Figure 2.

Paper title length and citations received, analysed at journal level. (a) For each journal in 2010, we plot the median citations for a paper against the median title length. We find that journals which publish papers with shorter titles receive more citations per paper (Kendall's τ=−0.19, p<0.001, N=361). (b) Parallel analyses of the data for each year between 2007 and 2013 confirm that this relationship holds across all 7 years of data (2012: τ=−0.1, N=320, p<0.05; 2013: τ=−0.11, N=352, p<0.01; all other years: all τs≤−0.14, all ps <0.001, α=0.05; Kendall's τ correlation with FDR correction).