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I've written a paper draft and given it a provisional title which is slightly tongue-in-cheek (but not in any way offensive; cf. examples below). This title makes my coauthor nervous, as he feels like it may cause the paper itself to be taken less seriously. I'm of the opinion that a fun title simply makes the paper more inviting, but to be honest I don't know whether it makes it more or less likely for readers to engage with and appreciate the paper. Hence the questions of the title: Can a bad paper title hurt you? Can a good one help you?

Some real examples of papers with fun titles:

I realize that it is probably not possible to answer this question in a uniform way for all situations. E.g. the circumstances will certainly be different between law and epidemiology and computer science. But I would appreciate any general guidelines that can be provided, as well as specific advice for physics and adjacent fields.

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    I still remember this one from 37 years ago: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.58.1038
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Jul 13 at 18:11
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    Regardless of the actual question, you shouldn't do something a coauthor is uncomfortable with.
    – Cameron Williams
    Commented Jul 13 at 18:12
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    Perhaps the better question is, "Can you reliably predict which is which?" Or is this selection bias on the titles that people remember?
    – Anonymous
    Commented Jul 13 at 21:38
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    This is an opinion rather than an answer, but for me (physics researcher), a title has to unambigiously convey the core messagge of the article. Othervise I won't even look at it while searching references. If I'm looking for e.g. the most accurate Hubble parameter measured, a title "Highly accurate determination of the Hubble parameter using novel supernova interferometry" will catch my eyes 10x more than "Big bang determined to be bigger by banged stars", or you get the idea. The cited titles don't quite tell me what the article is about.
    – Neinstein
    Commented Jul 15 at 20:21
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    Note that humour does not always travel well, in time or space. Will your title be understood in the way you intend by readers from different cultures or language backgrounds? Will changing societal attitudes make it age like spilt milk?
    – avid
    Commented Jul 15 at 20:33

6 Answers 6

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Yes to both - a good title can help and a bad title can hurt.

Humor is hard. Comedians, who make humor professionally, always try out their material before incorporating it into their main show, because it's so difficult to gauge what other people will actually find funny.

Your coauthor may be uncomfortable because they don't want to impact the seriousness of the work, but they also might be gently telling you that your joke isn't funny. Either way, best to heed their feedback on this one. Maybe the next paper will be a better fit for a clever title.

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    I actually did try out various titles on about 10 colleagues who are not coauthors. The clever one was the overwhelming favorite. If not for that data I would have fewer qualms about using a boring title, but now I worry that doing so would be a tremendous missed opportunity.
    – Sesquipedal
    Commented Jul 14 at 19:25
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    For more details, Belcher talks a good deal about titles, with this same point I believe, in their writing on these types of decisions in "Writing your journal article in 12 weeks" - search.worldcat.org/en/title/1079401118
    – Mike M
    Commented Jul 16 at 6:31
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    Remember that the goal for your paper title is not "amuse colleagues who already know you" but something more like "convey the topic of the paper to someone not familiar with it". Your colleagues liking the clever title doesn't give you any information about how likely people are to read the paper
    – deee
    Commented Jul 16 at 14:05
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In my field my perception is that authors need to "earn" the right to publish articles with cheeky titles by being very well established/famous in the field. That is, your name or the work needs to already be so well known that those features will attract attention on their own. This then buys you a little extra freedom in having a cheeky title. If you're not so well-established in the field you may want to go with a more conventional title. Not a definitive answer by any means, but an additional point to consider.

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A good title is one that will entice readers to read further (abstract or full text). I frequently scan through tables of contents for titles which are relevant or interesting to me in some way, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. So yes, a good title can help gain readers, and bad title might mean that your work gets less attention that you would like.

Based on my experience as a reader, the way to do this is to be sufficiently, but not excessively, specific. The title should be clear, contain important key words, but not so technical or long that the general reader will lose interest. Note that you should probably not be worrying about attracting those interested in precisely your field. They will surely find it and read it even with a clunky title. You are trying to tempt those in a linked or adjacent field, or just those with general interest, to take a look.

Your two examples:

Attention is all you need

I have no idea what that paper is about, or even what field it belongs to. If I'm not in a rush, I might click out of idle curiosity, but it's basically empty. (Note: comments have pointed out this title might be perfectly clear to someone in the field of deep learning. So if you are publishing in a specialist journal, this might be fine. In a more general journal, it might get lost.)

How dark matter came to matter

Much better example. A touch of humour, but most importantly, I can tell within six short words what this paper is about.

Note that humour is great provided a) it doesn't come at the cost of informativeness, and b) it appeals to most potential readers. Bryan Krause's answer discusses the riskiness of point b), and it's also discussed at length in this related question.

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  • A compromise to balance humour and informativeness that I've seen a reasonable amount is "Straightforward Informative Title: Witty Subclause After Colon"
    – deee
    Commented Jul 16 at 14:09
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    "Attention is all you need" is a deep learning paper, putting forward the idea that attention (which is a technique already popular at the time) is incredibly powerful. For the right crowd, it is actually very informative.
    – Davidmh
    Commented Jul 16 at 14:54
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    @Davidmh totally, and in particular, that other popular features of neural nets at the time were not needed; that you could go far using only attention. The title "Attention is all you need" was so effective that it has spawned countless "X is all you need" imitators since, not always as appropriately titled.
    – John Madden
    Commented Jul 16 at 20:33
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    @JohnMadden indeed, it has spawned a paper or two. Although "All you need is a good init" predates it (same sentiment, minus the Beatles).
    – Davidmh
    Commented Jul 17 at 7:15
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    @Davidmh thanks for pointing this out, I was showing my ignorance! I have edited the answer to note this point.
    – user2390246
    Commented Jul 17 at 11:04
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A bad thesis title hurt me financially.

Basically (and unwisely) I was dead set on my thesis title describing exactly what was in my thesis. In my case, this included various subscripts and superscripts, as well as a particular mathematical squiqqle. My university's policy was that I had to get three copies of the thesis printed and bound by a local printer. The squiggle which I wanted to print had to be embossed in gold on the front page. Being non-conventional, it doubled the cost of typesetting.

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  • How our hearts bleed for thee !
    – user104446
    Commented Jul 16 at 13:55
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    Out of topic, but the university should pay for the printing.
    – Davidmh
    Commented Jul 16 at 14:48
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    @Davidmh - certainly hasn't been that way at various US and Dutch universities that I know of.
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Jul 16 at 21:20
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I definitely agree that a good title can make or break your paper! Like the abstract, people look at the title to see what is the main idea of your study. If it doesn't clearly communicate what your paper is about, the paper may lose its purpose in effectively communicating the content to its audience.

Plus as a student, the title is usually what people would look at when they're researching for papers to back their own research up. Personally, since I'm a business student, I have a bit more creative freedom with creating titles and incorporating humour, but ultimately, it comes down to a number of factors. Maybe it's your field of study, or your coauthors, or whatever.

Then again, if your coauthor is nervous about the title. What's the title of your paper, and how does it compare to your abstract? I would say hear out your coauthor about why they think they're nervous about the title and if both of your can come to solve this problem or compromise.

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Let's be clear that none of these titles are actually funny.

The best you can hope for is to be quirky:

Nineteen dubious ways to compute the exponential of a matrix

How dark matter came to matter

Why the Brazil nuts are on top: Size segregation of particulate matter by shaking

Some titles are attempting to be quirky but are uninteresting:

Attention is all you need

And some are tiresome:

Some title containing the words "homotopy" and "symplectic", e.g. this one

As user2390246 says, most titles like these are OK as long as the quirkiness does not come at the expense of informativeness. It is best if the quirky part adds something to the serious meaning, as in the ones with "dubious" and "matter".

In answer to the questions, yes and yes. It depends how bad or good the titles are.

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