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http://dx.doi.org/10.16981/kliss.46.201503.345

Remnants of Culture in Journal Article Titles: A Comparison between the United States and Korea in the Field of Social Sciences  

Kim, Eungi (계명대학교 문헌정보과)
Publication Information
Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society / v.46, no.1, 2015 , pp. 345-372 More about this Journal
Abstract
Most academic journals in the world today typically require submission of journal article titles in English. However, most authors and reviewers are insensitive to the fact that cultural differences at a national level exist in writing titles. In this paper, journal article titles that have been published in the United States and Korea were compared in order to find cross-national cultural characteristics in these titles. To conduct this study, sample titles in the field of social sciences were obtained from two bibliographic databases-Scopus and RISS. A frequency count on number of variables was used: length of title, types of titles and n-gram phrases. In addition, a variety of similarities and differences found from this study including the type of words and phrases that Korean authors tend to favor in journal articles. The results showed that there is a considerable amount of cultural related variability in the construction of journal article titles. This study suggests that cross national characteristics of journal article titles should be emphasized in the future.
Keywords
Journal articles; Title; Sub-title; Culture; Research paper; Social sciences;
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