or headlines? Anticipating conclusions in biomedical research article titles as a persuasive journalistic strategy to attract busy readers. Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 39: 29–54.
Jamjoom, A. A. B.; Nikkar-Esfahani, A. and Fitzgerald, J. E. F. (2009) Writing a medical case report. Student BMJ 17: 5274.
Laband, D. N. and Tollison, R. D. (2000) Intellectual collaboration. Journal of Political Economy 108 (3): 632–662. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/262132
Lewinson, G. and Hartley, J. (2005) What’s in a title? Number of words and the presence of colons. Scientometrics 63 (2): 341–356. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-005-0216-0
Maisonneuve, H., Lorette, G., Maruani, A. and Huguier, M. (2010) La rédaction médicale. Paris: Doin editeurs.
McCarthy, L. H. and Reilly, K. E. H. (2000) How to write a case report. Family Medicine 32 (3): 190–195.
McGowan, J. and Tugwell, P. (2005) Informative titles described article content. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association 26: 83–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.5596/c05-029
Morgan, P. P. (1985) Why case reports? Canadian Medical Association Journal 133: 353.
Morris, B. A. (1989) The importance of case reports. Canadian Medical Association Journal 141: 875–876.
Mungra, P. and Canziani, T. (2013) Lexicographic studies in medicine: Academic word list for clinical case histories. Ibérica 25: 39–62.
Murawska, M. (2010) Impersonality in medical case reports. In R. Lorés-Sanz, P. Mur-Dueñas and E. Lafuente-Millán (eds) Constructing Interpersonality: Multiple Perspectives on Written Academic Genres, 311–325. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Nobert, M. (1983) Le titre comme séduction dans le roman Harlequin: une lecture sociosémiotique. Études littéraires 16 (3): 379–398.
O’Connor, M. (1991) Writing Successfully in Science. London: HarperCollins. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203478684
Pascal, R. R. (1985) Case reports – desideratum or rubbish? Human Pathology 16: 759. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0046-8177(85)80244-6
Patsopoulos, N. A., Analatos, A. and Ioannidis, J. P. (2005) Relative citation impact of various study designs in the health sciences. Journal of the American Medical Association 293: 2362–2366. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.293.19.2362
Rose, J. C. and Corn, M. (1984) Dr. E. and other patients: New lessons from old case reports. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 39: 3–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/39.1.3
Rosner, J. (1990) Reflections on science as a product. Nature 345: 108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/345108a0
Roy, M. (2008) Du titre littéraire et de ses effets de lecture. Protée 36 (3): 47. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/019633ar
Salager-Meyer, F. (1984) Compound nominal phrases in scientific technical writings: Proportion and rationale. In A. K. Pugh and J. M. Ulijn (eds) Reading in a Foreign Language: Studies in Native and Foreign Languages, 136–146. London: Heinemann.
Salager-Meyer, F. (2012) The importance of medical case reports. European Science Editing 38 (2): 38–42.
Simpson, R. J. and Griggs, T. R. (1985) Case reports and medical progress. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 28: 402–406.
Smith, R. (2000) Informative titles in the BMJ. British Medical Journal 320: 915.
Smith, R. (2008) Why do we need Cases Journal? Cases Journal 1 (1) [http://www.casesjournal.com/content/1/1/1].
Soler, V. (2007) Writing titles in science: An exploratory study. English for Specific Purposes 26 (1): 90–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2006.08.001
Soler, V. (2009) Títulos científicos en lengua española: Estudio exploratorio. Lebende sprachen 2: 50–58.
Soler, V. (2011) Comparative and contrastive observations on scientific titles in written English and Spanish. English for Specific Purposes 30 (2): 124–137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2010.09.002
Sugimoto, C. R. and Cronin, B. (2012) Bio-bibliometric profiling: An examination of multi-faceted approaches to scholarship. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63 (3): 450–468. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.21695
Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J. and Feak, C. B. (1994) Academic Writing for Graduate Students: A Course for Nonnative Speakers of English. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Taavitsainen, I. and Pahta, P. (2000) Conventions of professional writing: The medical case report in a historical perspective. Journal of English Linguistics 28 (1): 60–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00754240022004875
Tomaszewski, C. (2006) The power of the case report. Journal of Medical Toxicology 2: 139–140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03161180
Van der Wall, E. E. and Wilde, A. A. M. (2009) Case histories: Increasing role for major journals. Netherlands Heart Journal 17 (7/8): 272–273. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03086263
Vanderbroucke, J. P. (2001) In defense of case reports and case series. Annals of Internal Medicine 134: 330–334. http://dx.doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-134-4-200102200-00017
Wang, Y. and Bai, Y. (2007) A corpus-based syntactic study of medical research article titles. Syntax 35 (3): 388–399.
Whissel, C. (1999) Linguistic complexity of abstracts and titles in highly cited journals. Perceptual and Motor Skills 88: 76–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.1999.88.1.76
White, A. and Hernández, N. R. (1991) Increasing field complexity revealed through article title analysis. Journal of the American Society of Information Science 42 (10): 731–734. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199112)42:10<731::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-W
Yadav, H. (2006) The philosophy of the medical case. Student BMJ 14: 133–176.
Yakhontova, T. (2002) Titles of conference presentation abstracts: A cross-cultural perspective, in E. Ventola, C. Shalom and S. Thompson (eds) The Language of Conferencing, 277–300. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Zeiger, M. (2000) Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. New York: McGraw-Hill. Second Edition.