Geothermal energy application papers with location titles attract fewer citations

Amidst the global transition towards sustainable energy sources, geothermal energy applications (GEA) have gained considerable prominence. Citations of GEA research papers play a crucial role in disseminating knowledge within the GEA research community and beyond. However, GEA papers often refer to specific locations to elaborate on local geothermal energy applications, raising the question of whether mentioning a location in the title affects citation rates. To address this question, we employed a carefully constructed search string to extract GEA-related papers from the Web of Science database. Using advanced named entity recognition techniques, coupled with manual verification, we determined the geographical focus within the titles of the selected papers. Our analysis revealed a noticeable increase in publications that avoid specifying a location in their title since the 1990s. Moreover, papers with a broader thematic scope, not limited to a specific location, were found to be cited more frequently. Our analysis shows that locational specificity in GEA titles is associated with lower citation counts across journals, research areas, and document types. Papers with broader thematic titles may be associated with higher visibility compared to those with locational emphasis.