Are Shorter Article Titles More Attractive for Citations?

[Eugene Garfield]

Full text available at :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2859422/

 

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TITLE:          Are Shorter Article Titles More Attractive for
Citations?

                Crosssectional Study of 22 Scientific Journals (Article,
English)

AUTHOR:         Habibzadeh, F; Yadollahie, M

SOURCE:         CROATIAN MEDICAL JOURNAL 51 (2). APR 2010. p.165-170

                MEDICINSKA NAKLADA, ZAGREB

 

SEARCH TERM(S):  GARFIELD E  rauth; JOURNALS  item_title;

                 CITATION*  item_title;

                 GARFIELD E         JAMA-J AM MED ASSOC   295:90
2006;

                 GARFIELD E         CAN MED ASSOC J       161:979   1999

 

KEYWORDS+:       IMPACT FACTOR

 

ABSTRACT:       Aim To investigate the correlation between the length of

the title of a scientific article and the number of citations it
receives, in view of the common editorial call for shorter titles.

 

Methods Title and the number of citations to all articles published in

2005 in 22 arbitrarily chosen English-language journals (n = 9031) were
retrieved from citation database Scopus. The 2008 journal impact factors
of these 22 journals were also retrieved from Thomson Reuters' Journal
Citation Report (JCR). Assuming the article title length as the
independent variable, and the number of citations to the article as the
dependent variable, a linear regression model was applied.

 

Results The slope of the regression line for some journals (n = 6, when
titles were measured in characters but 7 when titles were measured in

words) was negative - none was significantly different from 0. The
overall slope for all journals was 0.140 (when titles were measured in

characters) and 0.778 (when titles were measured in words), which is
significantly different from 0 (P < 0.001, t test). Overall, articles
with longer titles received more citations - Spearman rho = 0.266 - when
titles were measured in characters, and rho = 0.244 when titles were
measured in words (P < 0.001). This association was found for 7 of 8
journals with impact factor > 10 and for 2 out of 14 journals with
impact factor < 10 (P < 0.001, Fisher exact test).

 

Conclusion Longer titles seem to be associated with higher citation
rates. This association is more pronounced for journals with high impact
factors. Editors who insist on brief and concise titles should perhaps
update the guidelines for authors of their journals and have more
flexibility regarding the length of the title.

 

AUTHOR ADDRESS: F Habibzadeh, POB 71955-575, Shiraz 71955, Iran

 

 

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Eugene Garfield, PhD. email:  garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu
<mailto:garfield at codex.cis.upenn.edu>  
home page: www.eugenegarfield.org <http://www.eugenegarfield.org/> 
Tel: 610-525-8729 Fax: 610-560-4749

Chairman Emeritus, ThomsonReuters Scientific (formerly ISI)
1500 Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19130-4067

Editor Emeritus, The Scientist LLC. www.the-scientist.com
<http://www.the-scientist.com/>    
400 Market St. Suite 330 Philadelphia, PA 19106-2535

Past President, American Society for Information Science and Technology
(ASIS&T) www.asist.org <http://www.asist.org/>  

 

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