Who ever said size doesn't matter? The association between journal title length and impact factor

‘It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.’

Horace (65 BC–8 BC), Epistles

Just like any other young and aspiring researcher at the start of his or her career, we once dreamt of seeing our groundbreaking research published in journals like Nature and Science. As the years went by, we have had to tune down our expectations; nevertheless, our aspirations have remained.

It was in considering the fate of our articles that we came to perceive a direct relation between the length of a journal's name and its impact factor (IF). High-impact journals seem to have short and impressive names like Cell, Blood, Gut or Thorax, whereas the names of lower impact journals consist of more than one word, starting with ‘journal’ or ‘archives’; are adorned with words like ‘international’ or ‘clinical’ and mention not only the journal's subject or subjects but also the country of origin.

We set out to analyse the relation between the length of journals’ names and IFs, using the ISI Journal Citation Reports Science Edition 2005.

Materials, methods and results

All journals noted in the ISI Journal Citation Reports Science Edition 2005 were considered (n = 6088). We excluded journals with no IF and journals whose IF was 0.000 (n = 55). Journal title length was calculated as the number of characters (including spaces) of the full title. Of the remaining 6033 journals, CA—A Cancer Journal for Clinicians—had the highest IF (49.794) and MER–-Marine Engineers Review—the lowest (0.004). Analysis of journal title length showed a wide range (Supplementary Figure), with a median journal title length of 29 characters [inter-quartile range (IQR) 20–39]. The shortest titles consisted of only three characters [nine journals, median IF 0.637 (range 0.010–7.692)]. The journal with the longest name (122 characters) was Nuovo Cimento della Societa Italiana di Fisica B-General Physics Relativity Astronomy and Mathematical Physics and Methods, with an IF of 0.324.

Using Spearman's rank correlation test, we found a highly significant negative association between the ranks of the journal's title length and IF (ρ = −0.118, P < 0.001). Further analysis confirmed this finding: comparing journals with a top 2% IF ranking (n = 120, median IF 13.264, range 49.794–9.107) to those in the bottom 2% (n = 120, median IF 0.058, range 0.090–0.004), title length was shorter among the high IF journals [median 26.5 (IQR 18–32) versus 29 (IQR 19–43) characters per title, P = 0.025 (Mann–Whitney test)].

However, as this compares IF in a wide variety of journals, this evaluation is like comparing apples to oranges: there are many similarities but also some differences [1]. The Journal Citation Reports Science Edition lists a total of 171 journal categories, ranging from Crystallography to Aerospace engineering. We compiled a list of journal categories related to medicine and set out to compare title length of journals in the quintile with the highest IF to those in the lowest IF quintile per category. Journal categories had to contain a sufficient number of journals to allow for a reasonable statistical analysis (limit arbitrarily set at eight journals per quintile; 30 categories included).

Seven categories showed a significant difference in journal title length (Supplementary Table); in five of these categories the median journal title was shorter in the high IF quintile. Finally, when we compared all journals in the top IF quintiles of the selected 30 categories (n = 551) with the journals from the low quintiles (n = 551), title length was significantly shorter in the high impact journals (P < 0.001).

Comment

Our analysis shows that size does matter: higher impact journals do have shorter titles. Even though there is much debate on the value of IFs, they are still widely used to evaluate research and researchers [2]. As a rule of thumb, one should pick short-titled journals for publications, as this may help to survive in the growing battle for funding.

However, as both authors work in the field of Paediatric Nephrology, and the categories Pediatrics and Urology & Nephrology are the only two categories with a significantly longer journal title in the quintile with the highest IF, our newly developed rule of thumb does not seem practical for us. This also provides extra support for the new Nephrology journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation PLUS, as the long title (40 characters) would fit into the top IF quintile.

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material is available at NDT Journal online.