Relative prolixity in journals with different citation impact values: an evidence-based scientific writing assessment

Introduction

A scientific text should be straightforward, without prolixity (Matthews & Matthews, 2014), and informative, without obscurity (Annesley, 2010a; Hirst et al., 2015). However, the extent to which researchers follow these recommendations is unknown. Considering that the most cited journals provide more detailed instructions for authors (Gasparyan et al., 2017), we hypothesized that articles published in such journals would be less prolix and more informative than those published in journals with fewer citations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the degree of relative prolixity (i.e., length versus amount of information) among journals with different CiteScore™.

Methods

Results

The mean CiteScore values of the ‘Pharmaceutical Science’ journals divided into the four quartiles were 0.34, 1.37, 2.40 and 4.14, respectively. The median number of paragraphs in the Introduction of articles did not differ significantly between quartiles and ranged from 3.92 to 4.84 (p = 0.102; Figure 1a). Both the number of characters (including spaces) and citations (21, on average) in the Introduction were significantly higher in the journals with the highest CiteScore (p < 0.001; Figure 1b and c). The number of words in the Introduction gradually increased from the first to the fourth quartile (p < 0.001), whose average number was 442.69, 512.24, 591.00, and 721.60 words. No differences were detected between the first and second, and second and third quartiles (p > 0.05).

Figure 1.

Median number of (a) paragraphs, (b) characters (including spaces), and (c) citations in the Introduction section of journals with different CiteScore values.

The degree of relative prolixity in the Introduction of the articles presented a negative correlation with the CiteScore value of the journals (p = 0.017; Figure 2).

Figure 2. Correlation between the degree of relative prolixity (the ratio between the number of characters and the number of citations) in the Introduction section and the CiteScore values of journals indexed in the Pharmaceutical Science category (indexed in the Scopus database: https://www.scopus.com/sources).

Spearman’s p = 0.017.

Discussion

This study showed that the articles published in pharmaceutical science journals with higher values of CiteScore have an Introduction with a lower degree of relative prolixity and more characters, words, and citations. A low degree of relative prolixity matches the consensual recommendation that the Introduction should be as short as possible (Annesley, 2010b; Armağan, 2013; Katz, 2009; Liumbruno et al., 2013; Matthews & Matthews, 2014). One hypothesis to explain our results is that authors who publish in journals with higher citation impact would have better writing skills. In fact, people with less cognitive ability use more words to express information (Saling et al., 2012; Saling et al., 2016). Another hypothesis is that articles that cite more references would simply be more cited, which in fact occurs (consequently increasing CiteScore values) (Fox et al., 2016; Gargouri et al., 2010).

The higher number of references in articles from journals with higher CiteScore indicates that such articles refer to more experimental findings to support their statements. This agrees with the recommendation that a scientific text should cite the most relevant findings that directly relate to the particular scope of the study (Cals & Kotz, 2013; Seals & Tanaka, 2000; Thrower, 2008), i.e., the “closest information available in the scientific literature” (Katz, 2009). However, the citations may refer to sources that should be avoided, such as books, review articles, and papers whose degree of proximity to the original findings is low (Bavdekar, 2015; Katz, 2009). The average number of words in the Introduction found here (442.69–721.60) was higher than the recommendation of 250–300 words (Bahadoran et al., 2018; Kallestinova, 2011) and disagrees with the consensus that the Introduction should be short (Kallestinova, 2011; Liumbruno et al., 2013; Matthews & Matthews, 2014; Seals & Tanaka, 2000). Furthermore, the number of paragraphs in the Introduction found in the present study (3.92–4.84) was also higher than the recommended number of up to three paragraphs (Annesley, 2010b; Bahadoran et al., 2018; Katz, 2009; Liumbruno et al., 2013; Matthews & Matthews, 2014; Thrower, 2008; Vitse & Poland, 2017), which indicates that many authors are not aware of or ignore this recommendation.

In conclusion, articles in the pharmaceutical sciences journals with higher CiteScore values show lower degrees of relative prolixity (i.e., shorter texts to transmit a certain amount of information) and obscurity.

Data availability