The use of topic sentences for evaluating the representativeness of Arabic article titles

Abstract

This paper provides another partial answer to the question of whether titles of Arabic periodical articles can be used for keyword indexing techniques and for the production of Arabic title-derivative printed indexes. It examines and evaluates the representativeness of Arabic article titles in five different disciplines by comparing the substantive words found in titles to the content of their accompanying topic sentences in the introduction or objectives parts of articles. Although significant differences are found between titles in library and information science and titles in philosophy, Arabic titles appear to provide good representations of their articles. Between 70% and 88% of the substantive words in titles matched substantive words in the corresponding topic sentences. To give a full answer to the above question, there are still other issues to be investigated