Milojevic, S. (2015). "Journal article titles as tools for self-presentation." Presentation at #ASIST2015 #SIGMET15 panel "Self-Presentation in Academia Today: From Peer-Reviewed Publications to Social Media"

1. Journal article titles as tools for self-
presentation
Staša Milojević
School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University Bloomington

2. Scientific documents
• Key element in practice of science
(Callon, Courtial, Turner & Banin 1983; Latour & Woolgar 1986)
• “The central medium for the dissemination and exchange of scientific ideas”
(Bowker, 2005, p. 126)
• The primary purpose of journal articles is to persuade the intended audience
of worth, originality, and cognitive authority
• Shared conceptual system of scientific communities expressed through the
terminology used in documents.
• Disciplines/fields exist through a medium of ordered language.

3. Language and academic identity
“…we use language as the raw materials for the presentation of ourselves to
the world and that what we say and write aligns us with or separates us from
other people and their positions.”
K. Hyland Disciplinary Identities

4. Identity as a process
Identity is socially and historically constituted by individuals through their social
relations, and is thus something that does not belong WITHIN an individual, but
BETWEEN persons. (Vygotsky, Mind in Society).

5. Document titles
• Function as “attention triggers” (Bazerman 1985,1989)
• Have undergone a change during the 20th
century, becoming
• More informative
• More specific
• Containing a larger number of words that indicate article content

6. Title types
• Declarative titles – state the
main findings or
conclusions
• Descriptive titles – describe
the subject of the article
but do not reveal the main
conclusions
• Interrogative titles –
introduce the subject in the
form of a question

7. Characterization of authors
Groups of authors having different:
• Academic age
• Do titles of senior and junior researchers differ?
• Productivity level
• Do prolific researchers have different titles?
• Collaborative activity level
• Do researchers who collaborate more have different titles?

8. Pilot study: core journals in Astronomy
Field Number of
journals
Number of
articles
(1961-2010)
Number of
articles
(2006-2010)
Astronomy 4 156,871 31,470
Retrieved from Web of Science.

9. 11
12
13
14
15
1 10
words
Individual productivity
Title length
11
12
13
14
15
1 10 100
words
Number of collaborators plus one
Title length
11
12
13
14
15
0 10 20 30 40 50
words
Academic age
Title length
Longest titles:
assistant professors
and members of
large teams
Pilot study: astronomy

10. 20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
0 10 20 30 40 50
percentageofpapers
Academic age
Titles containing a subtitle
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
1 10
percentageofpapers
Individual productivity
Titles containing a subtitle
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
55%
60%
65%
70%
75%
80%
1 10 100
percentageofpapers
Number of collaborators plus one
Titles containing a subtitle
Most frequent use of
subtitles: assistant
professors, authors
with medium
productivity and
members of large
teams
Pilot study: astronomy

11. 0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
0 10 20 30 40 50
percentageofpapers
Academic age
Titles containing a question
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
1 10
percentageofpapers
Individual productivity
Titles containing a question
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
1 10 100
percentageofpapers
Number of collaborators plus one
Titles containing a question
Most frequent use of
interrogative titles :
postdocs and senior
researchers, very
productive authors.
Never used by
members of very
large teams
Pilot study: astronomy

12. 5500
5700
5900
6100
6300
6500
6700
6900
0 10 20 30 40 50
lexicaldiversity-uniquephrases
Academic age
Cognitive extent
5500
5700
5900
6100
6300
6500
6700
6900
1 10
lexicaldiversity-uniquephrases
Individual productivity
Cognitive extent
5500
5700
5900
6100
6300
6500
6700
6900
1 10 100
lexicaldiversity-uniquephrases
Number of collaborators plus one
Cognitive extent
Cognitive extent = range of
topics: highest at the
beginning and the end of
career. More
productive/collaborative
authors as a whole work on
only a subset of topics in
astronomy
Pilot study: astronomy

13. Thank you!
Staša Milojević
School of Informatics and Computing
Indiana University Bloomington
smilojev@indiana.edu