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Citation studies bibliography

On this page, we provide a list of all papers we've reviewed thus far. Beside the page numbers, we include what each study found. As always, if you see articles we are missing or notice any issues, please let us know.

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List of citation studies

Title

The advantage of short paper titles

Author(s)

Adrian Letchford, Helen Susannah Moat, and Tobias Preis

Relevant pages

Entire Article

Year

2015

disciplines

20,000 most cited papers in Scopus database each year between 2007 and 2013

note(s)

Large sample size of 140,000 total papers across a range of disciplines.

quote

“Our analysis provides evidence that journals which publish papers with shorter titles receive more citations per paper. These results are consistent with the intriguing hypothesis that papers with shorter titles may be easier to understand, and hence attract more citations.”

view article
Title

Article Title Type and Its Relation with the Number of Downloads and Citations

Author(s)

Hamid R. Jamali & Mahsa Nikzad

Relevant pages

657-658 (longer titles; )

Year

2011

disciplines

Life and Medical Sciences

notes

2172 articles included in the study. Found that articles with longer titles tend to get fewer downloads but did not find a significant correlation between title length and number of citations. Using a question (interrogative) for the title received more downloads, but fewer citations. A declarative title (describes the conclusion) received fewer downloads and citations than a descriptive title (describe content but don't include conclusion).

view article
Title

Assessing impact and quality from local dynamics of citation networks

Author(s)

Camille Roth, Jiang Wu, Sergi Lozano

Relevant pages

115 (more internal citations)

Year

2012

disciplines

computer science, economics, engineering, physics

note(s)

This study’s findings related to new internal references and references within the same discipline that the article focused on. It found that more of either of these types of references led to more citations to the studied article.

view article
Title

Author and article characteristics, journal quality and citation in economic research

Author(s)

Shi Young Lee, Sanghack Lee, Sung Hee Jun

Relevant pages

1698-1699 (write long articles, have more co-authors, have more UK and US authors, and co-authors from the same institution)

Year

2010

disciplines

economics

view article
Title

Be known by the company you keep: Citations—quality or chance?

Author(s)

John Hudson

Relevant pages

234 (write long articles)

Year

2007

disciplines

economics

view article
Title

Bibliometric analysis of factors predicting increased citations in the vascular and endovascular literature

Author(s)

George A. Antoniou, Stavros A. Antoniou, Efstratios I. Georgakarakos, George S. Sfyroeras, George S. Georgiadis

Relevant pages

289-290 (more internal citations & write long articles)

Year

2015

disciplines

major vascular and general surgical journals

view article
Title

Bibliometrics of systematic reviews: Analysis of citation rates and journal impact factors

Author(s)

Pamela Royle, Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, Katharine Barnard, and Norman Waugh

Relevant pages

1 (abstract - publish in a top journal), 8 (article length has no impact)

Year

2013

disciplines

life and health sciences

view article
Title

A citation analysis of influences on collaborative computing research

Author(s)

Clyde W. Holsapple and Wenhong Luo

Relevant pages

359-360 (publish in a top journal)

Year

2003

disciplines

collaborative computing

note(s)

Included nearly 20,000 articles in the study.

view article
Title

Citations, justifications, and the troubled state of legal scholarship: An empirical study

Author(s)

Jeffrey L. Harrison and Amy R. Mashburn

Relevant pages

65 (publish in a top journal)

Year

2015

disciplines

law

view article
Title

Citations to scientific articles: Its distribution and dependence on the article features

Author(s)

E.S.Vieira, J.A.N.F.Gomes

Relevant pages

9-12 (more internal citations), 10-12 (publish in a top journal)

Year

2010

disciplines

biology, biochemistry, chemistry, mathematics, and physics

view article
Title

Determinants of citations to articles in elite law reviews

Author(s)

Ian Ayres, Fredrick E. Vars

Relevant pages

440 (reduce internal citations, write long articles, use shorter titles, write on Constitutional Law and the Legal Profession for More Citations)

Year

2000

disciplines

Law

note(s)

53 pages is optimal length according to this study. It looked at articles published between 1980 to 1995, in three top law journals.

view article
Title

Determinants of Citations to the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Journals

Author(s)

Christiana E. Hilmer, Jayson L. Lusk

Relevant pages

688-689 (write long articles)

Year

2009

disciplines

agricultural economics

note(s)

Found that advantage of long articles disappeared when conference / proceedings papers were excluded.

view article
Title

Determinants of research citation impact in nanoscience and nanotechnology

Author(s)

Fereshteh Didegah, Mike Thelwall

Relevant pages

1060-1061 (publish in a top journal), 1061 (citations to well-known works), 1061-1062 (more internal citations), 1062 (more institutions represented & impact from number of authors unclear) , 1062-1063 (impact of authors from multiple countries unclear)

Year

2013

disciplines

nanoscience and nanotechnology

note(s)

This article found that articles with more references are cited more often and that articles with references to “high impact” works get even more citations.

view article
Title

Determinants of the citation rate of medical research publications from a developing country

Author(s)

Anupama Annalingam, Hasitha Damayanthi, Ranil Jayawardena, and Priyanga Ranasinghe

Relevant pages

5-6 (publish in a top journal; publish with co-authors; increase regional or international collaboration)

Year

2014

disciplines

Sri Lankan medical research

view article
Title

The Effect of Characteristics of Title on Citation Rates of Articles

Author(s)

Fatemeh Rostami, Asghar Mohammadpoorasl, and Mohammad Hajizadeh

Relevant pages

2010 (use a colon or hyphen in title; title length = no impact; use different keywords in title & body)

Year

2013

disciplines

Addictive Behavior

notes

Small sample size: only looks at a single volume of 1 journal. Colon or hyphen in title received more citations. Title length had no impact. Using different keywords in the title and body led to more citations.

view article
Title

Factors affecting citation networks in science and technology: focused on non-quality factors

Author(s)

Minho So, Jiyoung Kim, Sangki Choi, Han Woo Park

Relevant pages

1529 (more internal citations & don't write long articles)

Year

2014

disciplines

science and technology, including natural sciences, life sciences, and engineering

note(s)

This was the largest study we looked at. It included over 45,000 papers.

view article
Title

Factors affecting citation rates of research articles

Author(s)

Natsuo Onodera, Fuyuki Yoshikane

Relevant pages

757 (more internal citations), 760 (article length has no impact)

Year

2015

disciplines

condensed matter physics, inorganic and nuclear chemistry, electric and electronic engineering, biochemistry and molecular biology, physiology, and gastroenterology

note(s)

Found that in addition to more references leading to more citations, citation chances could be increased further if a higher percentage of those references were to articles published 5 years of less from the date of the studied article.

view article
Title

Features of scientific papers and the relationships with their citation impact

Author(s)

Tian Yu and Guang Yu

Relevant pages

43 (more internal citations), 46 (publish in a top journal)

Year

2014

disciplines

information science & library science

view article
Title

How to Improve the Citation Impact of a Paper: Choice of Journal, Co-authors and Institutional Addresses

Author(s)

José A.N.F. Gomes and Elizabeth S. Vieira

Relevant pages

38 (publish in a top journal)

Year

2009

disciplines

physics & chemistry

view article
Title

The impact of article length on the number of future citations: A bibliometric analysis of general medicine journals

Author(s)

Matthew E. Falagas, Angeliki Zarkali ,Drosos E. Karageorgopoulos, Vangelis Bardakas, and Michael N. Mavros

Relevant pages

4 (write long articles), 7 (publish in a top journal)

Year

2013

disciplines

general medicine journals

view article
Title

The Impact of Article Titles on Citation Hits: An Analysis of gGneral and Specialist Medical Journals

Author(s)

Thomas S. Jacques & Neil J. Sebire

Relevant pages

2 (create long titles)

Year

2010

disciplines

Generalist & Specialist Medicine

notes

Small sample size: Looked at 25 most cited and 25 least cited articles in Lancet, BMJ and Journal of Clinical Pathology.

notes

More cited articles tend to have longer titles and more often contain subtitles in Astronomy and Ecology. No impact from aggressive / assertive titles vs ones that just state conclusion or ask question. More topics led to fewer citations.

view article
Title

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

Author(s)

Staša Milojević

Relevant pages

9 (longer titles and subtitles in Astronomy and Ecology; fewer topics)

Year

2017

disciplines

Astronomy, Mathematics, Robotics, Ecology, and Economics

view article
Title

Predicting citation counts of environmental modelling papers

Author(s)

Barbara J. Robson, Aurélie Mousquès

Relevant pages

1392 (more internal citations & write long articles)

Year

2014

disciplines

environmental modelling

view article
Title

Predicting long-term citation impact of articles in social and personality psychology

Author(s)

Nick Haslam, Peter Koval

Relevant pages

898 (more internal citations & publish in a top journal & write long articles)

Year

2010

disciplines

social, personality psychology

view article
Title

Predictive effects of structural variation on citation counts

Author(s)

Chaomei Chen

Relevant pages

447 (more internal citations & don't write long articles)

Year

2011

disciplines

terrorism, mass extinction, complex network analysis, and knowledge domain visualization

view article
Title

Self-selected or mandated, open access increases citation impact for higher quality research

Author(s)

Yassine Gargouri, Chawki Hajjem, Vincent Larivière, Yves Gingras, Les Carr, Tim Brody, Stevan Harnad

Relevant pages

5 (more internal citations & publish in a top journal & write long articles)

Year

2010

disciplines

General / interdisciplinary

view article
Title

Short and amusing: The relationship between title characteristics, downloads, and citations in psychology articles

Author(s)

Sinisa Subotic & Bhaskar Mukherjee

Relevant pages

abstract

Year

2013

disciplines

Psychology

quote

“The partial least squares model revealed that shorter titles were associated with more citations, but the effect was fully mediated by the journal impact, suggesting that the observed citational benefits of the shorter titles might be an artefact of some higher journal impact related attribute (perhaps editorial or peer review process).”

view article
Title

What a difference a colon makes: how superficial factors influence subsequent citation

Author(s)

Maarten van Wesel, Sally Wyatt, Jeroen ten Haaf

Relevant pages

1606 (write long articles; use short titles for Sociology & Applied Physics; longer titles for General & Internal Medicine; longer abstracts for General & Internal Medicine and Applied Physics)

Year

2013

disciplines

sociology, general & internal medicine, applied physics

view article
Title

What factors determine citation counts of publications in chemistry besides their quality?

Author(s)

Lutz Bornmann, Hermann Schier, Werner Marx, Hans-Dieter Daniel

Relevant pages

16 (more internal citations)

Year

2012

disciplines

chemistry

view article
Title

What makes an article influential? Predicting impact in social and personality psychology

Author(s)

Nick Haslam, Lauren Ban, Leah Kaufmann, Stephen Loughnan, Kim Peters, Jennifer Whelan, Sam Wilson

Relevant pages

179 (more internal citations & publish in a top journal & write long articles)

Year

2008

disciplines

social-personality psychology

note(s)

Looked at articles from 1998.

view article
Title

Where you publish matters most: A multilevel analysis of factors affecting citations of internet studies

Author(s)

Tai‐Quan Peng, Jonathan J.H. Zhu

Relevant pages

1794 (more internal citations & publish in a top journal & write long articles)

Year

2012

disciplines

interdisciplinary

view article
Title

Which Factors Help Authors Produce the Highest Impact Research? Collaboration, Journal and Document Properties

Author(s)

Fereshteh Didegah & Mike Thelwall

Relevant pages

Abstract (top journal; more internal references; internal references with higher citations counts; more co-authors (Biology, Biochemistry & Chemistry); write longer abstracts)

Year

2013

disciplines

Biology and Biochemistry, Chemistry & Social Sciences

note(s)

Publishing in a better journal, including more internal references, and writing longer abstracts both led to more citations in all studied subjects. More coauthors from outside the institution led to more citations in all subjects, except Social science. Co-authors from the same institution had no impact, nor did number of keywords, title length, or paper length.

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