Abstract Readers now scan keyword-generated search results from online databases to select articles rather than browse tables of contents, increasing the importance of titles in isolation. We aimed to describe clinical research titles in a corpus from two of the four most prestigious general medicine journals plus two high-ranked specialty journals published in 2017. The 2017 corpus was compared to a comparable 2015 corpus to describe titling in all four top-ranked general journals and two specialties 20 years after the advent of clinical research reporting guidelines. We also explored a statistical way to confirm corpus size adequacy. Two observers coded and reached consensus on the following characteristics: methods and results mentions (main content of interest); patient, clinical context, and geography mentions; number of parts and their punctuation; and positioning of methods mention. Title length was also compared. Main findings included differences between journals (notably methods mention) and between general and specialty journals (notably results mention). The 95% confidence intervals for percentages in the full corpus of 274 titles (60–70 per journal) were narrow, suggesting that observations reflect real proportions; the intervals for journal subcorpora were wider but accurate enough to guide writing. We suggest ways authors, instructors, and editors/translators can use the findings.

中文翻译：

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国际临床医学高水平期刊研究文章标题内容及形式

摘要 读者现在从在线数据库中扫描关键字生成的搜索结果来选择文章而不是浏览目录，这增加了单独标题的重要性。我们的目标是在 2017 年出版的四本最负盛名的普通医学期刊中的两本和两本高级专业期刊的语料库中描述临床研究标题。 将 2017 年语料库与 2015 年的可比语料库进行比较，以描述所有四本顶级期刊的标题临床研究报告指南问世 20 年后的普通期刊和两个专业。我们还探索了一种统计方法来确认语料库大小的充分性。两位观察者编码并就以下特征达成共识：方法和结果提及（主要感兴趣的内容）；患者、临床背景和地理提及；部分及其标点符号的数量；和定位方法提。标题长度也进行了比较。主要发现包括期刊之间的差异（特别是方法提及）以及普通期刊和专业期刊之间的差异（特别是结果提及）。274 个标题（每个期刊 60-70 个）的完整语料库中百分比的 95% 置信区间很窄，表明观察反映了真实的比例；期刊子语料库的间隔更宽，但足以指导写作。我们建议作者、教师和编辑/翻译人员可以使用这些发现的方式。274 个标题（每个期刊 60-70 个）的完整语料库中百分比的 95% 置信区间很窄，表明观察反映了真实的比例；期刊子语料库的间隔更宽，但足以指导写作。我们建议作者、教师和编辑/翻译人员可以使用这些发现的方式。274 个标题（每个期刊 60-70 个）的完整语料库中百分比的 95% 置信区间很窄，表明观察反映了真实的比例；期刊子语料库的间隔更宽，但足以指导写作。我们建议作者、教师和编辑/翻译人员可以使用这些发现的方式。