IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0049476.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Article Length on the Number of Future Citations: A Bibliometric Analysis of General Medicine Journals

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew E Falagas
  • Angeliki Zarkali
  • Drosos E Karageorgopoulos
  • Vangelis Bardakas
  • Michael N Mavros

Abstract

Background: The number of citations received is considered an index of study quality and impact. We aimed to examine the factors associated with the number of citations of published articles, focusing on the article length. Methods: Original human studies published in the first trimester of 2006 in 5 major General Medicine journals were analyzed with regard to the number of authors and of author-affiliated institutions, title and abstract word count, article length (number of print pages), number of bibliographic references, study design, and 2006 journal impact factor (JIF). A multiple linear regression model was employed to identify the variables independently associated with the number of article citations received through January 2012. Results: On univariate analysis the JIF, number of authors, article length, study design (interventional/observational and prospective/retrospective), title and abstract word count, number of author-affiliated institutions, and number of references were all associated with the number of citations received. On multivariate analysis with the logarithm of citations as the dependent variable, only article length [regression coefficient: 14.64 (95% confidence intervals: (5.76–23.50)] and JIF [3.37 (1.80–4.948)] independently predicted the number of citations. The variance of citations explained by these parameters was 51.2%. Conclusion: In a sample of articles published in major General Medicine journals, in addition to journal impact factors, article length and number of authors independently predicted the number of citations. This may reflect a higher complexity level and quality of longer and multi-authored studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew E Falagas & Angeliki Zarkali & Drosos E Karageorgopoulos & Vangelis Bardakas & Michael N Mavros, 2013. "The Impact of Article Length on the Number of Future Citations: A Bibliometric Analysis of General Medicine Journals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(2), pages 1-8, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0049476
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049476
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049476
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049476&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0049476?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bornmann, Lutz & Haunschild, Robin & Mutz, Rüdiger, 2020. "Should citations be field-normalized in evaluative bibliometrics? An empirical analysis based on propensity score matching," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    2. Iman Tahamtan & Askar Safipour Afshar & Khadijeh Ahamdzadeh, 2016. "Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1195-1225, June.
    3. Shesen Guo & Ganzhou Zhang & Qiuhong Ju & Yu Chen & Qianfeng Chen & Lulu Li, 2015. "The evolution of conceptual diversity in economics titles from 1890 to 2012," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2073-2088, March.
    4. Sato, Ryoma & Yamada, Makoto & Kashima, Hisashi, 2022. "Poincare: Recommending Publication Venues via Treatment Effect Estimation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    5. Bornmann, Lutz & Tekles, Alexander, 2021. "Convergent validity of several indicators measuring disruptiveness with milestone assignments to physics papers by experts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    6. Martorell Cunil, Onofre & Otero González, Luis & Durán Santomil, Pablo & Mulet Forteza, Carlos, 2023. "How to accomplish a highly cited paper in the tourism, leisure and hospitality field," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    7. Zhongheng Zhang & Sven Van Poucke, 2017. "Citations for Randomized Controlled Trials in Sepsis Literature: The Halo Effect Caused by Journal Impact Factor," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, January.
    8. Letchford, Adrian & Preis, Tobias & Moat, Helen Susannah, 2016. "The advantage of simple paper abstracts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 1-8.
    9. Minxian Zheng & Kuangji Zhao & Shikui Zhao & Yantong Zhang, 2020. "Effecting variables of journal’s ranking in forestry field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 135-151, October.
    10. Juan Xie & Kaile Gong & Ying Cheng & Qing Ke, 2019. "The correlation between paper length and citations: a meta-analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 763-786, March.
    11. Bornmann, Lutz, 2019. "Does the normalized citation impact of universities profit from certain properties of their published documents – such as the number of authors and the impact factor of the publishing journals? A mult," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 170-184.
    12. Dongyu Zang & Chunli Liu, 2023. "Exploring the clinical translation intensity of papers published by the world’s top scientists in basic medicine," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2371-2416, April.
    13. Radhamany Sooryamoorthy, 2017. "Do types of collaboration change citation? A scientometric analysis of social science publications in South Africa," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 379-400, April.
    14. Syed Hasan & Robert Breunig, 2021. "Article length and citation outcomes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(9), pages 7583-7608, September.
    15. Kaile Gong & Juan Xie & Ying Cheng & Vincent Larivière & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2019. "The citation advantage of foreign language references for Chinese social science papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(3), pages 1439-1460, September.
    16. Daniel L Belavy & Patrick J Owen & Patricia M Livingston, 2020. "Do successful PhD outcomes reflect the research environment rather than academic ability?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(8), pages 1-14, August.
    17. Mingyang Wang & Zhenyu Wang & Guangsheng Chen, 2019. "Which can better predict the future success of articles? Bibliometric indices or alternative metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1575-1595, June.
    18. Bramoullé, Yann & Ductor, Lorenzo, 2018. "Title length," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 311-324.
    19. Yangping Zhou, 2021. "Self-citation and citation of top journal publishers and their interpretation in the journal-discipline context," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6013-6040, July.
    20. Gianna Kexin Jiang & Yajun Jiang, 2023. "More diversity, more complexity, but more flexibility: research article titles in TESOL Quarterly, 1967–2022," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(7), pages 3959-3980, July.
    21. Naomi Moy & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler, 2018. "How much is too much? The effects of information quantity on crowdfunding performance," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-15, March.
    22. Peyman Akhavan & Nader Ale Ebrahim & Mahdieh A. Fetrati & Amir Pezeshkan, 2016. "Major trends in knowledge management research: a bibliometric study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1249-1264, June.
    23. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 203-216.
    24. Sepideh Fahimifar & Khadijeh Mousavi & Fatemeh Mozaffari & Marcel Ausloos, 2023. "Identification of the most important external features of highly cited scholarly papers through 3 (i.e., Ridge, Lasso, and Boruta) feature selection data mining methods," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 3685-3712, August.
    25. T. Liskiewicz & G. Liskiewicz & J. Paczesny, 2021. "Factors affecting the citations of papers in tribology journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3321-3336, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0049476. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.