Times have passed when a scientist could, like Darwin or Newton, for decades to calmly think about his theory. Now, in order to receive funding, you have to publish almost continuously. As a result, scientific periodicals came out of the shores and researchers are forced to take measures to be noticed and quoted in this sea. Of course, the article printed in a prestigious magazine and signed by a famous scientist attracts more attention. Those who have not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize and publication in Nature, it makes sense to work on the style.

Brevity

Specialists of the University of the University (Great Britain) suggested that the citation of a scientific article is affected by the length of its name: the shorter it, the more attention attracted. To verify their hypothesis, they used the Scopus biblometric database and analyzed 140 thousand of the most cited scientific articles printed between 2007 and 2013 20 thousand per year [1]. Scientists determined the length of the name of the article and the number of citation for the year and found a connection between these indicators. The length of the title varied from 6 to 393 signs with spaces without articles. For articles with short names, published in 2007-2010, they refer more often than in publications with long headlines. A striking example can be the headings of four articles published in 2010 in Science . Two of them are “The role of particles in the interference transmission of energy in the CDSE / CDS of the Heterostarts of Nanocrystals” ( The Role of Particle Morphology in Interfacial Energy Transfer in CDSE / CDS Heterostructure Nanocrystals ) and “Oils In nature, they attract predators, contributing to the rapid isomerization of volatile substances of green leaves ”( Insects Betray Themselves in Nature to Predators by Rapid Isomerization of Green Leaf Volatiles ) - were quoted 68 and 67 times, respectively. Articles with more short names: “Quantum walks of correlated photons” ( Quantum Walks of Correlated Photons ) and “The black sequence of the Neanderthal genome” ( a Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome ) were awarded 253 and 700 mention [2]. For publications of 2011–201 2011, the influence of the length of the name is more manifested; Their citation was influenced by the rating of magazines in which they are printed.

At the next stage of the work, researchers grouped articles on magazines. It turned out that publications publishing articles with more short titles receive more links to the article, and this pattern is fair for all seven years studied. But there are exceptions. The Lancet and The Lancet Oncology medical journals quote well, although the headlines of their articles are quite long, and publications in the Journal of High Energy Physics are less likely to mention, despite the short headlines.

The authors believe that short titles are easier to read, they are more understandable, so they attract more attention and more often refer to the article. But another explanation is possible: prestigious scientific journals often do not approve of long names and reduce them. On the other hand, articles describing intermediate results or complementing previous publications usually have longer names and are published in less prestigious journals. Researchers are going to check how other elements of style affect citation.

Publications, however, the sea; The analyzed articles account for 1.12% to 1.53% of the total. Even the least cited work from this list is mentioned 16 times, while a huge number of articles do not refer at all, no matter how long they have the title. Therefore, the results obtained by researchers from the University of Walorus are unlikely to reflect the real situation.

1000 and 14

Choosing a name for the article, there is no need to reduce it to a minimum to the detriment of the meaning. There are other ways to stand out from the total mass of publications.

A few months ago, Genes Genomes Genetics published an article by American researchers dedicated to the analysis of the smallest autosoma (non -head chromosome) of Drosophila [3]. It differs from others with autosomes a high content of heterochromatin, that is, a “silent” DNA that practically does not function in a cage. At the same time, about 80 genes encoding proteins are located on the chromosome. Researchers compared and characterized the DNA sequences of this chromosome in four types of Drosophila, having a common ancestor, but related to two different seniority: Drosophila melanogaster , d . Erecta , d . Mojavensis and d . Grimshawi . They found that the chromosome has existed for at least 40 million years and some of its sections have not changed much during this time.

The article attracted attention, and not so much the content, undoubtedly interesting for geneticists as the number of authors. There are 1014 of them, of which 940 students from 72 faculties of various US educational institutions. The list occupies almost three pages, leading researchers open and close it, the names of students are located in accordance with the alphabetical list of institutes in which they study. The scientific community stirred up and opened an online statement about the concept of authorship. Nature magazine devoted a small article to this discussion [4].

Scientific research becomes more and more complex and time -consuming, require the participation of a large number of qualified specialists; It is not surprising that the lists of authors are growing. In some areas of experimental physics, experiments are extremely laborious, and that, which exceeded the thousand co -authors, does not surprise anyone. So, in 2012, an article about the Higgs boson had 2932 author, that is, all physicists who participated in the creation of the ATLAS detector of a large adrone collider and conducted experiments on it. All of them performed different tasks and made an undoubted contribution to the opening.

In biology, the situation is different. The most time -consuming studies, genomic, can have several dozen authors, rarely more than a hundred, but 1014 is an unheard of business, especially since most of them are students. Some scientists welcomed this experience. Adam Fagen, Executive Director of the Genetic Society of America, believes that the participation of such a large team in the analysis of a huge amount of data is quite justified. Andreas Prokop, a geneticist from the University of Manchester, which has nothing to do with this work, called the involvement of hundreds of students to genomic research by a unique alloy of science and education. However, not all participants in the discussion shared this enthusiasm. According to biologists, such publications make the concept of “authorship of scientific work” meaningless. Since students were not responsible for the development of research and could not critically evaluate its scientific importance, students cannot be considered complete co -authors. It would be more correct to include them in the additional list placed in the application to the article. One of the most zealous opponents, a specialist in the neuroetology of invertebrates, Zen Faulkes, believes that participation in a study, the number of authors of which can be measured in “kilo -authors”, cannot be dutered to a scientist.

The project manager, professor at the University of Washington in St. Louis Sarah Elgin, stood up for the defense of students. She notes that all students are members of the Association “Educational Partnership on the Study of Genomics” (Genomics Education Partnership), which includes the largest institutions of the United States. One of the goals of the work was the publication of an article with co-author co-authors. Each of them did a huge job, manually correcting the errors of draft Sixvens and describing gene sequences, analyzed a large amount of data and made a significant intellectual contribution to the project. They did not write the article, but everyone read it, discussed and approved, and, of course, earned a place among co -authors. And as before the list in the application to the article, he also has, it was named by students who participated in the work, but for various reasons did not discuss the results.

1. Letchford A., Moat Hs, Preis T. The Advantage of Short Paper Titles // Royal Society Open Science. 2015. 2: 150266, DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.150266

2. Chawla ds in Brief, Papers with Shorter Titles Get More Citations, Study Sugggests // Science. 2015. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad1669

3. Leung W. et al., Drosophila Muller F Elements Maintain A Distinct Set of Genomic Properties Over 40 Million Years of Evolution // Genes Genomes Genet. 2015. 5. 719–740, DOI: 10.1534/g3.114.015966

4. WoolSton C. Fruit-Fly Paper Has 1.000 Authors // Nature. 2015. 521: 263, Doi: 10.1038/521263F