Getting the most out from keywords

Keywords are words or phrases which should capture the essence of an academic paper. As such, most nursing journals request authors to provide them as part of manuscript submission. Choosing the most appropriate keywords is vitally important, as other readers and researchers will use these when searching for information in academic research databases, such as the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). Therefore, to enhance the discoverability of an article, keywords must reflect an accurate indexing of a manuscript. At the Journal of Clinical Nursing, we believe that it is vital for our authors to choose the most relevant keywords that corresponds with their manuscript. As such, we have recently standardised our list of keywords, used by us to help identify appropriate peer reviewers by matching manuscript keywords with reviewer keywords. At present, we ask our author's to provide up to ten keywords, taken from those recommended by the US National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser list at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/.By using keywords effectively, an author can enhance the chances of potential readers finding their article. It is advisable to take some time to consider the most appropriate keywords for their manuscript, prior to submission of a manuscript. In this editorial, the role and importance of keywords in nursing academic papers are explored. Some practical tips and strategies are provided to help authors make the best choice of the most appropriate and effective keywords for their manuscript.