Effective selection of keywords for the article

A list of keywords is often the last step in the preparation of a scientific publication. However, it is not the last in importance, and here’s why.

Keywords help to find an article in the citation bases. It is they who make it visible to other researchers. Indeed, in the modern world it is impossible to track all publications, even in some narrow branch of knowledge. Perhaps your colleagues do not read the journal in which the work is published, or the title of the article did not attract their attention.

In such cases, a search engine that shows related articles can bring your post out of the shadows, show it to potential readers, and increase citation.

In new areas of research, author keywords can become the basis for indexing in databases. In addition, the editors of the journal can use the list of keywords to determine the relevance of the article and its compliance with the profile of the journal. A good match reduces the likelihood of publication rejection.

Article content [ Hide ]

• 1. What are keywords and where to look for them?
• 2. What to focus on when choosing keywords?
• 3. Useful tips for choosing keywords.
• 4. What should not be done when choosing keywords?
• 5. How to properly format the list of keywords and translate it into English?
• 6. Helper Services
• 7. How to check keyword relevance?
• Conclusion

1. What are keywords and where to look for them?

In fact, keywords are the semantic core of the text. They show the reader the main content of the article.

Often, authors limit the keyword search field to an annotation. With this strategy, the reader gets the impression that he has received a complete picture of the article from the Abstract . If you want your colleagues to get acquainted with the full version (perhaps paid), then the keys should reflect the content of the entire study.

Important: some search engines do not search the entire document, especially if access is limited to a paid subscription. In such cases, the importance of keywords increases significantly.

To ensure that the choice of keys is not random, proceed in the following order:

1. First of all, focus on the topic of work . Select the research problem from it, this will be the first key.

Important: do not use words from the title. This is inefficient, as the search engine will show it anyway. The keyword should complement, clarify, decipher the terms from the title of the article, but not duplicate them.

1. Headings of chapters, sections and subsections . Choose concepts that describe the purpose, object and subject of research.
2. Text of the work . Find the most frequent words. Of these, choose those that describe the essence of the work.
3. Words with a high semantic load will also be candidates for keys. Pay attention to the Materials and Methods section . The most important experimental methods are sure to be included in the list of keywords.

Important: check your candidate words against a commonly accepted dictionary, list, indexing standard in your discipline, eg GeoRef, ERIC Thesaurus, PsycInfo, ChemWeb, BIOSIS Search Guide, MeSH Thesaurus. Make sure that the terms themselves and their spelling match those given in these sources.

As a result, you should have three groups of keywords:

• Support. Describe the area of ​​scientific research. For example, in the article “ Cancer drug development: Missing links” – such a keyword is “cancer” –
• Semantic. Reveal the object of study. In the mentioned article, these are “drugs” –
• Conceptual. Describe the subject and methods of research. In the article under consideration, such keys include “ patient survival, preclinical, clinical, cost”.

The more accurately the keywords reflect the essence of the work, the more likely it is that those of your colleagues who are really interested in this topic will read the article.

2. What to focus on when choosing keywords?

According to the list of keywords, the search engine will issue the article to other readers. This means that your task is to predict how the search queries of other users will be formulated. For the keys to work effectively, pay attention to the following:

• There are many key picking tools out there, but the best one is your own head. Think about how you yourself would formulate key queries if you were looking for material on your topic.
• Explore keywords in other articles in your area of ​​research. Perhaps they will help clarify and supplement their own list.
• Effective keys will be search suggestions – words that the search engine itself issues in response to a query. Enter the title of your work or terms from it in the search bar. See what prompts appear.

Typically, scientific journals ask for 5 to 10 keywords. Your initial list can be much larger so that you can later choose the most effective keywords.

3. Useful tips for choosing keywords.

First of all, it must be said that the term “keyword” is most often understood as a key phrase. Single words are not always good clues, as they often have a very broad meaning and do not allow the reader to understand whether the article belongs to his area of ​​\u200b\u200binterest.

• Use key phrases . For example, for the article “The tactics of surgical treatment of colon cancer depending on the location of the tumor”, appropriate keywords would be “colon cancer, surgical treatment”. Bad keys are “cancer, surgery”.
• Key phrase should consist of 2-3 words. Keys that are too long rarely match. Resist the temptation to fit all the meanings into one big sentence. Perhaps the phrase “surgical treatment of colon cancer of various localizations” describes the content of the article very accurately, but the article will most likely never be found for this key. Several separate phrases that complement each other will be more effective: “cancer surgery, colon cancer, tumor localization”.
• Use synonyms. The same information can be searched for by different search queries. Do not miss the opportunity to show your article to all interested readers.
• Specify generally accepted abbreviations and abbreviations. Many search queries are formulated in an abbreviated form. In the list of keywords, you need to mention both the abbreviation and the full term. Do not combine them in one key. It is better to write one key phrase with the full name, and another with an abbreviation, for example: “ultrasound scanning, laryngeal ultrasound”.

Important: make sure that the abbreviation does not have homonyms and matches. For example, the abbreviation ARC is used in programming, mathematics, biology and other branches of knowledge. Be specific with the key so that the reader understands what it refers to in your case, such as “ARC file format”.

• Use academic vocabulary . Speak the language of your target audience, because it is for them that you publish your work.

When translating into English , use professional dictionaries. Check what terms and in what spelling is commonly used in your branch of science. You can read about technical English-Russian dictionaries here .

4. What should not be done when choosing keywords?

Keys can be ineffective for various reasons. Here are some tips to avoid this:

• Do not use too abstract and general concepts, such as the names of disciplines.
• Avoid professional slang and technical terms.
• Do not put quotation marks, even in the names of organizations. Different editors use different types of quotes, because of this, the system may simply not recognize the key.
• Don’t use semicolons. In search engines, the comma is used as a separator. Therefore, the system regards parts of one phrase as separate keys. The phrase “method of statistical analysis used to estimate probability…” is better divided into two separate keys: “method of statistical analysis, estimation of probability”
• Each keyword is an independent semantic unit. You can not write “PCR method, its application in clinical practice.” The second key in this formulation will be useless. A more effective formulation is “clinical application of the PCR method”.

Check your list of keywords before submitting a manuscript to a journal. Only use keywords that will actually lead readers to your article.

5. How to properly format the list of keywords and translate it into English?

Sometimes quite relevant keys do not work due to incorrect formatting. Pay attention to the following rules:

• Write words in singular and nominative case. The exceptions are terms that do not have a singular form at all or are not used in such a form in your branch of science, such as “investment”.
• Do not capitalize the first word. Some search engines recognize uppercase and lowercase words as different. In this case, the first key may not match.
• Separate keywords and phrases with commas , this is common practice. You can read about the rules for placing commas in academic English here .
• Do not put a dot at the end of the list. The system can automatically append it to the last word. This key will not work. Read about punctuation rules in academic English in this article .
• A selection of keywords is given in Russian and English. Do not use machine translation to get the English version. Translation programs, as a rule, are not sharpened for scientific vocabulary and can produce completely incorrect terms. If you are not sure about your English, it is better to contact a specialist in your scientific field with a good knowledge of the language.
• When translating, check with editorial requirements. If it is customary for a journal to use the British or American spelling, this should be taken into account. Read our article about the peculiarities of American and British English.

The journal may have other requirements for the design of keys. For example, to regulate the number of words, the admissibility of phrases, compliance with established lists of terms, the admissibility of abbreviations. Review the editorial requirements on the journal’s website and make sure you meet them. Otherwise, the editor’s review of your article may not progress beyond the list of keywords.

6. Helper Services

There are online tools to help you choose the right keywords. You can use keyword generators such as Keyword Tool, Yandex, Google AdWords and others.

Important: the automated system will select keys based on search queries. Be critical of them. From the proposed list, select those that correspond to the scientific specifics and content of your manuscript.

Of the automated keyword generators, the choice is those that are created specifically for working with scientific text:

• Publishing house “Young scientist” has developed a keyword generator . The search is carried out by the text of the article, which is entered in a special field.
• For medical texts, MeSH on Demand is a good tool. It identifies the terms in the MeSH list in the text of the article and selects similar articles on PubMed. About what is good about the PubMed service and how to use it, read the article . As mentioned, looking at lists of keywords in related posts can help you choose the right keywords for your own article.

Word cloud generators such as Monkey Learn, Word Cloud Generator, and Tag Crowd can be used to select the most frequent words in your text . They convert the document into a visual picture, in which the most frequently occurring words will be the largest:

7. How to check keyword relevance?

Before submitting an article to the editor, make sure that the selected keywords are really effective.

Type your keywords into a search engine and see what articles come up for that query. If the search result is weakly related to your topic, then the key selection was unsuccessful.

If the search engine does not find anything for the query, then your article will not appear as similar when viewing other publications.

For search, it is important how the keywords are distributed within the document. It is necessary to evenly distribute the keys throughout the text, while maintaining the logic and academic style of presentation. Keywords should be a natural part of the text, not foreign elements.

It is recommended to use keywords in headings, subheadings, at the beginning and at the end of the article.

The optimal number is 10–15 keys, but this also depends on editorial requirements.

The introduction of keywords in the text of the article can occur at different stages of work:

• As the article is being written . If some keys are important, and you want to be sure to use them in your work, write the text right away with these terms. Then they will not look like alien inserts.
• Statement of keywords when proofreading the finished text . This is what happens most often. In this case, it is important to understand if you missed any important key.
• At the editing stage . This is not the best option, since it is difficult to enter the keys into the finished text so that the inserts are not conspicuous and do not violate the logic and coherence of the presentation.

Key words should be memorable and important, reflecting the essence of the work, but not out of the text. It is reasonable to introduce new keys at the editing stage only if the words chosen during the proofreading of the article are not enough or when they are checked they turn out to be ineffective.

Conclusion

The correct selection of keywords ultimately increases the citation index of the article and the author. They allow:

• find an article in the database faster;
• see the work when viewing another similar publication;
• to understand whether this article is within the scope of the scientific interests of a particular scientist.

The choice of keywords cannot be random, it must be based on logic and common sense.

• Choose as keywords synonyms, additions and clarifications to the terms from the title of the article, concepts from the subheadings, introduction, conclusion and section “Materials and Methods”.
• Use key phrases of 2-3 words. Specify generally accepted abbreviations and abbreviations. Use common synonyms to cover all possible keywords.
• Do not use too abstract and too narrow concepts. Focus on the key queries that you and your colleagues could make in search of information.
• Take words from the scientific lexicon. Check with the lists of terms generally accepted in your field of science, and when translating – with a specialty dictionary.
• Make sure that you have correctly formatted the list of keys and have complied with the requirements of the edition of the journal.

At the end, check the selected keys for effectiveness: if the search engine returns relevant results in response to the key input, then you did everything right.

Successful publications!