Use keywords to get your research noticed!

One of the benefits of conducting hundreds of author training workshops worldwide over the last 12 years is that I have had many opportunities to meet and interact with researchers from all areas of the world. And by doing so, I have become acutely aware of the challenges and inaccurate assumptions that are often made when researchers want to publish their research.

One such assumption that I frequently encounter is regarding keywords. Do you know that keyword list that journals ask you to submit alongside your manuscript? Yes...those keywords!

How many of you take the time to consider them carefully and optimize their use in your manuscript? Some of you likely do, which is fantastic. But many likely consider that keyword list as an afterthought. When I have asked researchers how they choose their keywords, they sometimes reply, "Well, the journal requires me to come up with 6 to 8 keywords for my article...so I just write a few words down related to my study." Does that sound familiar?

Well, before I dive into the strategy I recommend authors to use in choosing keywords properly, let me first explain why this is so important for you and the visibility of your research after publication.

Can you do me a favor? Please open another tab (don't close this one!), and open the database you usually use to find articles. Then, do a keyword search for articles related to your research topic. Done? Great. How many articles are shown? Thousands? Most likely. Well, how did that database know to select those articles? And how did the database decide the order in which to present those articles to you (i.e., which are put at the top of the list, and which are put at the bottom).

Keywords.

Do you want to be discoverable online? Do you want all of that hard-earned research to be visible to your peers after publication? Then you need to choose the appropriate keywords and optimize them for discoverability. It's not hard to do so, as long as you are using the right strategy.

Step 1: Choosing Keywords

The first thing you need to do is identify a shortlist of keywords (maybe 12 to 15) that you think may be appropriate for your study. And when I say 'keywords', I mean 'key phrases'. A single word will likely be too broad and not specific enough. For example, if you enter in 'networks' for a keyword, you will find hundreds of thousands of articles ranging from medicine to computer sciences! Meaning that this keyword will end up yielding many false matches. However, if you try 'neural networks', you will find considerably fewer hits and a lot more specific articles related to your topic (if that's what you are working on).

How to find these keywords? Well, think of terms you would use if you wanted to find your article online. Think of common synonyms. Look at recently published articles related to your topic...what keywords did they use? If you are in biomedical/clinical research, you can look at the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in MEDLINE.

The next thing to do is test those keywords/phrases in the databases you think most researchers in your field would use to find articles. You will notice that some keywords will give you a huge number of articles...and others will give you very few articles. Those are not useful. Those are either too broad or too overly specific to help in the discoverability of your article. Others, however, will be more medial. These are the ones you want to use.

As you can't be sure what type of database your readers will be using, I recommend using two different types: a subject-specific database (like PubMed or EconLit) and a broad-focused database (like Web of Science or Scopus). That way, regardless of the type of database your readers use, you would have optimized your keywords accordingly.

So, through this empirical sorting strategy, you should be able to discard 4 or 5 keywords that are not that appropriate for you. Great. Now you are left with a list of 8 or 9 good keywords.

Step 2: Using those keywords

Many authors are not aware that for many databases, the title and the keyword list are both used in indexing. That means, don't duplicate words across both. They will be redundant and will not help you improve discoverability. So, from your refined keyword list, use the two most important ones in the title of your article and place the rest in your keyword list. Why should you put the two most important ones in the title? This is what people see when they are selecting articles to download...so ensure that they are visible!

Step 3: Optimization

How many of you are familiar with search engine optimization (SEO)? Some may...others, this may be a new term. Well, it is a useful one to be mindful of when optimizing your keywords. Remember we discussed the order of articles when doing a keyword search online? How is that order determined? Usually by relevancy.

So how do these databases determine relevancy? They use an algorithm that tries to determine whether or not those keywords are relevant to your research. And because these are usually abstracting databases, they will make this assessment by seeing if you used those keywords to discuss your research in your abstract. If they see those keywords frequently (e.g., more than 3 or 4 times), they will assume that those keywords are relevant to your study and will assign your article a high relevancy score. This means the database will prioritize it on the list (i.e., at the top). If they don't see those keywords used in your abstract, they will assume they are not relevant to your study and will assign your article a low relevancy score. This means it will likely be found towards the bottom of the list.

You don't want to be at the bottom of the list!

Most researchers will probably look at the first 50-100 articles in a keyword search. Any articles after that will simply not be seen. Therefore, your goal is to try and be in the first 100 articles of that list. And SEO is a way to achieve that essential goal.

One last piece of advice is to not force the use of keywords in your abstract. You want to ensure that your abstract is written clearly and communicates your key ideas effectively.

So, I hope this post has opened your eyes to how important keywords are and why they should be decided carefully while preparing your manuscript. By doing so, you will increase the visibility of your research, and consequently, the impact and influence of your ideas in the field.