The effect of key characteristics of the title and morphological features of published articles on their citation rates

Abstract

The title is one of the most important parts of the article because it is the first contact that reviewers and readers have with the paper. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of key characteristics of the title and morphological features of articles on their citation rates. One thousand two hundred and fifty one articles published in eight ISI-indexed reputable journals were analyzed. A form was designed to collect information on the number of citations in the Scopus, characteristics of the title and morphological features of each article. The results revealed that the title type, number of words and characters in the title were not correlated with the number of citations (P>0.05). Also, the authors’ country of origin and mentioning time in the title were not associated with the number of citations (P>0.05). A significant relationship was found between types of articles and number of citations (P<0.001); the average number of citations for review articles was higher than original articles. The average number of authors was positively and significantly correlated with the average number of citations (P<0.001). Moreover, the average number of citations was considerably higher in the articles with no reference to the place of the study in the title (P<0.001). The results showed that some characteristics of the articles and their titles such as types of articles, number of authors and reference to the place in the title affect the citation rates of published articles.