Short, Amusing, and Not Necessarily Cited

Information shines forth from this study:

“Short and amusing: The relationship between title characteristics, downloads, and citations in psychology articles,” Sinisa Subotic and Bhaskar Mukherjee, Journal of Information Science, November 21, 2013. (Thank to investigator Charles Oppenheim for bringing this to our attention.)  The authors, at NGO ‘Persona’, Bosnia and Herzegovina and ‘CEON/CEES’, Serbia and Guru Ghasidas University, India, explain:

“The aim of this study was to conduct a unified investigation of various, previously mostly individually studied scientific article title characteristics, like: title length, type, amusement and pleasantness, and specific title ‘markers’ (e.g. colons, attention-grabbing words etc.)… While these findings are limited to the psychology discipline only, our results suggest that the integrative structural approach is promising and that more research following this paradigm is needed.”

Here’s detail from the study: