How to use the content of \title{} as a reference?

Question

I want to be able to reference to my document title by name. How can I achieve that?

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\title{Example}\label{title}
\author{me}
\maketitle

The title is: "\nameref{title}" (Here it should read "Example")

\end{document}

Answer 1

If you look up \title in the latex source, you'll see it's defined like this:

\def\title#1{\gdef\@title{#1}}

So the title is stored in a regular macro named \@title. The only problem with using that to recover the title is the @ sign, normally not allowed in control sequences.

To get around this, alias a regular macro to \@title:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\title{Example}
\author{me}

\makeatletter
\let\inserttitle\@title
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\maketitle

The title is: ``\inserttitle'' (Here it should read ``Example'')

\end{document}

\label does something a little bit different. It saves the value of the currently active counter (requiring an aux file and a second pass), and you want to save the expansion text of a macro. Macros are well suited for the latter, and it would be hard to overload \label and \nameref to do the former.

You'll also see that I reorganized your code. I think it's best to put macros that do not produce output like \title and \author in the preamble rather than within the document. There shouldn't be anything between \begin{document} and \maketitle because you will likely get extra spaces from blank lines. Also, having those “metadata” declarations in the preamble, and especially right after \documentclass{} makes it easier to identify the file to the user editing it.

Answer 2

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\title{Example}
\author{me}
\makeatletter\let\Title\@title\makeatother
\begin{document}

\maketitle
The title is: "\Title" 

\end{document}

Answer 3

You can use the authoraftertitle package which makes the values of \author{...}, \title{...} and \date{...} available via the commands \MyAuthor, \MyTitle and \MyDate (although I think it's kind of overkill to have a package only for this single purpose...):

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage{authoraftertitle}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\title{Example}
\author{me}
\maketitle

The title is: "\MyTitle" (Here it does read "Example")

\end{document}