Quantifying cohesion in high citation research article titles: a cross-disciplinary and diachronic investigation

Jiawei Wang ()
Additional contact information
Jiawei Wang: Xiamen University

Scientometrics, 2024, vol. 129, issue 9, No 2, 5075-5102

Abstract: Abstract This study presents the result of a cross-disciplinary and diachronic examination of cohesive devices used in high citation research article (HCRA) titles, a hitherto less-explored subgenre of academic discourse. Based on Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) Cohesion Model, the research analyzed the employment of connectors in a self-constructed corpus of 30,000 HCRA titles from disciplines of Biology, Chemistry, Linguistics, and Music from 1980 to 2023. Comparisons of disciplinary and diachronic changes of connectors were made in two-way multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA), and follow-up analyses of variance (ANOVA). Major findings indicate that discipline, as compared to period, is the determinant of cohesion in HCRA titles, albeit in medium effect size. The use of Extension and Enhancement prevail HCRA titles, suggesting an exponential increase of sophistication and comprehensiveness of information in the curation and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Specifically, cohesion of HCRA titles is predominantly realized by additive, temporal, and causal connectors with sharp contrasts between soft and hard sciences, indicating longer titles with these connectors attract readers by harnessing their familiarity of disciplinary knowledge. Quantitative characterization of cohesion in HCRA titles shed light on how expert writers coherently organize titles to maximize informativeness and research impact, thereby contributing pedagogically to academic writing for English for Academic and Specific Purposes, and empirically for the research on the predictability of citation impacts.

Keywords: Cohesion; High citation research article titles; Connectors; Disciplinary variation; Diachronic variation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-024-05123-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:129:y:2024:i:9:d:10.1007_s11192-024-05123-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-024-05123-y

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().