| Abstract: | A notion has occurred to me relative to a potentially more efficient means of information dissemination and I would be interested in membership and journal editors' considerations. Most of us read journal articles selectively, probably predominantly on the basis of titles, and most likely the selection is in terms of the key concepts reflected in the title and our associations. However, I suspect all of us have come across articles relevant to a topic that we would never have perused on the basis of the title (or summary, author, journal, Abstracts search, word of mouth, or even idle curiosity). Some articles have subsidiary aspects relevant to a topic unreflected in the title and some articles can be fruitfully interpreted from a viewpoint other than that of the title, author, or journal. What I propose is that the author select salient related topics and note them parenthetically to the article's title, if the journal editor concurs with the author's chosen notation. Such a bit of information should probably be limited to something like three "telegraphic" conceptual terms which could not be justifiably elevated to the status of the title. Any added type-setting costs for this procedure would seem to be minimal and, perhaps, might even be offset by a corresponding shortening of the author's article. Maybe this telegraphic conceptual procedure is only carrying the "article summary" practice a step further, but I cannot help but feel that the communication value would be enhanced by this sub-sub-subtitle means. I must say that I harbor no hope that this century would ever see a catalog of standard nomenclature for article sub-sub-subtitles. However such a practice, it is hoped, would increase pertinent information dissemination and retrieval, as well as decreasing readers' overlooking something of potential value to them. Also such a practice might lower our limens for the sometimes stultifying journal stimuli! (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
