The evolution of conceptual diversity in economics titles from 1890 to 2012

Title characteristics and citations in economics

“…This finding is consistent with Guo et al (2015). The rise in the average number of words in a title coincides with a rise in the average number of authors per paper, as the right panel of Figure 1 shows.…”

“…We contribute to this strand of literature by examining the relationship in the field of economics, which has not been subject to analysis before. Merely the work by Guo et al (2015) has studied titles in economics, but not linked them to citations. In addition, we employ a larger data set than most other studies.…”

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

“…By analyzing word frequency of over 800,000 article titles from 18 different Scopus categories (excluding social sciences, arts and humanities), Thelwall (2017) found that usage of obscure (not frequently used) words in titles is associated with below average citation. The analysis of the diversity of ECN words in titles based on the ECN dictionary showed cyclical patterns (of varying length-30 or 40 years) of word usage (Guo et al, 2015). A study of 420 titles in medical journals found that the largest number of titles included topics related words, followed by the methods, with most articles lacking information on research design, methods, and results (Goodman et al, 2001).…”

Avoiding obscure topics and generalising findings produces higher impact research

“…A study of research-related clichés in medical article titles (e.g., "paradigm shift", "out of the box") also found these to rise and fall in popularity over time (Goodman, 2012). Within economics 1890-2012 there have also been similar popularity changes in individual terms, such as tax, which was the second most popular substantive title term in the 1950s but was out of the top 10 before then and again after the 1960s (Guo, Zhang, Ju, Chen, Chen, & Li, 2015). A comparison between the most frequently used terms between scholarly and trade technical communication publications found trade publication terms to relate to people more (e.g., you, your) whilst scholarly publication terms were more often about the research process (e.g., study, design, research) (Boettger & Friess, 2014).…”

“…The American Psychological Association (APA) guide recommends using a maximum of 12 words but most article titles tend to be longer, and this length has increased over time (Hallock & Dillner, 2016;Guo, Zhang, Ju, Chen, Chen, & Li, 2015). An analysis of the titles of the 25 most cited and 25 least cited articles in medical journals from 2005 found that longer titles were more cited (Jacques & Sebire, 2010).…”