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Why the Use of Keywords in Scientific and Medical Writing is Critical

Using keywords in scholarly journals is one of the most often disregarded aspects of writing in the medical and scientific field. However, like your abstract and your introduction, the keywords help your paper be noticed by researchers. It helps you increase readership by making your paper more accessible to researchers. A paper with wisely chosen keywords is more likely to get retrieved in a web-based search.

Who will choose the keywords? Keywords are usually supplied by authors. Other times, the journals will prescribe a set of keywords for authors to better target articles in search engines. For example, authors generating key words for medical articles often have to select only words from the medical subject headings (MeSH) taxonomy – a structured taxonomy used by MEDLINE (Hartley, 2008).

In addition, some journals require the number of times the keywords must appear in the text. Other times, the author will have to choose his own keywords to use keeping in mind the nature and topic of the research paper. Keywords are also sometimes supplied by the journal referees, peer reviewers, or editors. Moreover, the National Library of Medicine offers some suggestions for authors as they select keywords for their articles. Use their database to help you locate the appropriate vocabulary.

In selecting keywords, Hughes (2005) suggests to consider words from a set of categories related to the discipline, methods used in the paper, locations (country or institution for example) and the topic. For instance, if your paper uses a comparative analysis method, use the keywords "comparative analysis", "comparison", or "analysis". It will also help not to use terms that are too common. Otherwise, your search hits will still be unmanageable for other researchers.

Also, do not use prepositions like "in" or "of". For example, if you are thinking of using "estimate of data" as key word, use "data estimates" instead. Think of words that the users would use to locate your research. Prefer popular words than sparingly used words.

In any case they must adequately describe the contents of the paper. Try not to use acronyms. Acronyms could confuse researchers especially those foreign scientists and scholars. If you have to use Greek words in a mathematical paper, spell them out. If you are planning to use a concept used in the text as keyword and this concept has been known for different terminologies in a separate field, be sure to include its alternative names to help the researcher search across disciplines. For example, the "statistician's characteristic function" is the "mathematician's Fourier transform", and in some countries "educational administration" is" educational management" (Gbur & Trumbo, 1995).

In sum, keywords are simple yet useful tools available for authors. It will increase the chances of your paper being retrieved in an online journal index or search engines and be cited as a reference in another's work. It is wise to ask your institution or journal committee if they require a specific set of keywords to use so you can choose effectively which ones to include. In this day and age, a simple defining keyword could make a great difference in distinguishing your paper from all other papers in the index.

References

Gbur, E. E. & Trumbo, B. (1995). Key words and phrases – the key to scholarly visibility and efficiency in an information explosion. The American Statistician, 49(1), 29–33.

Hartley, J. (2008). Academic Writing and Publishing: A Practical Handbook. NY: Routledge ISBN 0-203-92798-2 Master e-book ISBN.

Hughes, W. P. (2005). Keywords: Their choice and their importance. Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM) Newsletter, 20(1), 2–3 and 21(1), 4–5.

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