Ball, P (Ball, Philip) A longer paper gathers more citations NATURE, 455 (7211): 274-275 SEP 18 2008

[Eugene Garfield]

Email Address: p.ball at nature.com

Author(s): Ball, P (Ball, Philip) 

Title: A longer paper gathers more citations 

Source: NATURE, 455 (7211): 274-275 SEP 18 2008 

Excerpt: Researchers could garner more citations simply by making their 
papers longer, a study seems to imply.

In an analysis of 30,027 peer-reviews papers published between 2000 and 
2004 in top astronomy journals, astronomer Krzystof Stanek of Ohio State 
University in Columbus found that the median number of citations increases 
with the length of the paper - from just 6 for papers of 2-3 pages to 
about 50 for 50-page papers.

There is, however, a limit to the benefits of size: citations start to 
tail off when papers reach lengths of 80 pages or so, perhaps because 
fewer people have the stamina to read them.

It is unexpected, says astronomer Jorg Dietrich of the European Southern 
Observatory headquarters in Germany, who recently conducted a similar 
analysis and found the same results but didn't publish them. "I expected 
that shorter papers would be cited more than longer ones," he says.  "I 
assumed that people don't have time to read long papers."

Language: English 

Document Type: News Item 

Cited Reference Count: 5 

Times Cited: 0 

Publisher: NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP 

Publisher Address: MACMILLAN BUILDING, 4 CRINAN ST, LONDON N1 9XW, ENGLAND 

ISSN: 0028-0836 

DOI: 10.1038/455274a 

29-char Source Abbrev.: NATURE 

ISO Source Abbrev.: Nature 

Source Item Page Count: 2 

Subject Category: Multidisciplinary Sciences 

ISI Document Delivery No.: 349EX