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The rhetorical structure of science? A multidisciplinary analysis of article headings

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  • Thelwall, Mike

Abstract

An effective structure helps an article to convey its core message. The optimal structure depends on the information to be conveyed and the expectations of the audience. In the current increasingly interdisciplinary era, structural norms can be confusing to the authors, reviewers and audiences of scientific articles. Despite this, no prior study has attempted to assess variations in the structure of academic papers across all disciplines. This article reports on the headings commonly used by over 1 million research articles from the PubMed Central Open Access collection, spanning 22 broad categories covering all academia and 172 out of 176 narrow categories. The results suggest that no headings are close to ubiquitous in any broad field and that there are substantial differences in the extent to which most headings are used. In the humanities, headings may be avoided altogether. Researchers should therefore be aware of unfamiliar structures that are nevertheless legitimate when reading, writing and reviewing articles.

Suggested Citation

  • Thelwall, Mike, 2019. "The rhetorical structure of science? A multidisciplinary analysis of article headings," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 555-563.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:13:y:2019:i:2:p:555-563
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2019.03.002
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Deep and narrow impact: introducing location filtered citation counting," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 503-517, January.
    2. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Telescopic and panoramic views of library and information science research 2011–2018: a comparison of four weighting schemes for author co-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 255-270, July.
    3. Kai Li & Chenyue Jiao, 2022. "The data paper as a sociolinguistic epistemic object: A content analysis on the rhetorical moves used in data paper abstracts," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(6), pages 834-846, June.
    4. Mike Thelwall & Marcus Munafò & Amalia Mas-Bleda & Emma Stuart & Meiko Makita & Verena Weigert & Chris Keene & Nushrat Khan & Katie Drax & Kayvan Kousha, 2020. "Is useful research data usually shared? An investigation of genome-wide association study summary statistics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-11, February.

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