From ‘Envy, inequality and fertility’ to ‘Market size, trade and productivity’, using catchy three-part phrases in the titles of research papers can boost their citations, suggests a study.

The study used algorithms to examine more than 235,000 economics papers and 93,000 medical and life-sciences papers that contain three-part phrases in their titles. The medical and life-sciences studies that used the format attracted 32 extra citations, on average, than did papers that don’t contain such phrases, and the economics papers with this format received an extra 3.5 citations.

You must be joking: funny paper titles might lead to more citations

“When you have a catchy title, people are more likely to read at least the abstract or the whole paper,” says study co-author Klaus Wohlrabe, an economist at the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Munich, Germany. The analysis was published¹ last month on the SSRN preprint server.

Previous analyses have found that using shorter titles, funny ones or including certain punctuation marks, such as hyphens, commas, brackets or colons, can also help studies to garner more citations.

The economics papers were published in journals indexed by the scholarly database Web of Science between 2006 and 2019. The life-sciences and medicine studies — peer reviewed from 2001 to 2023 — were rated ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’ by the post-publication appraisal service Faculty Opinions.

Wohlrabe says that medical and life-sciences studies with three-part phrases in their titles attract more extra citations than do corresponding economics publications because “the average citations for a medicine or life-sciences article is much higher than in economics”.

Rhythmic patterns

The study says that ‘tripartite phrases’ enhance clarity by breaking down complex ideas into interconnected parts, create rhythmic patterns that are memorable and aim to communicate multiple aspects of research concisely.