IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v5y2011i4p608-617.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Non-alphanumeric characters in titles of scientific publications: An analysis of their occurrence and correlation with citation impact

Author

Listed:
  • Buter, R.K.
  • van Raan, A.F.J.

Abstract

We investigated the occurrence of non-alphanumeric characters in a randomized subset of over almost 650,000 titles of scientific publications from the Web of Science database. Additionally, for almost 500,000 of these publications we correlated occurrence with impact, using the field-normalised citation metric CPP/FCSm. We compared occurrence and correlation with impact both at in general and for specific disciplines and took into account the variation within sets by (non-parametrically) bootstrapping the calculation of impact values. We also compared use and impact of individual characters in the 30 fields in which non-alphanumeric characters occur most frequently, by using heatmaps that clustered and reordered fields and characters. We conclude that the use of some non-alphanumeric characters, such as the hyphen and colon, is common in most titles and that not including such characters generally correlates negatively with impact. Specific disciplines on the other hand, may show either a negative, absent, or positive correlation. We also found that thematically related science fields use non-alphanumeric characters in comparable numbers, but that impact associated with such characters shows a less strong thematic relation. Overall, it appears that authors cannot influence success of publications by including non-alphanumeric characters in fields where this is not already commonplace.

Suggested Citation

  • Buter, R.K. & van Raan, A.F.J., 2011. "Non-alphanumeric characters in titles of scientific publications: An analysis of their occurrence and correlation with citation impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 608-617.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:5:y:2011:i:4:p:608-617
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2011.05.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157711000642
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2011.05.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henk F. Moed, 2005. "Statistical relationships between downloads and citations at the level of individual documents within a single journal," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 56(10), pages 1088-1097, August.
    2. Nick Haslam & Lauren Ban & Leah Kaufmann & Stephen Loughnan & Kim Peters & Jennifer Whelan & Sam Wilson, 2008. "What makes an article influential? Predicting impact in social and personality psychology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 76(1), pages 169-185, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair & Michael Gibbert, 2016. "What makes a ‘good’ title and (how) does it matter for citations? A review and general model of article title attributes in management science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1331-1359, June.
    2. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    3. Ajiferuke, Isola & Famoye, Felix, 2015. "Modelling count response variables in informetric studies: Comparison among count, linear, and lognormal regression models," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 499-513.
    4. Sato, Ryoma & Yamada, Makoto & Kashima, Hisashi, 2022. "Poincare: Recommending Publication Venues via Treatment Effect Estimation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    5. Zahedi, Zohreh & Haustein, Stefanie, 2018. "On the relationships between bibliographic characteristics of scientific documents and citation and Mendeley readership counts: A large-scale analysis of Web of Science publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 191-202.
    6. James Hartley, 2015. "Inaccuracies in titles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 329-330, April.
    7. Matthias Gnewuch & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2017. "Title characteristics and citations in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1573-1578, March.
    8. Uddin, Shahadat & Khan, Arif, 2016. "The impact of author-selected keywords on citation counts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 1166-1177.
    9. Kong, Ling & Wang, Dongbo, 2020. "Comparison of citations and attention of cover and non-cover papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    10. Letchford, Adrian & Preis, Tobias & Moat, Helen Susannah, 2016. "The advantage of simple paper abstracts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8.
    11. James Hartley & Guillaume Cabanac, 2015. "An academic odyssey: writing over time," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 1073-1082, June.
    12. Ángel Acevedo-Duque & Alejandro Vega-Muñoz & Guido Salazar-Sepúlveda, 2020. "Analysis of Hospitality, Leisure, and Tourism Studies in Chile," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-20, September.
    13. Mike Thelwall, 2017. "Avoiding obscure topics and generalising findings produces higher impact research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 307-320, January.
    14. James M. Cook & Dawn Plourde, 2016. "Do scholars follow Betteridge’s Law? The use of questions in journal article titles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1119-1128, September.
    15. William S. Pearson, 2020. "Research article titles in written feedback on English as a second language writing," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 997-1019, May.
    16. Ruiz-Castillo, Javier & Costas, Rodrigo, 2014. "The skewness of scientific productivity," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 917-934.
    17. William S. Pearson, 2021. "Quoted speech in linguistics research article titles: patterns of use and effects on citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3421-3442, April.
    18. Shaoliang Xie, 2020. "English Research Article Titles: Cultural and Disciplinary Perspectives," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, June.
    19. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 203-216.
    20. Malik Muhammad Saad Missen & Sajeeha Qureshi & Nadeem Salamat & Nadeem Akhtar & Hina Asmat & Mickaël Coustaty & V. B. Surya Prasath, 2020. "Scientometric analysis of social science and science disciplines in a developing nation: a case study of Pakistan in the last decade," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 113-142, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Belén Álvarez-Bornstein & Adrián A. Díaz-Faes & María Bordons, 2019. "What characterises funded biomedical research? Evidence from a basic and a clinical domain," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 805-825, May.
    2. Gao, Qiang & Liang, Zhentao & Wang, Ping & Hou, Jingrui & Chen, Xiuxiu & Liu, Manman, 2021. "Potential index: Revealing the future impact of research topics based on current knowledge networks," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    3. Corsini, Alberto & Pezzoni, Michele, 2023. "Does grant funding foster research impact? Evidence from France," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4).
    4. Ajiferuke, Isola & Famoye, Felix, 2015. "Modelling count response variables in informetric studies: Comparison among count, linear, and lognormal regression models," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 499-513.
    5. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Maurizio Galetto & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2012. "The success-index: an alternative approach to the h-index for evaluating an individual’s research output," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 621-641, September.
    6. Barbara McGillivray & Mathias Astell, 2019. "The relationship between usage and citations in an open access mega-journal," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 817-838, November.
    7. Önder, Ali Sina & Schweitzer, Sascha & Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2021. "Specialization, field distance, and quality in economists’ collaborations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    8. González-Albo, Borja & Bordons, María, 2011. "Articles vs. proceedings papers: Do they differ in research relevance and impact? A case study in the Library and Information Science field," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 369-381.
    9. Marton Demeter & Agnes Jele & Zsolt Balázs Major, 2022. "The model of maximum productivity for research universities SciVal author ranks, productivity, university rankings, and their implications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4335-4361, August.
    10. Peter Sjögårde & Fereshteh Didegah, 2022. "The association between topic growth and citation impact of research publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1903-1921, April.
    11. Teresa H. Jones & Claire Donovan & Steve Hanney, 2012. "Tracing the wider impacts of biomedical research: a literature search to develop a novel citation categorisation technique," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(1), pages 125-134, October.
    12. Rodrigo Costas & Thed N. Leeuwen & María Bordons, 2012. "Referencing patterns of individual researchers: Do top scientists rely on more extensive information sources?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2433-2450, December.
    13. Hamid Bouabid & Hind Achachi, 2022. "Size of science team at university and internal co-publications: science policy implications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 6993-7013, December.
    14. María Bordons & Borja González-Albo & Javier Aparicio & Luz Moreno, 2015. "The influence of R&D intensity of countries on the impact of international collaborative research: evidence from Spain," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1385-1400, February.
    15. Mike Thelwall, 2018. "Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(3), pages 1231-1240, June.
    16. Muhammad Salman Khan & Muhammad Younas, 2017. "Analyzing readers behavior in downloading articles from IEEE digital library: a study of two selected journals in the field of education," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(3), pages 1523-1537, March.
    17. Frandsen, Tove Faber & Jacobsen, Rasmus Højbjerg & Wallin, Johan A. & Brixen, Kim & Ousager, Jakob, 2015. "Gender differences in scientific performance: A bibliometric matching analysis of Danish health sciences Graduates," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 1007-1017.
    18. Geert Van Campenhout & Tom Van Caneghem, 2010. "Article Contribution and Subsequent Citation Rates: Evidence from European Accounting Review," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 837-855.
    19. Basma Albanna & Julia Handl & Richard Heeks, 2021. "Publication outperformance among global South researchers: An analysis of individual-level and publication-level predictors of positive deviance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8375-8431, October.
    20. Bramoullé, Yann & Ductor, Lorenzo, 2018. "Title length," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 311-324.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:5:y:2011:i:4:p:608-617. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.