Variation in informativity of titles of research papers in selected humanities journals: A comparative study |
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Authors: | M Yitzhaki |
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Affiliation: | (1) Department of Information and Library Studies, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, (Israel) |
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Abstract: | Titles constitute the most concise statement of a document's content, and are heavily used by information retrieval systems.
Consequently, the great importance of titles being highly informative is indisputable. The most common measure of title ‘informativity’
has been the number of ‘substantive’ words it includes. Previous studies found significant differences between journals of
different subject fields, in the sciences and the social sciences, regarding the number of substantive words in article titles.
However, unlike the sciences and the social sciences, very little research has been done onhumanities journals. Examining title informativity in a group of eighteen leading English-language journals, covering various humanities
disciplines, from 1940 to 1990, the present study searched for possible differences between the humanities journal and the
scientific and social sciences ones, concerning patterns of title informativity. Generally, considerable differences were
found in the number of substantive words in article titles between the various humanities journals checked. On the other hand,
a comparison of thegroup-average means and medians of the humanities journals to group figures of journals from the sciences and the social sciences indicates
significant differences for almost all decade years studied. However, titles of papers in humanities journals did follow the
general trend of increase in informativity, although in a slower pace. Possible explanations of these differences are discussed
and areas for further study are suggested.
Paper presented at the Round Table On Editors Of Library Journals (RTELJ) at the 61st IFLA General Conference, 20–26 August
1995, Istanbul. |
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