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You must be joking: funny paper titles might lead to more citations

After controlling for importance, analysis finds that papers with funnier titles get more citations. But some researchers question these results.
  1. Giorgia Guglielmi
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Including a joke in the title of a scholarly paper could pay off in terms of citations, according to a study. The finding — which was posted as a preprint on bioRxiv1 and has not been peer reviewed — suggests that researchers could gain citations by giving their papers more amusing titles. But some say the evidence is too weak to support that conclusion.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00946-2

References

  1. Heard, S. B., Cull, C. A., & White, E. R. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.18.484880 (2022).

  2. Haustein, S., Peters, I., Sugimoto, C. R., Thelwall, M. & Larivière, V. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 65, 656–669 (2013).

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