Skip to main content

Scholarly communication in transition: The use of question marks in the titles of scientific articles in medicine, life sciences and physics 1966–2005

Scientometrics volume 79, pages 667–679 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The titles of scientific articles have a special significance. We examined nearly 20 million scientific articles and recorded the development of articles with a question mark at the end of their titles over the last 40 years. Our study was confined to the disciplines of physics, life sciences and medicine, where we found a significant increase from 50% to more than 200% in the number of articles with question-mark titles. We looked at the principle functions and structure of the titles of scientific papers, and we assume that marketing aspects are one of the decisive factors behind the growing usage of question-mark titles in scientific articles.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

References

  1. G. Lewison, J. Hartley, What’s in a title: Numbers of words and the presence of colons, Scientometrics, 63 (2005) 341–356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. L. Adams-Phillips, C. Barry, J. Giovannoni, Signal trasduction systems regulatin fruit ripening, Trends Plant Science, 9 (2004) 331–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. C. Ross, Huntington’s disease new paths to pathogenesis, Cell, 118 (2004) 4–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. T. Tyrrell, R. E. Zeebe, History of carbonate ion concentration over the last 100 million years, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 68 (2004) 3521–3530.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. G. Krapivinsky, I. Medina, L. Krapivinsky, S. Gapon, D. Clapham, SynGAP-MUPP1-CaMKII synaptic complexes regulate p38 MAP kinase activity and NMDA receptor- dependent synaptic AMPA receptor potentiation, Neuron, 43 (2004) 563–574.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. All examples taken from: Top 25 Hottest Articles, http://top25.sciencedirect.com/index.php?cat_id=6&subject_area_id=2

  7. W. Schneider, D. Esslinger, Die Überschrift, List Verlag, München, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  8. M.A. Mabe, M. Amin, Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde: Author-reader asymmetries in scholarly publishing. In: ASLIB Proceedings, 54 (3). Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2002 pp.149–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. B. Simon, Der Teaser — eine multifunktionale Textsorte, Dissertation (2004) 129. 134–139.

    Google Scholar 

  10. G. Myers, The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics 10 (1989) 1–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. M. Yitzhaki, Relations of title length of journal articles to number of authors, Scientometrics, 30 (1994) 321–332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. J. A. Perry, The Dillion hypothesis of titular colonicity: En empirical test from the ecological science, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 36 (1985) 251–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. M. Townsend, Tutular colonicity and scholarship — New-Zealand research and scholarly impact, New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 12 (1983) 41–43.

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  14. J. T. Dillon, The emergence of the colon: An empirical correlate of scholarship, American Psychologist, 36 (1981) 879–884.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. J. Hartley, Planning that title: Practices and preferences for titles with colons in academic articles, Library & Information Science Research, 29 (2007) 553–568.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. V. Soler, Writing titles in science: An exploratory study, English for Specific Purposes, 26 (2007) 90. 100–102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. A. Alexandrov, M. Hennerici, Writing good abstracts, Cerebrovascular Diseases, 23 (2007) 256–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. D. H. Rakison, J. B. Cicchino, Is an infant a people person?, Cognition, 94 (2004).

  19. V. A. Kuhlmeier, P. Bloom, K. Wynn, Do 5-month-old infants see humans as material objects?, Cognition, 94 (2004) 95–103.

    Google Scholar 

  20. G. Natoli, Little things that count in transcriptional regulation, Cell, 118 (2004) 406–408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. M. L. Mbow, R. T. Sarisky, What is disrupting IFN-α’s antiviral activity?, Trends in Biotechnology, 22 (2004) 395–399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. S. G. Fischer, W. D. Macrosson, C. A. WALKER, FIRO-B, the power of love and the love of power, Psychological Reports, 76 (1995) 195–206.

    Google Scholar 

  23. N. Rosen, Q. B. She, AKT and cancer — is it all mTOR?, Cancer Cell, 10 (2006) 254–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. D. L. Simmons, What makes a good anti-inflammatory drug target?, Drug Discovery Today, 11 (2006) 210–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. M. Haggan, Research paper titles in literature, linguistics and science: dimensions of attractions, Journal of pragmatics, 36 (2004) 293–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. J. Hartley, Is it appropriate to use structured abstracts in social science journals?, Learned Publishing, 10 (1997) 313–317.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. P. H. Weiss, J. C. Marshall; K. Zilles, G. R. Fink, Are action and perception in near and far space additive or interactive factors?, Neurolmage, 18 (2003) 837–846.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. S. Harnad, Don’t take any virtual planes! Reply to powers on hornad on symbolism-connectionism, Psycoloquy, 12 (2001) Article 24.

  29. M. A. J. Kompier, The “Hawthorne effect” is a myth, but what keeps the story going?, Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 32 (2006) 402–412.

    Google Scholar 

  30. C. I. Vardavas, A. Kafatos, Greece’s tobacco policy: another myth?, Lancet, 367 (2006) 1485–1486.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. G. Laudel, Studying the brain drain: Can bibliometric methods help?, Scientometrics, 57 (2003) 215–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. C. Zimmermann, G. L. Bisanz, J. Bisanz, J. S. Klein, P. Klein, Science at the supermarket: A comparison of what appears in the popular press, experts’ advice to readers, and what students want to know,, Public Understanding of Science, 10 (2001) 37–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. S. Harnad, Can a machine be conscious? How? www.cogprints.org/5330, (2003).

  34. H. B. Uylings, L. I. Malofeeva, I. N. Bogolepova, A. M. Jacobsen, K. Amunts, K. Zilles, No postnatal doubling of number of neurons in human Broca’s areas? A stereological study, Neuroscience, 136 (2005) 715–728.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Library of Regensburg, 93042, Regensburg, Germany

    Rafael Ball

Authors
  1. Rafael Ball
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafael Ball.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ball, R. Scholarly communication in transition: The use of question marks in the titles of scientific articles in medicine, life sciences and physics 1966–2005. Scientometrics 79, 667–679 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1984-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-007-1984-5

Keywords

  • Life Science
  • Scientific Article
  • Question Mark
  • Scholarly Communication
  • Social Science Journal