Finding the right title for your article: Advice for academic author.

On reading the title of an article the reader can sometimes wonder what the author is trying to say, as the title seems so far removed from the research covered in the article.  Do such authors forget that many readers of health and medical journals browse the list of contents (in a paper or electronic format) and use titles to select the article that attracts attention? Academic authors are often not clear enough in the titles of their articles, and hence may not attract as large a readership as possible.   Any author would want their article to be read and cited, and to stand out in a crowded Table of Contents or a list of papers found in a search on electronic databases.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nje.v4i1.10138 Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 2014;4 (1): 344-347</jats:p

Avoiding obscure topics and generalising findings produces higher impact research

Much academic research is never cited and may be rarely read, indicating wasted effort from the authors, referees and publishers. One reason that an article could be ignored is that its topic is, or appears to be, too obscure to be of wide interest, even if excellent scholarship produced it. This paper reports a word frequency analysis of 874,411 English article titles from 18 different Scopus natural, formal, life and health sciences categories 2009-2015 to assess the likelihood that research on obscure (rarely researched) topics is less cited. In all categories examined, unusual words in article titles associate with below average citation impact research. Thus, researchers considering obscure topics may wish to reconsider, generalise their study, or to choose a title that reflects the wider lessons that can be drawn. Authors should also consider including multiple concepts and purposes within their titles in order to attract a wider audience

From the Humour of Science to (pedagogical uses for) the Science of Humour

Science is generally seen as a serious subject, yet scientific discoveries may sometimes have humorous aspects. Joking about science is often used as a coping strategy by the general public, as a means of dealing with feelings of inadequacy about the relentlessness of scientific progress. Several recent newspaper articles bear witness to this tendency. Humour may also be used by scientists, with the aim of making science seem less threatening, or to make science more accessible to the layperson, particularly in the form of popular science, from books to keynote speeches. The etymology of the words “humour and “science”, and any changes in their frequency of use over time, will be examined through dictionaries, and corpus data. This paper will then explore in greater depth the many parallels between science and humour, with examples drawn from several fields, including Geology, the science of the Earth, and Linguistics, the science of language. Although no firm answers can yet be provided, the following questions will be discussed: i) Can moments of paradigm shift be identified in scientific articles by analysing their use of humour?  and ii) Can humour be used pedagogically, to teach science more effectively?Science is generally seen as a serious subject, yet scientific discoveries may sometimes have humorous aspects. Joking about science is often used as a coping strategy by the general public, as a means of dealing with feelings of inadequacy about the relentlessness of scientific progress. Several recent newspaper articles bear witness to this tendency. Humour may also be used by scientists, with the aim of making science seem less threatening, or to make science more accessible to the layperson, particularly in the form of popular science, from books to keynote speeches. The etymology of the words “humour and “science”, and any changes in their frequency of use over time, will be examined through dictionaries, and corpus data. This paper will then explore in greater depth the many parallels between science and humour, with examples drawn from several fields, including Geology, the science of the Earth, and Linguistics, the science of language. Although no firm answers can yet be provided, the following questions will be discussed: i) Can moments of paradigm shift be identified in scientific articles by analysing their use of humour?  and ii) Can humour be used pedagogically, to teach science more effectively

The Relationship Between Manuscript Title Structure and Success: Editorial Decisions and Citation Performance for an Ecological Journal

A poorly chosen article title may make a paper difficult to discover or discourage readership when discovered, reducing an article\u27s impact. Yet, it is unclear how the structure of a manuscript\u27s title influences readership and impact. We used manuscript tracking data for all manuscripts submitted to the journal Functional Ecology from 2004 to 2013 and citation data for papers published in this journal from 1987 to 2011 to examine how title features changed and whether a manuscript\u27s title structure was predictive of success during the manuscript review process and/or impact (citation) after publication. Titles of manuscripts submitted to Functional Ecology became marginally longer (after controlling for other variables), broader in focus (less frequent inclusion of genus and species names), and included more humor and subtitles over the period of the study. Papers with subtitles were less likely to be rejected by editors both pre- and post-peer review, although both effects were small and the presence of subtitles in published papers was not predictive of citations. Papers with specific names of study organisms in their titles fared poorly during editorial (but not peer) review and, if published, were less well cited than papers whose titles did not include specific names. Papers with intermediate length titles were more successful during editorial review, although the effect was small and title word count was not predictive of citations. No features of titles were predictive of reviewer willingness to review papers or the length of time a paper was in peer review. We conclude that titles have changed in structure over time, but features of title structure have only small or no relationship with success during editorial review and post-publication impact. The title feature that was most predictive of manuscript success: papers whose titles emphasize broader conceptual or comparative issues fare better both pre- and post-publication than do papers with organism-specific titles

When astrophysics meets lay and specialized audiences: titles in popular and scientific papers

In this study we carry out a comparative analysis between titles of research papers published in the most authoritative specialized European and US-based astrophysics journals written in English and titles of articles on astrophysics published in Scientific American Magazine, the most prestigious English-written journal in the divulgation of science. We specifically address issues related to three linguistic variables: title length, title lexical density and title type. Our main results show that titles of research papers published in scientific journals are much longer than titles of articles published in Scientific American Magazine. Lexical density is also higher in scientific titles than in popular science ones. Scientific American Magazine titles are formulated in a clear and direct way, with no syntactic complexity. They consist primarily in simple and nominal constructions with a low presence of adjectives, compound groups and technical terminology. The predominance of nominal compounds over adjectival ones and the use of proper names, which mainly refer to well-known stars, planets, satellites and galaxies, imply that popular science titles usually deal with more global and well established concepts. The higher number of verbal titles and of definite articles in popular science titles when compared to scientific titles may also be interpreted as a greater desire to generalize the ideas presented. This study may be applied to languages other than English and would surely be of the utmost importance to determine the design of titles of scientific and popular science papers, not only in astrophysics but also in other fields

Factores influyentes en las citaciones en contabilidad: un análisis de la REFC

Este trabajo realiza un análisis de los artículos publicados en la Revista Española de Financiación y Contabilidad en el período 2008-2013 según los datos contenidos en el Web of Science, Scopus y Google Académico. El análisis descriptivo identifica los artículos más influyentes, los autores y las instituciones más productivos, así como las revistas que más citan a dichos artículos, entre otra información. Asimismo, se estiman modelos explicativos de las citaciones recibidas en estas bases de datos en el período analizado. El número de autores de los artículos, el número de publicaciones previas de los autores, así como la temática y el idioma de los artículos son los factores que más persistentemente influyen en las citaciones. A partir de los resultados obtenidos se realizan algunas reflexiones sobre el actual enfoque académico de la REFC

Rigorous, transparent, and eye-catching: Exploring the universalistic parameters of impactful theory building in management

In the management discipline, scholarly impact is most commonly measured using a researcher perspective, by counting the number of times a particular article is mentioned in the references section of other articles (Aguinis, Shapiro, Antonacopoulou, and Cummings, 2014). This approach conceptualizes scholarly impact using a measurable indicator, the citation count an article receives. Several studies have been conducted to examine what drives scholarly impact in the field of management. The originality of the idea, rigor of the study, and clarity of writing have been identified as the most significant universalistic parameters of scholarly impact (Judge, Colbert, Cable, and Rynes, 2007). This dissertation sets out to do a detailed examination of these parameters. The six articles included in the thesis do so in two ways: either by offering recommendations for improving these universalistic parameters of scholarly impact or by further exploring the relationship between the universalistic parameters and scholarly impact. Our first empirical article, here relayed in Chapter II, focuses on case studies, and analyzes the methodological rigor of all case studies published during the period 1996-2006. We point out different types of replication logic, and illustrate how their individual research actions have differential effects on the internal and external validity (in that order of priority) of the emerging theory. Chapter III follows up on the previous chapter, extending the investigation to quantitative as well as qualitative research, and offers replication logic as a tool for analyzing deviant cases identified during the course of a qualitative or quantitative study. We call this technique the \u2018Deviant Case Method\u2019 (\u2018DCM\u2019). Through this study, we explain the theoretical consequentiality (Aguinis et al., 2013; Cortina, 2002) of analyzing three different kinds of outliers (construct, model fit, and prediction outliers/ deviant cases) and offer DCM for analyzing prediction outliers/deviant cases. In Chapter IV, we extend this method to have a look at medium-N studies. Here we focus on inconsistent or deviant cases which turn up during a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). We offer a method called \u2018Comparative Outlier Analysis\u2019 (\u2018COA\u2019) which combines DCM and Mill\u2019s canons (1875) to examine these multitude of inconsistent cases. We explicate this using exemplars from fields like politics, marketing, and education. Unlike in other disciplines or methods, it is far from clear what the label \u2018transparent research procedures\u2019 constitutes in management field studies, with adverse effects during write-up, revision, and even after publication. To rectify this, in Chapter V, we review field studies across seven major management journals (1997- 2006) in order to develop a transparency index, and link it to article impact. Chapter VI is a sequel to the previous chapter. We propose a new method for assessing the methodological rigor of grounded theory procedures ex-post using an audit trail perspective. While existing research on the methodological sophistication of grounded theory was typically done from the perspective of the author or producer of the research, our perspective is customer-centric, both in terms of the end-customer (i.e. the reader or other author), as well as the intermediate customer (i.e. reviewers and editors). The last empirical article in the thesis, Chapter VII, focuses on yet another parameter influencing impact: the style of academic writing. Specifically, we focus on the attributes of article titles and their subsequent influence on the citation count. At this early stage of theory development on article titles, we do this in the specific application context of management science. We conclude with Chapter VIII where we sum up the findings and implications of all preceding studies and put forth suggestions for future research

Scientific structures in context : identification and use of structures, context, and new developments in science

The use and visualisation of structures in science (sets of related publications, authors, words) is investigated in a number of applications. We hold that the common ground of a field can explain the use and applicability of these structures.LEI Universiteit LeidenFSW - CWTS - Ou