Scientific Papers With Shorter Titles Get More Citations

sciencehabit writes: Articles with shorter titles tend to get cited more often than those with longer headers, concludes a study published today, which examined 140,000 papers published between 2007 and 2013. It appears in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Citations are a key currency in the academic world. The number of times other researchers cite a scientist’s work is often an important metric in hiring and workplace evaluations. Citations also play a role in determining a journal’s place in the scholarly pecking order, with journals that publish more highly cited papers earning a higher “impact factor” (although many critics challenge that measure).

Comments

I RTFA and it's crap

[serviscope_minor]

There's a figure which shows this supposed correlation. It is AMAZINGLY weak and looks like it's biased by a couple of short titled, very highly cited papers.

Most of the paper length/citation counts form a nice uniform blob in the middle of the graph.