A citation analysis examining geographical specificity in article titles

This investigation explores the impact of geographical names within article titles on citation frequency across a corpus of literature within the field of library and information science, spanning from 2018 to 2020, and encompassing 56 journal titles. We hypothesized that the presence of geographical names of nations in article titles would negatively correlate with citation counts. Our primary analysis of 1330 articles with geographical names in titles versus 8702 without, revealed a statistically significant, albeit small, difference in median citations, favoring articles without geographical names (mdn = 7) over those with geographical names (mdn = 6). Contrary to our secondary hypothesis, a proximity analysis demonstrated a weak, positive correlation between the position of geographical names near the title end and citation counts. Our examination found little evidence supporting differential citation frequency based on the Human Development Index (HDI) of the nations mentioned in titles. However, although a journal’s impact score strongly predicted citation counts for articles, we found that these counts were depressed when articles in those journals contained a geographic name. We found a negative correlation between the frequency of geographical names in article titles and the journals’ impact scores, yet this was weakly, statistically significant. Our data also suggested a vague positional preference for nations within titles, unrelated to HDI. Furthermore, the likelihood of journals publishing articles mentioning nations of varying HDI was found to be statistically insignificant. This study sheds light on the nuanced influence of title specificity, through geographical names, on scholarly communication and citation impact, indicating a slight preference for broader title phrasing in garnering citations.