Lewison G, Hartley J "What's in a title? Numbers of words and the presence of colons " SCIENTOMETRICS 63 (2): 341-356 APR 2005

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail Addresses: g.lewison at soi.city.ac.uk

Title: What's in a title? Numbers of words and the presence of colons

Author(s): Lewison G, Hartley J

Source: SCIENTOMETRICS 63 (2): 341-356 APR 2005

Document Type: Article      Language: English
Cited References: 30

Abstract:
Much has been written about titles in scientific journal articles but
little research has been carried out. We aimed to assess in two studies how
factors like the length of a title and its structure might vary in
different scientific fields, and whether or not these features have changed
over time. Statistical analyses were made of 216,500 UK papers from science
journals, and of 133,200 international oncology papers. Factors examined
included title length, the use of colons in the titles, and the number of
authors. All of these factors increased over time for both sets of papers,
although there were some disciplinary differences in the findings. In both
studies, titles with colons occurred more frequently with single than with
multiple authors except when the numbers of co-authors were large. Certain
features of titles can be related to different disciplines, different
journals, the numbers of authors and their nationalities.

Addresses: Lewison G (reprint author), City Univ London, Dept Informat Sci,
London, EC1V 0HB England
City Univ London, Dept Informat Sci, London, EC1V 0HB England
Keele Univ, Dept Psychol, Keele, Staffs England

E-mail Addresses: g.lewison at soi.city.ac.uk

Publisher: SPRINGER, VAN GODEWIJCKSTRAAT 30, 3311 GZ DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS

IDS Number: 924RX

ISSN: 0138-9130

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