The title of a paper is "like a hat on a head or the front door to a house" and its initial impression. Writing a good and effective title makes the paper more retrievable by search engines and maximizes its impact in the scientific community. The paper's title presents what has been studied, how it has been done, and what are the major results. A well-written title is balanced for being informative and concise, as well as attractively conveying the main topic, highlighting the importance of the study. For writing a good title, it should be drafted correctly, accurately, carefully, and meticulously by the main study keywords. By removing extra and unspecific words, the final title should be unambiguous, memorable, captivating, and informative. Here, we provided an overview of the importance and function of the title as well as different types of titles in scientific medical writing. We also focused on the content and organization of the title of a hypothesis-testing paper. In addition, the features of a good title were discussed. Although the title is a very small part of a research paper, it plays an important role in connecting the writer with potential readers. It also determines whether the paper is read or not ( 2 ). The title of a paper acts as a billboard, a descriptor, an advertisement ( 3 ), or a trailer for the movie ( 4 ). For every person who reads the whole paper, about 500 people only read the title, indicating that the majority of the papers are read by title alone ( 5 ). The title can influence the first impression of the work during the pre-publication process that occurs in the peer-review, as well as the post-publication process, which affects both dissemination and citations ( 3 , 6 ). To state results of a single investigation past tense and for results of a systematic review present tense should be used ( 27 ). 4.3. Interrogative Titles To make a title more attractive, an interrogative form, which phrases the subject of the paper in the form of a question, can be used ( 30 ). However, in hypothesis-testing papers, interrogative titles are not recommended ( 31 ), because the reader would appreciate being told the answer from the beginning ( 30 ). An interrogative title may be appropriate for a review article, where the controversial issues are being discussed in response to the study question ( 30 ); e.g. are shorter article titles more attractive for citations? Cross-sectional study of 22 scientific journals ( 32 ). Interrogative titles in general lead to more paper down-loads but may result in fewer citations ( 22 ). 4.4. Compound Titles Compound titles (or hanging titles) contain the main title and a subtitle ( 23 ) that are separated by a colon (:) ( 18 ). Compound titles can be started with a short question, a subject sentence, or a noun phrase, followed by a colon and a declarative sentence or a question ( 22 ). These types of titles are used to provide additional relevant information (e.g. about the study design, geographic or temporal scope of the research) or to add substance to a provocative area ( 23 ); e.g. To get more attention, the use of “effective opening”, “alliteration”, “irony”, “puns”, “humor” or “mystifying” ( 35 ) may also be used. However, the latter styles do help the paper grab readers’ attention, the authors need to ensure they will be understood and appreciated by all readers and are culturally appropriate ( 23 ). One example of referring to a parable in the title is: challenges for measuring oxytocin: the blind men and the elephant? ( 36 ), in which the subtitle refers to the parable of the 6 blind men and the elephant. 5. Running Title To identify the articles in a journal, short phrases called running titles (running heads) appear at the top or bottom of every page or every other page ( 6 , 18 ). Running titles are short versions of the title ( 6 , 18 ) and help readers to keep track of the article throughout its printed pages ( 21 ). As running titles mostly cannot be longer than 50 characters (including the spaces), authors are recommended to use standard abbreviations and omit the study design ( 21 ). In hypothesis-testing papers, the running title usually names independent and dependent variables ( 18 ). The form “X and Y”, which is unspecific for the title can be used for the running title ( 18 ). 12. Title and Paper Citation A well-organized title is positively associated with paper citation ( 47 ). Some studies have addressed how the feature and structure of a title can affect pre- and post-publication manuscript success ( 9 ). Association of title’s length and citation of the paper has remained inconclusive ( 47 , 48 ), however, papers with shorter titles ( 40 ) especially when presenting study conclusion ( 49 ) receive more citations ( 40 ). Analysis of published papers in the Lancet journal showed that titles with two components separated by a colon were significantly more common in the well-cited papers ( 47 ). Titles emphasizing broader conceptual or comparative issues get more attention than those being more specific (e.g. use of particular genus or species by their taxonomic name in the title) ( 9 ). Some factors such as referring to a specific country or geographical region may also lead to poor citation of the paper ( 47 , 49 ). Other factors such as punctuations and use of acronyms can also affect the citation rate of a paper ( 47 ). Use of “colon”, “hyphen” and “comma” was most frequent whereas “semi-colon”, “dash” and “single quotation marks” were least frequent punctuation marks in top-cited papers ( 50 ). 13. Conclusions The essence of research is reflected in its title, which acts as a “signpost” for the main topic of the paper ( 31 ). In addition to presenting the message of the paper, the title should evoke interest in reading the paper. Appropriate types of a title (e.g. descriptive, declarative, interrogative) should be selected by the authors and in all cases, the title should be accurate, unambiguous,