The 4th Cross-disciplinary Dialogue Meeting was held at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (IAS) on 15 November 2022. In this regular luncheon meeting, Prof. Rob Law brought us a sharing of his research work titled “What Makes an Article Citable?”.
Prof. Law first used the algorithm of the 2023 World University Ranking to lead everyone to think about citation and impact factor: what makes an article citable? Based on the literature review, Prof. Law pointed out that citation and word limit have a negative relationship. The longer the article, the lower the citation. On the contrary, the reference list and number of authors and collaboration have a positive relationship with citation. Through statistical analysis of data, Prof. Law emphasized, “The more word in a title, the less likely to be cited. A short title can indeed increase the number of citations.” In addition, publishing papers with prolific authors, international collaboration, length of related elements, etc. have no association with paper citations. Finally, he gave a suggested paper standard: 2 geographically similar authors, 6,400 words manuscript, 4 keywords, 3 tables, 56 references and a title with no more than 4 words. The topic was hotly discussed among the fellows regarding the research evaluation approaches and citation databases, and they also exchanged views on research performance strategies.
The IAS team and fellows from various faculties attended the luncheon meeting, including Prof. Wong Seng Fat, Alfred (FST), Prof. Liu Jianhong (FLL), Prof. Zhang Yue (FAH), Prof. Hans-Georg Moeller (FAH), Prof. Ung Oi Lam, Carolina (ICMS), Prof. Wu Man Sze Anise (FSS), Prof. Xingzhong Yu (FLL/IAS).