EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Pattern, Perception, and Performance: Tripartite Phrases in Academic Paper Titles

Lutz Bornmann and Klaus Wohlrabe

No 11671, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: This study examines how tripartite phrases in academic paper titles affect citation counts. Tripartite phrases consist of three interconnected elements separated by commas and conjunctions such as pattern, perception, and performance. Analyzing comprehensive datasets from economics (235,330 articles) and medicine and life sciences (93,713 articles), we found that papers with titles including tripartite phrases receive significantly more citations. Papers with tripartite phrases receive on average 3.5 additional citations in economics and 32 additional citations in medicine and life sciences compared to those without, controlling for paper characteristics, journal characteristics, and publication timing. For medical and life sciences papers, this effect persists when controlling for expert-assessed paper quality. The relative share of tripartite titles among the titles of all papers was stable over time at approximately 9% in economics and 4% in medicine and life sciences, suggesting an established stylistic convention.

Keywords: tripartite phrases; academic writing; bibliometrics; citation analysis; paper titles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11671.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ces:ceswps:_11671

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-24
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11671