Omission of "the" to improve reading fluency

[4lej0_I]

Hello,

yesterday I got into a discussion about whether it is correct to omit the article "the" in the following research paper title to improve readability.
Title: "An Empirical Investigation of Factors Influencing the Citizens' Willingness to Engage in Smart Mobility Co-Production"

Thank you

 

[emsr2d2]

Hello.

Yesterday, I got into a discussion about whether it is correct to omit the article "the" in the following research paper title to improve readability.
Title: "An Empirical Investigation of Factors Influencing the Citizens' Willingness to Engage in Smart Mobility Co-Production"

Thank you.

Welcome to the forum. Please note my addition of punctuation above. I thought it was the same in German but, in case it's not, bear in mind that you need closing punctuation at the end of sentences as short as "Hello" and "Thank you".

You didn't actually ask us a question in post #1 but I'm going to assume that you want our opinions on the omission of "the". The word certainly can be and, in my opinion, should be omitted because it's a title. In English titles, this is common practice. I might even omit the opening "An"! It's less to do with readability and more to do with space. It all harks back to when space was at a premium in newspapers etc so, in titles only, words were omitted to save space whilst ensuring the meaning of the sentence wasn't lost.

 

[4lej0_I]

Thank you for the quick response. Does that apply only to titles today as well? or can "the", when followed by the possesive noun, be ommitted in the body text of the research paper as well? For example:

"This new approach is also taken by Osborne et al. (2013), who place the integration of the citizens' knowledge and experience at the core of the theoretical framework."

 

[jutfrank]

It's not just that it's 'correct' to omit the article—you must omit it since it has no place there.

I disagree with what emsr2d2 says above about this having to do with space. It's to do partly with register, this being academic English, and mostly to do with the rules of usage concerning articles. You use 'the' only when you're making specific reference to something, which, importantly you're not doing here. For you, 'citizens' is a general group, so you can't use 'the'.

 

[emsr2d2]

I didn't necessarily mean that we omit words these days in order to save space but I'm pretty sure that's how it started. When people wrote headlines or story titles, there was a space issue and they were charged by the letter so the fewer letters the better.
I agree that in this context "the" would be wrong. If the piece refers to all citizens, then the article-free version would be correct. If the piece refers to a specific group of citizens, they would be named in the title (for example, "German citizens").