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

Buter, R.K.; Raan, Anthony F. J. van

doi:10.1016/j.joi.2011.05.008

Cited by 59 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Among the many alternatives, we classify all articles into 30 broad fields, namely,take as our starting point the partition of scientific activity into the 35 broad fields distinguished inintroduced by Tijssen et al (2010) except the following five that, which hasve been used in Buter & van Raan (2011), Hoekman, et al (2010), and Schneider & Costas, R. (2013 2. The accurate assignment of articles to individual authors is known to be plagued with formidable obstacles (Lindsey, 1980, andCostas et al, 2010).…”

Section: Ii1 Measurement Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The skewness of scientific productivity

Ruiz‐Castillo

Costas

2014

Journal of Informetrics

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This paper exploits a unique 2003-2011 large dataset, indexed by Thomson & Reuters, consisting of 17.2 million disambiguated authors classified into 30 broad scientific fields, as well as the 48.2 million articles resulting from a multiplying strategy in which any article co-authored by two or more persons is wholly assigned as many times as necessary to each of them. The dataset is characterized by a large proportion of authors who have their oeuvre in several fields. We measure individual productivity in two ways that are uncorrelated: as the number of articles per person, and as the mean citation per article per person in the 2003-2011 period. We analyze the shape of the two types of individual productivity distributions in each field using size-and scale-independent indicators. For productivity inequality, we use the coefficient of variation. To assess the skewness of productivity distributions we use a robust index of skeweness, as well as the Characteristic Scores and Scales approach. For productivity inequality, we use the coefficient of variation. In each field, we study two samples: the entire population, and what we call "successful authors", namely, the subset of scientists whose productivity is above their field average. The main result is that, in spite of wide differences in production and citation practices across fields, the shape of field productivity distributions are very similar across fields. The parallelism of the results for the population as a whole and for the subset of successful authors when productivity is measured as mean citation per article per person, reveals the fractal nature of the skewness of scientific productivity in this case. These results are essentially maintained when any article co-authored by two or more persons is fractionally assigned to each of them.Acknowledgements. This is the third version of a Working Paper in this series with the same title whose second version appeared in May 2014. This paper was conceived while Ruiz-Castillo enjoyed the hospitality of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands, during the 2013 spring term. Ruiz-Castillo also acknowledges financial help from the Spanish MEC through grant ECO2010-19596. The authors acknowledge fruitful conversations with Raquel Carrasco, as well as comments from the participants in a CWTS seminar. All remaining shortcomings are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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Section: Ii1 Measurement Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The skewness of scientific productivity

Ruiz‐Castillo

Costas

2014

Journal of Informetrics

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“…Regarding non-alphanumeric characters, Buter and van Raan (2011) find that they are used in 68% of titles across different fields of study and that this share is relatively stable from 1999 to 2008. Further, they find the usage of non-alphanumeric characters in the title to be correlated positively with the impact of the respective paper, although this result does not hold for some individual disciplines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Title characteristics and citations in economics

Gnewuch

Wohlrabe

2017

Scientometrics

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“…Titles containing non-alphanumeric characters, such as colons, hyphens, dashes, and periods, indicating titles with a subtitle, or a multicomponent title, have been found to be common across the disciplines and generally associated with higher citation (Buter and van Raan, 2011). Specifically, the usage of colon has become more prevalent, although it differed across the fields (Lewison and Hartley, 2005).…”

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The Length and Semantic Structure of Article Titles—Evolving Disciplinary Practices and Correlations with Impact

Milojević

2017

Front. Res. Metr. Anal.

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In this paper, we examine the characteristics of titles (average length, proportion of titles with subtitles, proportion of interrogatory, and indicative titles) and how they changed over a substantial period of time (half a century). We consistently analyze core literature in five diverse fields, in order to probe the usage of titles as a disciplinary identity building tool. In addition, we study whether different types of titles are used differently by authors depending on their academic age and productivity and collaboration levels, which has not been studied before. Finally, we revisit the connection between title characteristics and impact. We found that belonging to some discipline is the strongest determinant for the length of the titles and the occurrence of different forms of titles. This suggests that authors try to comply with the norms set in their fields. However, these norms are not fixed in time. Over the decades, the practices have changed, some of them quite abruptly. Individual groups of authors most often did not differ in their practices regarding the use of titles. We find that using titles posed as questions or titles stating the result do not lead to citation benefit.

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

Cited by 59 publications

References 21 publications

The skewness of scientific productivity

The skewness of scientific productivity

Title characteristics and citations in economics

The Length and Semantic Structure of Article Titles—Evolving Disciplinary Practices and Correlations with Impact

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