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    If I am looking for a certain paper in the bibliography, I know the author name, not the title of the paper (in most cases). If I want to discuss the choice of a textbook for a certain course, I refer to them by author name, since the titles are pretty much interchangeable. Commented Apr 19, 2016 at 14:20
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    @GEdgar Your first statement assumes the paper is cited by author name (and possibly year) rather than by number (the latter seems to be more common in computer engineering) or that, if citations are numeric, the name is explicitly mentioned in the text (which again seems to differ by field). Commented Apr 19, 2016 at 14:28
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    So many titles starting by "The impact of...". Longer to read than author's name Commented Apr 19, 2016 at 15:07
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    What @GEdgar says. Most people find it a lot easier to remember ideas by the names of those from which they've learnt them rather than by the (often uninspired and random) titles that have been chosen to convey them. Commented Apr 19, 2016 at 15:12
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    Usually people will write multiple papers exploring one overarching theme, each paper building on the previous ones and looking into a new aspect. The papers will be connected by one or more common authors, not by their titles. I know a couple of papers on certain topics that I recommend over and over - I know their authors, but not the titles, and I always go back to my .bib file to find the exact references. Commented Apr 19, 2016 at 16:17