ENGLISH FRANCA: Academic Journal of English Language and Education Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022, IAIN Curup P-ISSN 2580-3670, E-ISSN 2580-3689 DOI: 10.29240/ef.v6i2.5445 The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different SINTA Scores Noni Apriani University of Bengkulu noniapriani94@gmail.com Safnil Arsyad University of Bengkulu safnil@unib.ac.id ABSTRACT The journal article (henceforth JA) title is regarded as an advertisement to promote the content of the research article to potential readers. The authors must write and organize their titles to be attractive by paying attention to the syntactic features of titles. This research aims to investing the average length, syntactic features, and the differences of JA titles in Applied Linguistics at different Sinta scores. The method used in this research was a mixed method with an exploratory sequential design. 120 JA titles were included as corpora of this research taken from six journals at different Sinta scores. The analyses of data were conducted following Cheng et al. (2012)'s framework on the syntactic features, while the analysis of the average length of JA titles by counting the parts of speech of the titles. The results show that the average length of JA titles was in the range of 10.5 to 13.55 words. Moreover, there are three types of syntactic features of JA titles found in this research, namely nominal structure, compound structure, and Verb- Ing phrases. Furthermore, all groups of journals in applied linguistics at different Sinta scores tended to have the same average length and syntactic features of JA titles. The findings of this research give useful significance for Indonesian authors in applied linguistics especially new or novice authors who should learn and use the common syntactic features of JA titles when writing an mailto:noniapriani94@gmail.com mailto:safnil@unib.ac.id 220 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 article in English to be submitted to reputable international journals. Keywords: Applied Linguistics, Journal Article Titles, SINTA Scores INTRODUCTION In the article structure, a title is the first part of the journal article that the readers may write when writing a research article. Also, it is the first part of the article read by readers when they want to find out the literature (Lang, 2010 Wager et al., 2016). Moreover, the readers could decide whether they continue or stop reading the whole part of the article after reading the journal article title (Tullu, 2019 Yang, 2019). In other words, the JA title has an important function although it is written in terms of the sentence that contains some words. The JA title is regarded as an advertisement to promote the content of the research article to potential readers. The authors must write and organize their JA titles to be attractive by paying attention to some factors. Jamali and Nikzad (2011) suggest that several factors may affect readers' interest in a particular article; among other things 1) the quality of the journal where the article is published, 2) the accessibility of the article to wide readers, 3) the topic or subject of the article, 4) the popularity of the author/s writing the article, and 5) the attractiveness of the article title. Therefore, authors must choose the words included in a title very carefully and the meaning connections between the words must be organized carefully. Several researchers have conducted studies related to JA titles across disciplines in terms of the length of word count. Anthony (2001) investigated the characteristic features of research article titles, including length, punctuation usage, word frequency, and preposition usage. This study included 600 research articles from six journals of the IEEE Computer Society. In terms of the length of the titles, this study found that the average length of the titles in the field of Computer Science is between 8.0 to 9.9 words. Soler (2007) examined the most recurrent structural constructions of titles in two different genres, namely, review papers (RVP) and research papers (RP) in two fields: biological sciences and social sciences. The corpus of this study consisted of 570 titles, of which 480 were RP titles and the remaining 90 titles were RVP titles, all covering the period 1996–2002. The results of the study revealed that the average length of JA titles in Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 221 Biology, Medicine, and Biochemistry is 14.15 to 15.48 words while in soft sciences 7.98 words for Linguistics and 12.63 for Psychology. Moattarian and Alibabaee (2015) found a longer JA title in Applied Linguistics articles (12.88 words), Dentistry (10.38 words), and Civil Engineering (13.54 words). According to Moattarian and Alababaee, the shorter titles in Dentistry are because they contain more compound words and, unlike in social and hard sciences, authors in Dentistry as in other medical sciences do not need to give detailed information on the study. According to Cheng et al. (2012), JA titles in Applied Linguistics are constructed using at least five different syntactic structures: compound, nominal, full-sentence, V-ing phrase, and prepositional phrases. According to Cheng et al., among the five different structures, compound titles constitute the most dominant titles followed by nominal titles. Cheng et al. suggest that this is probably because the compound titles allow authors to connect two or more important variables in a study and provide greater flexibility in organizing information. Yang (2019) investigated JA titles in Applied Linguistics published from 1990 to 2016 by international reputable journals indexed by the Web of Science and organized by Thomson Reuters. Yang found that the titles became longer over time, containing more keywords to expand the visibility of the JAs and improve their citations. It is because from 2011 to 2016 research interests in Applied Linguistics became much more diverse and as a result, more keywords were used to accommodate the diverse research topics. Doykova (2016) investigated 500 JA titles in the field of Medicine and Dental Medicine written in English by Bulgarian authors. This study found that the most dominant title type was the nominal title. Other types of titles are also found in the study, such as compound, prepositional phrase, full-sentence, question, and v-ing type titles. Scholars have investigated the length and the syntactic structure of JA titles written in English by native and non-native speakers. However, as far as we are concerned, no study compared the syntactic features of JA titles published in different ranking journals such as different quartile values, impact factors, and Sinta scores. This is the rationale for this study to investigate the length and syntactic structures of JA titles published in different-ranking Indonesian journals. By knowing the differences in length and syntactic structures of titles of the two groups of JAs, Indonesian authors such as university students and lecturers can be familiar with the length and syntactic 222 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 structures of each journal with a different ranking. The research questions addressed in this research are as follows: 1) What is the average length of JA titles in Applied Linguistics published in Indonesian accredited journals at different Sinta scores? 2) What syntactic features are often used in the JA titles in Applied Linguistics published in Indonesian accredited journals at different Sinta scores? and 3) What are the differences between JA titles in Applied Linguistics published in Indonesian accredited journals of different Sinta scores? THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Scholars have suggested the specific characteristics of a good JA article. Bavdekar (2016), for example, argues that a good JA title can represent the research work to the fullest extent but concisely. The concise manner means that the JA title is written in a good syntactic structure by considering the use of part of speech, and the number of words. In terms of the length of the title, ‘longer titles contain more words and, therefore, more potential keywords, thus increasing the potential for retrieval’ (Milojevic, 2017, p. 2). On the other hand, JA that has longer titles may be more difficult to digest and may reduce the attraction factor (Hudson, 2016). Therefore, the length of JA is suggested to not write too long and short, but it is informative, attractive, and concise. If it does not represent those factors, the JA will be a poorly written article. According to Fox and Burn (2015), a poorly written article title will be difficult to discover and read by potential readers. Moreover, the author should write a title with appropriate syntactic structure concerning the use of certain features related to the content of the article. Jacques and Sebire (2010) claim that certain features related to the title of a scientific article influence the number of subsequent citations it receives. It assumes that there is a strong association between the length of the JA title and the title structure on citation rate and attracts potential readers. This shows that making an informative, attractive, and concise title seems a challenging task for some authors, especially Indonesian authors in applied linguistics. The problem is that most of the article titles are too broad and they do not contest the information contained in the article (Belcher, 2009). This may be one of the factors why articles were often declined by journal Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 223 editors. It is emphasized by the statement of Ehara and Takahashi (2007), Adnan (2009), Renandya (2014), Jasrial et al. (2019), that the cause of manuscripts is declined by journal editors or reviewers because the language barrier, discourse structure, poorly writing quality, language errors, scope, and aims of the journals do not match and follow the submission's guidelines. Those factors include the JA title's structure and length of word count. Moreover, the JA title is often changed by the reviewer to make it suitable for the JA content. Therefore, Indonesian authors (e.g., university students or novice authors) should learn and be familiar with the length and syntactic structure of JA titles for their journal articles when they want to publish in accredited Indonesian journals in applied linguistics that have been ranked by science and technology index (Sinta) of Indonesia. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The method of this research was mixed-method. Gay et al. (2011) point out that mixed-method is the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches and the data of the study must be in form of quantitative and qualitative. The use of the mixed method in research activity aims at obtaining data to be more focused, valid, reliable, and objective (Sugiyono, 2011). The type of mixed method used in this research is exploratory sequential design. The exploratory sequential mixed method research design is where the qualitative data is first collected and analyzed, and themes are used to drive the development of a quantitative instrument to further explore the research problem (Creswell & Plano, 2011). Further, Nicolau et al. (2015) state that the exploratory sequential mixed method research design is research that transfers or generalizes qualitative results using quantitative results. 1.1. The Corpus of the Research The corpus of this research consisted of 120 research article titles published in applied linguistics in an accredited national journal at different Sinta scores. As stated by Corder and Foreman (2009) and The author et al. (2020), the minimum requirement of the corpus includes for genre analysis is 30 texts. For this reason, the total corpus involved in this study is 120 JA titles to fulfill the requirements of samples of this research. The detailed corpus was presented in the following table, Table 1: The Distribution of the Corpus of the Research No Name of Journal Sinta Code F P 224 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 Value 1 SIELE (Studies in Language and Education) Sinta-1 A 20 16.67% 2 JEFL (Journal of English as a Foreign Language) Sinta-2 B 20 16.67% 3 JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature) Sinta-3 C 20 16.67% 4 ELT WORLDWIDE: Journal of English Language Teaching Sinta-4 D 20 16.67% 5 JELT (Journal of English Language Teaching) Sinta-5 E 20 16.67% 6 JELE (Journal of English Language and Education) Sinta-6 F 20 16.67% Total 120 100% As shown in table 1, the total corpus of this study was 120 titles taken from six journals with different Sinta scores. The technique of sampling used in this research was purposive sampling. Sugiyono (2017) states that purposive sampling is based on certain considerations. The considerations in taking the samples of this research were; 1) the journals were indexed in Sinta (Values of 1-6). 2) the scope of journals published articles in the field of English applied linguistics. 3) the journals were open-access and the researcher can download the articles for free. 4) The articles were published in 2021. The recent articles published in those journals were to represent the updated information about the syntactic structures of article titles published in those journals. 1.2. The Instrument of the Research This study used an observation sheet to obtain information about the average length and syntactic structures of article titles in the corpus of the study. The observation sheet consisted of two types; these are observation sheets for syntactic structure and compound structure patterns (see Appendix 1 for the instrument). The instrument was developed following the description and classification of JA title types suggested by Cheng et al. (2012). 1.3. Data Analysis Techniques Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 225 The function words such as definite articles (e.g., the) and indefinite article (e.g., a, and an) are not counted in this study because they are not content words (Al-Sulaimaan & Alsinjari, 2018). The compound word (e.g., self-voicing), abbreviation, and an acronym, such as EFL were counted as a single word in this study. Yule (1965) suggests that a compound word is a joining of two separated words to produce a single word. An abbreviation is constructed by taking initial letters of multi-word sequences to become a new word, while an acronym is part of the abbreviation which is also the process of a new word formed from the initial letters of the constituent words of a phrase or sentence (Zapata, 2007 & Pujiyanti, 2019). 1.4. Analyzing the Syntactics Structure Types of Article Titles To answer the second question, we followed the theory of Cheng et al. (2012). Cheng informs that the syntactic classifications are nominal, compound, full-sentence, V-ing phrase, and prepositional phrase. To analyze the type of syntactic features of JA titles, the researcher saw the keywords of each type of syntactic structure. Moreover, the researcher also saw the colon, dash, question mark, or period of the JA titles. The types, descriptions, and examples of these five different syntactic features are given in the table below. A general description of the research is important to show the basis of the research. It is a very brief introduction to the methodology section. Table 3: Syntactic Structure Types of the Journal Article Titles (Adopted from Cheng et al., 2012) Syntactic Structure Types Description Examples Nominal It consists of one or more nouns i.e., that is, a head/s that can be preceded by pre- modifiers or followed by post-modifiers The Effects of a Phonological Awareness Intervention on the Oral English Proficiency of Spanish-Speaking Kindergarten Children Compound It consists of two parts separated by a colon, dash, question mark, or period Voice of EFL mentor teachers: Mentorship for mutual professional development. 226 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 Full sentences It comprises a complete sentence or clause, including both declarative structures When Grammar Instruction Undermines Cohesion in L2 Spanish Classroom Discourse, and interrogative structures, e.g., Is there an Academic Vocabulary? V-ing phrases It is the –ing form of one or more verbs, followed by objects or modifiers of the verb(s). Identifying the teaching of English to early young learners at Stepping Stones School Surabaya Prepositional phrases It starts with a preposition that is followed by the object of the preposition. Toward a Socioliterate Approach to Second Language Teacher Education 2.5. Inter-rater Reliability Analysis The data validation technique used in this research was by involving an independent co-rater. The co-rater was an alumnus of the postgraduate program of English education at the University of Bengkulu who knows the structure of the research article and has a good command of discourse analysis. The reason for choosing her as a co-rater was that she did a similar study in the same field. To get a better understanding and analysis results, she was trained until she understood how to analyze the syntactic and the length of JA titles using the instrument. If there is any difference in analysis results, a discussion was held to achieve an agreement. After, the rater and co-rater finished analyzing the syntactic structure types in all article titles; the findings of each rater were compared to develop a broader and deeper understanding of how the different raters analyzed the JA titles. The analysis results between the two raters were analyzed using Cohen’s Kappa statistical analysis. The maximum score in the Kohen Kappa analysis is 1.00, and the minimum score was 0.00. If the final score of analysis from the rater and co-rater had been obtained, then the score was interpreted in the range score Cohen‘s Kappa value. Cohen’s Kappa statistics were calculated as percent agreement, in which it was the number of agreed scores divided by the total number of scores and multiplied by a hundred percent. The Cohen’s Kappa agreement score obtained was 0.82. Several discussions were held between the two raters on the differences in the analysis results to get a full agreement. Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 227 RESULTS & DISCUSSION 3.1. Results 3.1.1. The Average Length of JA Titles The first analysis of this research was on the length of the titles in terms of the number of words. The results are presented in the following table. Table 4. The Average Length of JA Titles in Word Count No Name of Journal Sinta Value Number of JA Titles The average length of titles in word count 1 SIELE (Studies in Language and Education) Sinta-1 20 11.7 2 JEFL (Journal of English as a Foreign Language) Sinta-2 20 13.4 3 JOALL (Journal of Applied Linguistics and Literature) Sinta-3 20 12.5 4 ELT Worldwide: Journal of English Language Teaching Sinta-4 20 12.4 5 JELT (Journal of English Language Teaching) Sinta-5 20 13.6 6 JELE (Journal of English Language and Education) Sinta-6 20 10.5 Total 120 12.3 As presented in Table 6, the average length of JA titles in all groups of Indonesian-accredited national journals was 12.33 words. Moreover, the longest JA title was found in JELT (Sinta-5) with a length of 13.55 words, followed by JEFL (Sinta-2) with a length of 13.4 words, JOAL (Sinta-3) with a length of 12.5 words, ELT Worldwide (Sinta-4) with the length of 12.4 words, and Siele (Sinta-1) with the length of 11.65 words. Moreover, the shortest JA title was found in JELE (Sinta-6) with a length of 10.5 words. The examples are as follows: Extract 1: a JA with 10 words 228 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 English teachers’ instructional practice in pandemic outbreaks: efforts and challenges (JELE-1) Example 1 is a JA that consists of ten words. The words counted in this title are only parts of speech. Thus, the article “the” is not counted as a word. Extract 2: a JA with 11 words Students’ perspective toward English learning for non-EFL students in higher education (JELT-13) Example 2 is a JA that consists of eleven words. The combined word such as “non-EFL” is counted as a word. Extract 3: a JA with 12 words Teachers’ perception in Google Forms-Based English assessment in an Indonesian Vocational High School (ELT Worldwide-18) Example 3 is a JA that consists of twelve words. The combined word such as “non-EFL” is counted as a word, while the article “an” is not counted as a word or not part of speech. Extract 4: a JA with 14 words Grammatical errors in thesis abstracts written by the undergraduate students of the management study program (JOALL-5) Example 4 is a JA that consists of thirteen words. The article “the” is not counted as a word or not part of speech. 3.1.2. The Syntactic Feature Types of JA Titles The second analysis of this research was on the syntactic feature type of the JA titles. The results are presented in the following table. Table 5. The Average Frequency of Syntactic Features of the JA Titles No Syntacti c Features SIELE n=20 JEFL n=20 JOALL n=20 ELT Worl dwid e n=20 JELT n=20 JELE n=20 Total N=120 % http://ejournal.unp.ac.id/index.php/jelt/article/view/114388 http://ejournal.unp.ac.id/index.php/jelt/article/view/114388 https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ELT/article/view/22145 https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ELT/article/view/22145 Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 229 S-1 S-2 S-3 S-4 S-5 S-6 1 Nomina l Structu re 5 (25 %) 8 (40 %) 16 (80% ) 6 (30 %) 17 (85% ) 15 (75%) 67 55.8 2 V-Ing Phrases 6 (30 %) 2 (10 %) 1 (5%) 6 (30 %) 1 (5 %) 3 (15 ) 19 15.8 3 Compoun d Structur e 9 (45 %) 10 (50 %) 3 (15%) 8 (40 %) 2 (10% ) 2 (10 %) 34 28.3 4 Full Sentence s 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 Prepositi onal Phrases 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total 120 100 Table 6 shows that there were three syntactic features found in applied linguistics in accredited national journals at different values, namely nominal structure, V-ing Phrases, and Compound structure. Of the three syntactic features, the nominal structure was the most frequent title type used in all groups of JA titles (67 or 55.83%) followed by compound structure type (34 or 28.33%) and V-ing phrase structure type (19 or 15.83). In addition, full sentences and prepositional phrases were not found in all groups of journals. Below are examples of JA types taken from the data of the study. Extract 5 (Nominal structure) The sustainable impacts of teacher action research on EFL teachers in Indonesia (SIELE-3) The word "the sustainable impacts" in extract 5 is a noun phrase as the head of the 'impacts' so it is categorized as a nominal structure title. The point of this title is the impact of teacher action research on EFL teachers. In addition, the word “students’ perceptions” in extract 6 is a noun phrase at the head of the construction so it is categorized as a 230 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 nominal structure title. This title describes the study about the perceptions of the students on teacher feedback in EFL class. Extract 6 (Verbing phrase) Incorporating CEFR bands and ICT competencies in grammar syllabuses of the English Language Education Study Program in Indonesia (JEFL-16) ‘Incorporating’ or Verb-ing form in Extract 12 denotes that this title is classified as having a V-ing structure title. It is about the use of CEFR bands and ICT competencies in grammar syllabuses for English majors in Indonesia. 3.1.3. Compound Structure Title The third type of Syntactic feature found on the JA titles in applied linguistics published in accredited national journals at different values was V-Ing Phrases. As presented in Table 5, the most frequently used compound structure JA title was JEFL (Sinta-2) with a frequency of 10 or 50%. It was followed by SIELE (Sinta-1) with a frequency of 9 or 45%), ELT Worldwide (Sinta-4) with a frequency of 8 or 40%, JOALL (Sinta-3) with a frequency of 3 or 15%, and JELT (Sinta-5) and JELE (Sinta-6) with the frequency of 2 or 10%. It is presented in the following table. Table 6. The Patterns of Compound Structure Title No Compo und Structu re SIELE (N=9) JEFL (N=1 0) JOALL (N=3) ELT Worldw ide N=7) JELT (N=2) JELE (N=2) Total % S-1 S-2 S-3 S-4 S-5 S-6 1 Nomin al + V-ing Phrase s 1 (11.11 %) 0 (0% ) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 2.9 4 2 Nomin al + Nomin al 6 (66.67 %) 6 (60 %) 3 (100 %) 5 (62.50 % 1 (50 %) 1 (50 %) 2 2 64. 71 https://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/article/view/2863 https://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/article/view/2863 https://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/article/view/2863 https://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/article/view/2863 https://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/article/view/2863 https://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/article/view/2863 Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 231 3 V-Ing Phrases + Nominal 1 (11.11 %) 4 (40 %) 0 (0%) 2 (25%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 7 20. 59 4 Nominal + Full Sentenc e 1 (11.11 %) 0 (0% ) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 (50%) 1 (50 %) 3 8.8 2 5 Full Sentenc e + V- Ing Phrases 0 (0%) 0 (0% ) 0 (0%) 1 (12.50 %) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 2.9 4 Total 3 4 10 0 As described in Table 8, there were five patterns of compound structure titles found in applied linguistics published in national accredited journals at different Sinta scores. The patterns were nominal + V-ing Phrases, Nominal + Nominal, V-ing Phrases + Nominal, Nominal + Full Sentence, and Full Sentence + V-ing Phrases. The most frequent type of compound structure title was nominal + nominal pattern (22 or 64.71%), followed by V-Ing Phrases + Nominal (7 or 20.59%), Nominal + Full Sentence (3 or 8.82%), Nominal + V-ing Phrases (1 or 2.94%), and Full Sentence + V-ing Phrases (1 or 2.94%). The examples are as follows; Extract 7 (Verb-ing phrase+Nominal Structure) Mentoring practice during practicum: The perspectives of Malaysian pre-service English language teachers (SIELE-14) The use of punctuation marks or colons after the word ‘practicum’ in Extract 17 is an indicator that this title has a compound structure even though the title starts with a Verb-ing of ‘Mentoring’. The pattern of the compound structure of this title was “V-Ing Phrases + Nominal. This title contains the study of the pre-service English teachers’ perspective on mentoring practice during practicum. Extract 8 (Nominal structure+Nominal structure) 232 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 Online instructional strategies for English language learning during Covid-19 Pandemic: A case from a creative teacher (JOALL-6) The use of punctuation marks or colons after the word 'Covid-19 Pandemic' in Extract 19 is an indicator that this title has a compound structure even though the title starts with a noun phrase of 'Online instructional strategies. The pattern of the compound structure of this title was "Nominal + Nominal". This title contains the teachers' strategies for English language learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Extract 8 (Nominal structure+Full sentence) Music and seventh graders’ listening proficiency: Does Islamic song works? (JELE-20) The use of punctuation marks or a colon after the word ‘proficiency’ in Extract 22 is an indicator that this title has a compound structure even though the title has the sentence with a complete sentence of 'Does Islamic song work?'. The pattern of the compound structure of this title was Nominal + Full-sentence. This title contains the use of Islamic songs for teaching listening skills. Extract 9 (Full sentence+Verb-ing phrase) Purposive communication is not enough: Exploring English language learning from the perspectives of English majors in a Philippine higher education institution (ELT Worldwide-19) The use of punctuation marks or a colon after the word ‘enough’ in Extract 22 is an indicator that this title has a compound structure even though the title has a sentence with a complete sentence of purposive communication is not enough. The pattern of the compound structure of this title was “Full-sentence + V-ing Phrases”. This title contains the perspectives of English students on English language learning in a university. 3.1.4. The Syntactic Features of JA Titles of Different Sinta Scores. The last analysis of this research was on the differences in syntactic features of JA titles in terms of length and the syntactic feature type. The differences are described in the following chart. https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ELT/article/view/23094 https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ELT/article/view/23094 https://ojs.unm.ac.id/ELT/article/view/23094 Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 233 Figure 1. Syntactic Structure of JA Titles of Different Sinta Scores As presented in Chart 2, the compound structure was the most frequent type of JA used in SIELE (Sinta-1), JEFL (Sinta-2), and ELT Worldwide (Sinta-4). The nominal structure was the most frequent JA title type used in JOALL (Sinta-3), JELT (Sinta-5), and JELE (Sinta 6). 3.2. Discussion The first analysis of this research was about the average length of JA titles. The results show that each journal of different values has a different average length of JA title with a range of 10 to 14 words. The lowest value of the Sinta rank was the shortest length of the JA title, while the longest one was in the Sinta-5 journal. It implies the length of the JA title depends on the content of the study so that the author includes some important points to show the keywords of the study. However, the average length of JA titles in all groups (Sinta-1 to Sinta-6) of Indonesian-accredited national journals was 12.33 words. A JA title ideally consists of 10 to 15 words, and if it is a very long title, the readers may get confused about reading or understanding (Shah, 2014). Likewise, Bavdekar (2016) and Hudson (2016) assert that the JA that has a very long title avert readers from reading it in full because readers 25% 40% 80% 30% 85% 75% 30% 10% 5% 30% 5% 15% 45% 50% 15% 40% 10% 10% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% SINTA 1 (SIELE) SINTA 2 (JEFL) SINTA 3 (JOALL) SINTA 4 (ELT Worldwide) SINTA 5 (JELT) SINTA 6 (JELE) Nominal Structure V-Ing Phrases Compound Structure 234 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 tend to lose the information focus of the title when they read the title. The possible reason why titles are lengthened is due to the use of colons; authors use colons to elaborate their titles (Fumani et al., 2015). Other reasons may be due to there being no limitation on the number of words for a title in a journal, or the authors do not know the ideal length of the JA title. In addition, writing a longer JA title has some benefits. Yang (2019) claims that longer titles can address more research focuses or keywords and these titles tend to attract more attention from journal editors and reviewers, enlarge the visibility of the articles and boost citations. It means that there are strengths and weaknesses between short and long JA titles. The most important thing is a good JA title can represent the research work to the fullest extent but concisely (Bavdekar, 2016). It must be able to attract readers' attention, and it is easier to find on the internet through the keywords used in the title. In general, the results of this research are similar to Moatarian and Alibabaee (2015) who reported that the average length of article titles in Applied Linguistics written by international authors and published in high-rank international journals such as those indexed by Elsevier and Sage is 12.88 words. Likewise, Soler (2007) reported that the average length of JA titles in Linguistics is 12.63 words. In contrast, Xiang and Li (2020) found that the length of JA titles in linguistics and literary journals across periods such as 1998, 2008, and 2018 was 11.2 words/title. It can be concluded that the average length of JA titles found in this research at different Sinta scores is common and not significantly different from the findings of previous studies. The second analysis of this research was about the syntactic feature of JA titles. The results of the research shows that there were three types of syntactic features of JA titles in Applied Linguistics found in each Indonesian accredited national journal at different values; nominal structure, V-ing phrase, and compound structure. The most dominant type of JA title was compound structure, followed by V-Ing phrase, and nominal structure. It indicates that the authors prefer expressing the content and scope of their research in two sections. It may aim to inform the content and scope of the study. It is in line with the statement of Cianflone (2010) and Morales et al. (2020) that the function of the first part of the title is to inform about the topic, while the second part is to offer more specific information about the topic, scope (participants, sample, environment, place, and area), or method of the study. Writing the JA title into two sections, it will make the readers easier to find the keywords of the study. Also, using two sections of a Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 235 title (compound structure) will allow the authors to express the detailed content and scope of their research in two sections and nominal structure is used to stand out the purpose of the study. The second most dominant type of JA title used by authors was the nominal structure title. It implies that these authors prefer allowing the authors to write the JA titles by starting with nominal heads in terms of pre-and-post modifiers. Also, it is possibly caused by the heads in nominal titles usually functioning to inform readers of the general focus of the study and they often need further specification and nominal group construction provides a compressed structure, (Cheng et al., 2012). Further, Cheng et al. stated that the nominal structure type of JA title allows authors to include as many specific messages as possible employing pre- and post-modifiers qualifying the head nouns as the focus of research. Thus, a noun phrase as a title used by authors aims to address several important pieces of information about the study written in the article. The third dominant structure is V-ing phrases in all groups of journals although not as frequently as the other two types of title features (nominal and compound). The Verb-Ing phrase JA title has a predictive function, and it is used to show a sense of continuity, and to express the activity that is still in progress (Morales, 2020). This reason may be why the authors and journal reviewers and editors are reluctant to follow or suggest this format. The finding of this study is, however, different from that of Doykova (2016) and Nagano (2015). Doykova found five syntactic feature types of JA titles in the field of Medicine and Dental Medicine journals written by non-native speakers of English. Nagano (2015) also found five types of syntactic features of JA titles in the eight disciplines (botany, fluid engineering, geology, medicine, economics, education, history, and sociology). this implies that the syntactic structures of JA titles published in Indonesian accredited national journals at different values in the field of Applied Linguistics are not varied as like as journals outside Indonesia. The last analysis of this research was about the differences in syntactic features of JA titles published in Indonesian accredited journals at different Sinta scores. The results show that there is no relationship between the length and the quality of journals viewed from Sinta scores in terms of the average length of JA titles. It depends on the content and scope of the study that the authors write in the JA titles. The average length of JA titles in the same disciplines with different ranks or 236 | ENGLISH FRANCA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2022 values of the journals is not much different. this is in line with the findings from Soler (2007) who examined the most recurrent structural constructions of titles in two different genres in two fields of biological sciences and social sciences. This study found that the average length of JA titles in biological sciences such as Biology, Medicine, and Biochemistry is 14.15 to 15.48 words while in soft sciences 7.98 words for Linguistics and 12.63 for Psychology. It means that the same disciplines tend to have the same average length of JA titles although they are published in different-ranking journals. In terms of syntactic features, the results of the analysis show that all groups’ journals have three types of features, and those are the same. The difference is only about the dominant syntactic feature in each journal of different Sinta scores. These findings imply that the same disciplines with different journal Sinta values also tended to have the same and common syntactic feature types of titles. This is in line with the findings of Appiah et al. (2019) who investigated JA titles in Business which was extensively dominated by compound titles and compound titles were also commonly found in Gynaecology/Obstetrics and Law. Based on the results of this research, it can be seen that journal titles are parts of the genre in the area of independent discourse units (Haggan, 2004). How authors use language properly and appropriately to create JA titles for their manuscript should consider some aspects of languages, such as the number of words and the syntactic structure. It aims to make scholars from the same community easier to find the article through the keywords included in the title. They can retrieve from online search platforms like Google search. The JA titles can catch attention and influence researchers’ decision to read on by informing on the topic, the methods, the findings, and the impact on everyday practice (Goodman et al., 2001). As a result, the authors’ articles may have a chance to have more citations from the other authors. A title should also offer readers as much information as possible with a limited and appropriate number of words. This is a necessity in contemporary research settings, where 11 million papers can be accessed online, and now in 2021; it may be more than 11 million papers found on the internet. If the titles are not written based on the standards of reputable applied linguistics journals such as the non- informative, or wordy/too-long, the title may go unnoticed. Thus, for these reasons, the data obtained from this analysis should be considered a snapshot of contemporary applied linguistics practices. The results of this research also show how Applied Linguistics researchers Prihantoror: The Linguistic Characteristics of Article Titles in Applied Linguistics Published in Accredited National Journals of Different Sinta Scores 237 communicate findings by concise titles of 12 words and by the use of three common formats: nominal, compound, and V-Ing phrase titles. CONCLUSION This research investigated the average length, the syntactic feature, and differences of syntactic features of JA titles in applied linguistics published in nationally accredited journals at different Sinta scores. Based on the results, the conclusions of the research are addressed as follows: 1) in terms of the length of the JA titles, the average length of JA titles in all groups of journals is in the range of 10.5 to 13.55 words. In general, the average length of all groups of journals is 12.33 words; 2) in terms of syntactic features, all groups of journals have three types of syntactic features, namely nominal structure, compound structure, and V-Ing phrases. For compound structure title, the most frequent type of pattern found in the compound structure title was nominal + nominal, and 3) in terms of differences, the longest JA title is Sinta-5 (JELT), while the shortest one is Sinta-6 (JELE). Among the three types of syntactic features, the most frequent type of JA title used by authors in Sinta-1 (SIELE), Sinta-2 (JEFL), and Sinta-4 (ELT Worldwide) is compound structure. The nominal structure is the most frequently JA title type used by authors in Sinta-3 (JOALL), Sinta-5 (JELT), and Sinta-6 (JELE). The implication of the findings of this research is important for both experienced and novice authors in the field of applied linguistics. They will be familiar with the display of how to construct their titles when writing a journal article. Now, the authors can choose one of the three syntactic features or the most dominant syntactic feature among them found in this research to construct titles for publications in Indonesian accredited national journals at different Sinta scores. 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