Short, But How Short? Analysis of Educational Research Titles

Abstract

In academic performance assessments, citations and citation-based metrics play a pivotal role. Among the elements that influence the success of an article, the title stands out as the first point of contact for editors, reviewers, and readers. Consequently, the title length-citation relationship is an extensively studied issue. While the dominant language used in the databases is English, rhetorical discourses are dominant in the non-English literature about the appropriate length of titles. This study investigates the relationships between title lengths, article downloads, and citations for educational research articles in the Turkish context. Specifically, it focuses on articles indexed in TRIndex and Google Scholar that were published in the Turkish Journal of National Education between 2010 and 2015. The parametric and nonparametric tests using different approaches (median and quarterly classification, correlation analysis) reveal a low negative correlation between title lengths and citations and downloads, a moderate positive correlation between downloads and citations, and a high positive correlation between the citations in the databases. It has been observed that the articles with short titles are read and cited more than the ones with longer titles. These findings align with previous research conducted in the English language. The results suggest that the optimal title length for educational research coincides with the magical number seven, plus or minus two, often referred to as Miller's Law, which represents the number of objects an individual can retain in their short-term memory. The study provides practical implications for authors, editors, and researchers on optimizing title length for better visibility and impact.