Use of five song titles (1964–1991) in the titles of Scopus-indexed papers

Abstract

Inspired by a previous study to determine whether the titles of academic papers indexed by Scopus had movie titles in them (DOI: 10.1007/s11192-024-05004-4), we were curious to learn whether song titles might similarly exist in the titles of academic papers. We examined five song titles, “Fight the Power,”“A Change is Gonna Come,”“Like a Rolling Stone,”“Smells like Teen Spirit,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”– songs from 1989, 1964, 1965, 1991, and 1967 by Public Enemy, Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, and The Beatles, respectively. On 11 February 2025, a search in Scopus revealed 22, 10, 24, 11, and 15 articles/documents with these song titles in their titles. After exclusions, 18, 7, 23, 11, and 14 articles/documents, respectively, were analyzed (n = 73). Based on our subjective three-tier classification, we found that 11/18 (61%), 7/7 (100%), 21/23 (91%), 9/11 (82%), and 11/14 (79%), respectively, of these five song titles may have been used to amplify signaling to readers, that is, to attract readers’ attention to their paper, although this conclusion is accompanied by large caveats. The highest number of papers appeared in Social Sciences (25), followed unexpectedly by Medicine (14). Authors from the United States (18) and the United Kingdom (11) most frequently used song titles, indicating a cultural influence. Although only five song titles were tested, this pilot study opens up an entire field of new and exciting musicological bibliometric research.