Linear Regression Analysis of Title Word Count and Article Time Cited using R

Alireza Mohebbi,Yousef Douzandegan

doi:10.5530/jscires.6.1.3

Abstract

There is a common idea, that title variables like article title length would influence article citations. The aim of the present study was to investigating possible relationship between size of article title and number of article citations by minimizing scientometric variable biases. A dataset containing ~100,000 virological literatures was obtained from Web of Science InCiteTM database from 1997 to 2016. Variables, Title size (TWC), Year (YoP), Source (JS), and Publisher were selected. In addition number of times article is cited ‘Time Cited’ (TC) was retrieved from Web of Science InCiteTM. Linear regression analysis was performed between variables and TC using R for a possible prediction model for TC. Result has shown a robust standard error corrected linear regression with only 30.6% power of predictability. Furthermore, it was found that TC, YoP, and JS have meaningful potential in the linear model. Moreover, TC is negatively correlated with YoP, JS, and positively with TWC. As a result, size of article title, years passed since publication and the journal in which article accepted are good but not sufficient predictor of article citations. In addition, article is a multi-characteristic subject and other predictors can be supposed. However, we think that finding an efficient statistical linear predication model for TC, by increase of articles citation, is overwhelming.

Highlights

Effects of article title length on article impact are controversial
Information on the following variables was tabulated from the above articles database: Article title word count (TWC), year of publication (YoP), publishers, and journal sources (JS) in which article is published and number of article citations (TC)retrieved from Science In CiteTM as on September 27, 2016
Linear regression resulted in a model with a prediction ability of 13.68% (y-intercept = 62.325, slope = 0.545, adjusted R-squared = 0.1368, and p-value < 2.2e-16)

Summary

Introduction

Studies have shown that an article title length may have a positive, negative, our neutral influence on articles citations.[1,2,3] many factors may affect study’s outcome. In which articles title are in a pre-defined format by the journal.[1] Studies about this subject had different results due to different data selection, statistical analysis strategies. With different statistical analysis as well as logistic regression they have shown that titles with less characters would bring more citations.[12] Results similar to those of Paiva et al were obtained in a study of seven journals from PloS publication. It was found that though each journal had different scope short titles had more downloads and citations.[2]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion