IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v126y2021i7d10.1007_s11192-021-04018-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A lexical and syntactic study of research article titles in Library Science and Scientometrics

Author

Listed:
  • Junli Diao

    (The City University of New York)

Abstract

Title of a research article is an abstract of the abstract. Titles play a decisive role in convincing readers at first sight whether articles are worth reading or not. Not only do research article titles show how carefully words are chosen by authors, but also reflect disciplinary differences in terms of title words and structure between hard sciences and soft sciences. This study examined the lexical density and syntactic structure of 690 research article titles chosen from five Library Science and Scientometrics journals, aiming to reveal disciplinary differences. The result suggested both Library Science and Scientometrics have almost the same title length and the prevalent usage of Nominal Phrase (NP) to govern the title structure. The result also stated some disciplinary differences: Library Science demonstrates more punctuation complexity, particularly a greater frequency in using colons; but Scientometrics shows more involvement of words related to research methods, which is an indicator to papers’ scientific value, and more usage of declarative Full Sentence (FS) structure, which were mostly discovered in the research articles in hard sciences.

Suggested Citation

  • Junli Diao, 2021. "A lexical and syntactic study of research article titles in Library Science and Scientometrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6041-6058, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:126:y:2021:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04018-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-04018-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-021-04018-6
    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/s11192-021-04018-6?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. Staša Milojević & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Erjia Yan & Ying Ding, 2011. "The cognitive structure of Library and Information Science: Analysis of article title words," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1933-1953, October.
    2. Shaoliang Xie, 2020. "English Research Article Titles: Cultural and Disciplinary Perspectives," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, June.
    3. J. A. Perry, 1985. "The dillion hypothesis of titular colonicity: An empirical test from the ecological sciences," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 36(4), pages 251-258, July.
    4. Wm. Mansfield Adams, 1967. "Relationship of keywords in titles to references cited," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 26-32, January.
    5. Staša Milojević & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Erjia Yan & Ying Ding, 2011. "The cognitive structure of Library and Information Science: Analysis of article title words," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1933-1953, October.
    6. 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.
    7. G. Jahoda & Mary Lou Stursa, 1969. "A comparison of a keyword from title index with a single access point per document alphabetic subject index," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 377-380, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    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.

    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. María Pinto & Rosaura Fernández-Pascual & David Caballero-Mariscal & Dora Sales, 2020. "Information literacy trends in higher education (2006–2019): visualizing the emerging field of mobile information literacy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1479-1510, August.
    2. Yi Bu & Binglu Wang & Win-bin Huang & Shangkun Che & Yong Huang, 2018. "Using the appearance of citations in full text on author co-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 275-289, July.
    3. Sabrina Petersohn & Thomas Heinze, 2018. "Professionalization of bibliometric research assessment. Insights from the history of the Leiden Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(4), pages 565-578.
    4. Hao Wang & Sanhong Deng & Xinning Su, 2016. "A study on construction and analysis of discipline knowledge structure of Chinese LIS based on CSSCI," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1725-1759, December.
    5. A. Abrizah & A. Noorhidawati & A. N. Zainab, 2015. "LIS journals categorization in the Journal Citation Report: a stated preference study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1083-1099, February.
    6. 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.
    7. Xie, Qing & Zhang, Xinyuan & Song, Min, 2021. "A network embedding-based scholar assessment indicator considering four facets: Research topic, author credit allocation, field-normalized journal impact, and published time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    8. Yuen-Hsien Tseng & Ming-Yueh Tsay, 2013. "Journal clustering of library and information science for subfield delineation using the bibliometric analysis toolkit: CATAR," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(2), pages 503-528, May.
    9. Sameer Kumar & Jariah Mohd. Jan, 2014. "Research collaboration networks of two OIC nations: comparative study between Turkey and Malaysia in the field of ‘Energy Fuels’, 2009–2011," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(1), pages 387-414, January.
    10. S. Lozano & L. Calzada-Infante & B. Adenso-Díaz & S. García, 2019. "Complex network analysis of keywords co-occurrence in the recent efficiency analysis literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 609-629, August.
    11. 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.
    12. Abhijit Thakuria & Dipen Deka, 2024. "A decadal study on identifying latent topics and research trends in open access LIS journals using topic modeling approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 3841-3869, July.
    13. Jianhua Hou & Xiucai Yang & Chaomei Chen, 2018. "Emerging trends and new developments in information science: a document co-citation analysis (2009–2016)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 869-892, May.
    14. Guo Chen & Lu Xiao & Chang-ping Hu & Xue-qin Zhao, 2015. "Identifying the research focus of Library and Information Science institutions in China with institution-specific keywords," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(2), pages 707-724, May.
    15. Daria Maltseva & Vladimir Batagelj, 2020. "iMetrics: the development of the discipline with many names," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 313-359, October.
    16. Yui-yip Lau & César Ducruet & Adolf K. Y. Ng & Xiaowen Fu, 2017. "Across the waves: a bibliometric analysis of container shipping research since the 1960s," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(6), pages 667-684, August.
    17. Erjia Yan, 2014. "Topic-based Pagerank: toward a topic-level scientific evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 100(2), pages 407-437, August.
    18. Rons, Nadine, 2018. "Bibliometric approximation of a scientific specialty by combining key sources, title words, authors and references," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 113-132.
    19. Aurora González-Teruel & Gregorio González-Alcaide & Maite Barrios & María-Francisca Abad-García, 2015. "Mapping recent information behavior research: an analysis of co-authorship and co-citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(2), pages 687-705, May.
    20. 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.

    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:scient:v:126:y:2021:i:7:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04018-6. 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.