paper on citations

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Fascinating article that was just brought to my attention by 
Highwire's John Sack via Twitter.  Here are the findings:

"Results The number of citations was positively correlated with 
the length of the title, the presence of a colon in the title and 
the presence of an acronym. Factors that predicted poor citation 
included reference to a specific country in the title.

"Conclusions These data suggest that the construction of an 
article title has a significant impact on frequently the paper is 
cited. We hypothesize that this may be related to the way 
electronic searches of the literature are undertaken."

Here is the link:

http://j.mp/cIjILZ

The shortened URL is the one John used.  An interesting corollary
question is how citations vary with referrals from social media, for
which shortened URLs serve as a tracking mechanism.

Joe Esposito