Volume 14, No 2, 2017
Tell Me Why Bob Dylan and the Beatles Song Titles Are Used in Biomedical Literature
Ger T. Rijkers, Anya Luscombe and Carla Sloof
Abstract
How often and why do scientists refer to music titles in their papers? There has been a growing trend of using popular music titles in scientific literature since the 1990s. We have investigated the extent to which songs by Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan, and by The Beatles are used in titles of biomedical scientific publications. The Beatles appear more popular than Dylan (in 589 and 211 publications, respectively): they are used more often in the titles and work with Beatles inspired titles also appear to be cited more often than work using Dylan titles. The Beatles’ hit used most often is The long and winding road; for Dylan it is The times they are a-changing. There are also geographical and gender-related preferences. This interdisciplinary study used 79 http://www.webology.org/2017/v14n2/a159.pdf specialist search engines and web-based tools to conduct bibliometric analysis and to visualize the results. While on the face of it, the study is slightly tongue-in-cheek, it does have a serious aim, namely to explore the reasons for the interplay between popular culture and the more traditional realm of biomedical science.
Pages:
DOI: 78-89
Keywords: B ibliometric analysis ; P opular culture ; Web of Science ; Medline ; C itations