PMC

Citation counts according to some features of article titles. A) Articles with results-describing titles were cited more often than those with methods-describing titles (p<0.001). B) Articles with titles containing a question mark were cited less often than those without such punctuation (p = 0.046). C) Articles with titles referring to a specific geographic region were cited significantly less often than those without reference to a specific region (p<0.001). D) Articles with titles containing two components separated by a colon or a hyphen had a lower number of citations compared to those with titles without this grammatical structure (p = 0.004).

View and citation counts according to the numbers of characters in the titles. A) The numbers of views were statistically different among the three groups analyzed (p<0.001). Post-hoc analyses showed that the group with the least number of characters (≤94.5) had significantly higher view counts compared with the other two groups (94.5 to 118 and >118) (p<0.01 for both). B) Citation counts were statistically significantly different among the three groups analyzed (p = 0.034). Post-hoc analyses showed that the group with the least number of characters (≤94.5) had significantly higher view counts compared with the group with the greatest number of characters (>118) (p<0.05). Different letters (a, b, and c) designate statistically significant group differences.