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We are in the process of publishing a paper in Communications Chemistry, for which we devised the following title:

All paths lead to hubs: the case of water isotopologues

However, the editor asked us to change the title because it does not comply the journal's (quite broad and inexact) house standards, specifically:

The title should summarize the key findings in a single statement of 15 words or fewer.

It also turned out that they would not allow a title which contains two (more or less) isolated statements with long dashes, commas, colons, semicolons, etc.

To treat this situation, we thought of the following form:

All paths lead to hubs in spectroscopic networks of water isotopologues

but this is not really what we would like to say. The correct meaning would be the following:

All paths lead to hubs in spectroscopic networks such as in those of water isotopologues

but this does not sound like a title. Is there any way to reflect the latter meaning in a title which retains the witty paraphrasis "all paths lead to hubs"? Thank you in advance for your help.

To give the title a context, this is the abstract of our manuscript:

In spectroscopic networks, where the nodes are quantum states and the edges are transitions connecting states, hubs are the most important states with the largest number of incident transitions. Utilizing network paths probed via precision metrology, absolute energies have been derived, with a 10-digit accuracy, for almost 200 hubs in the experimental networks of H₂16O and H₂18O. These hubs, lying on the ground vibrational states of both species and the bending fundamental of H₂16O, participate in tens of thousands of observed transitions. Relying on the same hubs and other states, benchmark-quality line lists were assembled, which supersede and improve, by three orders of magnitude, the accuracy of the vast amount of measurements published in hundreds of papers dealing with Doppler-limited spectroscopy. Due to the omnipresence of water, these ultraprecise line lists could be applied to calibrate high-resolution spectra and serve ongoing and upcoming space missions.

Ben
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TobiR
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1 Answers1

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Since, if I understand correctly, the water isotopologues are just one example for spectroscopic networks and since all paths lead to hubs in all spectroscopic networks, the example of the water isotopologues seems superfluous in the title and a sufficient and more concise title would be "All paths lead to hubs in spectroscopic networks" in my opinion.

Edit after your comments

If, as you say, "water isotopologues have these (spectroscopic) networks, they are not networks themselves", then the following seems an elegant possibility:

All paths lead to hubs in the spectroscopic networks of water isotopologues

Edit after your abstract

Your abstract seems to imply the following summary of your research:

Hubs participate in tens of thousands of observed transitions between the nodes of spectroscopic networks   (15 words)

Or possibly, since your proposed title says "all paths":

Hubs participate in all (observed) transitions between the nodes of spectroscopic networks of water isotopologues   (14 or 15 words)

Ben
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