IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/manrev/v73y2023i1d10.1007_s11301-021-00240-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Top, mid-tier, and predatory alike? The lexical structure of titles and abstracts of six business and management journals

Author

Listed:
  • Julián D. Cortés

    (Universidad del Rosario
    Fudan University)

Abstract

There is an established agenda seeking to disentangle the relationship between journal articles’ title, keywords, or abstract attributes and their association with bibliometric performance. To date, however, there have been few comparative, benchmarking studies in MBR (management-business research), particularly between top-tier, mid-tier, and periodicals with predatory features. This study aims to provide such a benchmark by identifying significant differences/similitudes in the lexical structure of article titles and abstracts of six MBR journals: Academy of Management Journal and Strategic Management Journal, both distinguished journals in the discipline; Corporate Reputation Review and Journal of Global Information Management, two mid-tier journals; and WSEAS Transactions on Business and Economics and Problems and Perspectives in Management, both identified as journals with predatory features. Three content analysis methods were used: (i) semantic networks; (ii) text readability; (iii) and lexical diversity indices (i.e., Flesch-Kincaid grade level and Yule’s K). Kruskal–Wallis tests were also implemented to identify differences between groups. The findings showed no significant differences in article length, irrespective of groups. Significant differences were found, however, in the readability and lexical diversity of the abstracts, with those in the top-tier group having a lower median readability and higher median lexical diversity. Key-terms with higher betweenness were also found to be similar to those central to MBR in developing countries and top-tier journals on strategy.

Suggested Citation

  • Julián D. Cortés, 2023. "Top, mid-tier, and predatory alike? The lexical structure of titles and abstracts of six business and management journals," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 297-316, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:manrev:v:73:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11301-021-00240-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11301-021-00240-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11301-021-00240-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11301-021-00240-x?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David I. Méndez & M. Ángeles Alcaraz & Françoise Salager-Meyer, 2014. "Titles in English-medium Astrophysics research articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 2331-2351, March.
    2. Uddin, Shahadat & Khan, Arif, 2016. "The impact of author-selected keywords on citation counts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 1166-1177.
    3. Zhijun LI & Jinfen XU, 2019. "The evolution of research article titles: the case of Journal of Pragmatics 1978–2018," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1619-1634, December.
    4. Nick Haslam & Lauren Ban & Leah Kaufmann & Stephen Loughnan & Kim Peters & Jennifer Whelan & Sam Wilson, 2008. "What makes an article influential? Predicting impact in social and personality psychology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 76(1), pages 169-185, July.
    5. Fatemeh Rostami & Asghar Mohammadpoorasl & Mohammad Hajizadeh, 2014. "The effect of characteristics of title on citation rates of articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(3), pages 2007-2010, March.
    6. Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent & Vicent Montalt-Resurecció & Juan Carlos Valderrama-Zurián, 2014. "A descriptive study of inaccuracy in article titles on bibliometrics published in biomedical journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 781-791, October.
    7. Hamid R. Jamali & Mahsa Nikzad, 2011. "Article title type and its relation with the number of downloads and citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 653-661, August.
    8. Moshe Yitzhaki, 2002. "Relation of the title length of a journal article to the length of the article," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 54(3), pages 435-447, July.
    9. Rahman Sahragard & Hussein Meihami, 2016. "A diachronic study on the information provided by the research titles of applied linguistics journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(3), pages 1315-1331, September.
    10. Aria, Massimo & Cuccurullo, Corrado, 2017. "bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 959-975.
    11. Didegah, Fereshteh & Thelwall, Mike, 2013. "Which factors help authors produce the highest impact research? Collaboration, journal and document properties," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 861-873.
    12. William W. Hood & Concepción S. Wilson, 2001. "The Literature of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, and Informetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 52(2), pages 291-314, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. 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.
    2. Zhijun LI & Jinfen XU, 2019. "The evolution of research article titles: the case of Journal of Pragmatics 1978–2018," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(3), pages 1619-1634, December.
    3. Mike Thelwall, 2017. "Avoiding obscure topics and generalising findings produces higher impact research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 307-320, January.
    4. William S. Pearson, 2021. "Quoted speech in linguistics research article titles: patterns of use and effects on citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3421-3442, April.
    5. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair & Michael Gibbert, 2016. "What makes a ‘good’ title and (how) does it matter for citations? A review and general model of article title attributes in management science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1331-1359, June.
    6. Juan Xie & Kaile Gong & Jiang Li & Qing Ke & Hyonchol Kang & Ying Cheng, 2019. "A probe into 66 factors which are possibly associated with the number of citations an article received," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1429-1454, June.
    7. Kong, Ling & Wang, Dongbo, 2020. "Comparison of citations and attention of cover and non-cover papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4).
    8. 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).
    9. Sergio Jimenez & Youlin Avila & George Dueñas & Alexander Gelbukh, 2020. "Automatic prediction of citability of scientific articles by stylometry of their titles and abstracts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 3187-3232, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Feng Guo & Chao Ma & Qingling Shi & Qingqing Zong, 2018. "Succinct effect or informative effect: the relationship between title length and the number of citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1531-1539, September.
    12. Lu, Chao & Bu, Yi & Dong, Xianlei & Wang, Jie & Ding, Ying & Larivière, Vincent & Sugimoto, Cassidy R. & Paul, Logan & Zhang, Chengzhi, 2019. "Analyzing linguistic complexity and scientific impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 817-829.
    13. Xuechun Xiang & Jing Li, 2020. "A diachronic comparative study of research article titles in linguistics and literature journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 847-866, February.
    14. Amon, Julian & Hornik, Kurt, 2022. "Is it all bafflegab? – Linguistic and meta characteristics of research articles in prestigious economics journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    15. Andrea Fronzetti Colladon & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Peter A. Gloor, 2020. "Predicting the future success of scientific publications through social network and semantic analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 357-377, July.
    16. James Hartley, 2015. "Inaccuracies in titles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 329-330, April.
    17. 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.
    18. Zahedi, Zohreh & Haustein, Stefanie, 2018. "On the relationships between bibliographic characteristics of scientific documents and citation and Mendeley readership counts: A large-scale analysis of Web of Science publications," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 191-202.
    19. William S. Pearson, 2020. "Research article titles in written feedback on English as a second language writing," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 997-1019, May.
    20. Don Watson & Manfred Krug & Claus-Christian Carbon, 2022. "The relationship between citations and the linguistic traits of specific academic discourse communities identified by using social network analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1755-1781, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Readability; Lexical diversity; Network analysis; Business; management and accounting; Predatory publishing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

    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:spr:manrev:v:73:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11301-021-00240-x. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.