Abstract
Objectives
The aim of this study was to assess whether specific title characteristics could influence
the likelihood of being included in the “Altmetric Top 100.”
Methods
We conducted a 1:2 matched case–control study with the cases being the health care
articles included in the “Altmetric Top 100” lists (2013–2015) matched through a random
computerized procedure with two health care articles published in the same journal
and year. For each title, we extracted the number of characters in the title, the
number of uncommon words, and whether the title was declarative. Conditional logistic
regression was used to estimate odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals adjusted
for a prespecified baseline confounder (open access).
Results
One hundred eight “Medical and health sciences” articles were retrieved in the 2013–2015
“Altmetric Top 100” and matched to 216 control articles. Titles of the “Altmetric
Top 100” articles were 102.6 characters (±42) long, included 3.4 (±2.0) uncommon words,
and 29.6% (32/108) were “declarative.” Titles of the matched articles were 109.3 characters
(±37.1) long, included 4.7 (±2.4) uncommon words, and 21.8% (47/216) were “declarative.”
After multivariate adjustment, declarative titles with a lower number of uncommon
words were significantly more represented in the Altmetric list, with declarative
titles having 2.8 times the odds of being in the top list (OR: 2.8; 95% confidence
interval: 1.2, 6.4). For each additional uncommon word in the title, there was a 1.4
increase in the odds of being a non-Altmetric Top 100 article (1.4; 1.2–1.6).
Conclusion
An easy-to-understand, informative title may help bridge the gap between scholar and
social media dissemination.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 27, 2016
Accepted:
November 9,
2016
Footnotes
Conflict of interest: None.
Funding: None.
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
