Search results

Scientific impact is traditionally assessed with citation-based metrics. Recently, altmetric indices have been introduced to measure scientific impact both within academia and among the general public. However, little research has investigated the association between the linguistic features of research article titles and received online attention. To address this issue, the authors examined in the present study the relationship between a series of title features and altmetric attention scores.

The data included 8,658 titles of Science articles. The authors extracted six features from the title corpus (i.e. mean word length, lexical sophistication, lexical density, title length, syntactic dependency length and sentiment score). The authors performed Spearman’s rank analyses to analyze the correlations between these features and online impact. The authors then conducted a stepwise backward multiple regression to identify predictors for the articles' online impact.

The correlation analyses revealed weak but significant correlations between all six title features and the altmetric attention scores. The regression analysis showed that four linguistic features of titles (mean word length, lexical sophistication, title length and sentiment score) have modest predictive effects on the online impact of research articles.

In the internet era with the widespread use of social media and online platforms, it is becoming increasingly important for researchers to adapt to the changing context of research evaluation. This study identifies several linguistic features that deserve scholars’ attention in the writing of article titles. It also has practical implications for academic administrators and pedagogical implications for instructors of academic writing courses.

In times of crisis, such as the Covid-19 global pandemic, journalists who write about biomedical information must have the strategic aim to be clearly and easily understood by everyone. In this study, we assume that journalistic discourse could benefit from language redundancy to improve clarity and simplicity aimed at science popularization. The concept of language redundancy is theoretically discussed with the support of discourse analysis and information theory. The methodology adopted is a corpus-based qualitative approach. Two corpora samples with Brazilian Portuguese (BP) texts on Covid-19 were collected. One with texts from a monthly science digital magazine called Pesquisa FAPESP aimed at students and researchers for scientific information dissemination and the other with popular language texts from a news Portal G1 (Rede Globo) aimed at unspecified and/or non-specialized readers. The materials were filtered with two descriptors: “vaccine” and “test.” Preliminary analysis of examples from these materials revealed two categories of redundancy: paraphrastic and polysemic. Paraphrastic redundancy is based on concomitant language reformulation of words, sentences, text excerpts, or even larger units. Polysemic redundancy does not easily show material evidence, but is based on cognitively predictable semantic association in socio-cultural domains. Both kinds of redundancy contribute, each in their own way, to improving text readability for science popularization in Brazil.

This study aimed to examine the mental health information entities and associations between the biomedical, psychological and social domains of bipolar disorder (BD) by analyzing social media data and scientific literature.

Reddit posts and full-text papers from PubMed Central (PMC) were collected. The text analysis was used to create a psychological dictionary. The text mining tools were applied to extract BD entities and their relationships in the datasets using a dictionary- and rule-based approach. Lastly, social network analysis and visualization were employed to view the associations.

Mental health information on the drug side effects entity was detected frequently in both datasets. In the affective category, the most frequent entities were “depressed” and “severe” in the social media and PMC data, respectively. The social and personal concerns entities that related to friends, family, self-attitude and economy were found repeatedly in the Reddit data. The relationships between the biomedical and psychological processes, “afraid” and “Lithium” and “schizophrenia” and “suicidal,” were identified often in the social media and PMC data, respectively.

Mental health information has been increasingly sought-after, and BD is a mental illness with complicated factors in the clinical picture. This paper has made an original contribution to comprehending the biological, psychological and social factors of BD. Importantly, these results have highlighted the benefit of mental health informatics that can be analyzed in the laboratory and social media domains.

Companies are often accused of using sustainability disclosures as public relations tools to manage financial and non-financial stakeholders' impressions. The purpose of our study was firstly to determine how comprehensive the human rights disclosures of a sample of large international companies were and secondly, whether different narrative styles are associated with levels of disclosure to manage readers' impressions about the company. We analysed the public human rights disclosures for 154 large, international companies obtained from the UN Guiding Principles Reporting website. On average, companies complied with only one-third of the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework criteria. Communication about policies has the highest compliance, whilst communication about determining which human rights aspects are salient to the company, remedies for transgressions and stakeholder engagement have the lowest disclosure. When we split the sample between high disclosure and low disclosure companies, we found that the readability of the human rights disclosures is exceptionally low and even more so for low disclosure companies. Low disclosure companies used words implying Satisfaction significantly more than high disclosure companies, which provides some support for suspecting that low disclosure companies practise impression management by only presenting a ‘rosy picture’, as well as obfuscation via low readability. We add to the literature on impression management by large corporations in their sustainability reporting, and specifically human rights disclosures, by revealing how the interplay of low disclosure, low readability and overuse of words signalling Satisfaction contributes to impression management, rather than sincere attempts at accountability to all stakeholders.

This paper aims to investigate the moderating effect of sustainability reporting on the relationship between the independent variables of board diversity, and earnings management and the dependent variable of readability of financial statements.

The study panel data regression analysis involved 36 Kenyan-listed companies from 2016 to 2020.

Key findings were that increased board diversity was found to significantly improve the readability of financial statements. Discretionary earnings management was found to significantly reduce the readability of financial statements. Sustainability reporting was found to significantly increase the readability of financial statements, and it moderated the relationship between board diversity, earnings management and financial statements readability in Kenya.

The study sample of 36 non-financial listed in the Nairobi Securities Exchange was very small and was affected by the problem of thin trading; hence, caution should be adopted when interpreting the findings.

The Capital Markets Authorities (CMA) as a policymaker should enforce sustainability reporting by Kenyan listed firms as there is evidence that the reporting enhances the readability of financial statements. The Institute of Certified Public Accountants as a policymaker should closely monitor the published financial statements of firms for earnings management and punish the perpetrators, as there is empirical evidence that the practice reduces the readability of financial statements.

Sustainability reporting is successful as a moderating variable between readability of financial statements and determinants of readability of financial statements.

This study contributes to knowledge by studying sustainability reporting as a moderating variable between the independent variables of board diversity and earnings management and the dependent variable of readability of financial statements and measured sustainability reporting using a dummy variable for the period before and after the enactment and release of CMA code of 2016 on corporate governance that required sustainability reporting by Kenyan listed companies.

This study aims to focus on automated text analyses (ATAs) of sustainability and integrated reporting as a recent approach in empirical–quantitative research.

Based on legitimacy theory, the author conducts a structured literature review and includes 38 quantitative peer-reviewed empirical (archival) studies on specific determinants and consequences of sustainability and integrated reporting. The paper makes a clear distinction between analyses of reports due to readability, tone, similarity and specific topics. In line with prior studies, it is assumed that more readable reports with less tone and similarity relate to increased reporting quality.

In line with legitimacy theory, there are empirical indications that specific corporate governance variables, other firm characteristics and regulatory issues have a main impact on the quality of sustainability and integrated reporting. Furthermore, increased reporting quality leads to positive market reactions in line with the business case argument.

The author deduces useful recommendations for future research to motivate researchers to include ATA of sustainability and integrated reports. Among others, future research should recognize sustainable and behavioral corporate governance determinants and analyze other stakeholders’ reactions.

As both stakeholders’ demands on sustainability and integrated reporting have increased since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, firms should increase the quality of reporting processes.

This analysis makes major contributions to prior research by including both sustainability and integrated reporting, based on ATA. ATAs play a prominent role in recent empirical research to evaluate possible drivers and consequences of sustainability and integrated reports. ATA may contribute to increased validity of empirical–quantitative research in comparison to classical manual content analyses, especially due to future CSR washing analyses.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the readability of sustainability reports and assurance provider effort, captured by assurance delay and the moderating effect of the assurance provider.

This sample consists of companies operating in sustainability sensitive industries from 39 countries for the period that covers the years 2016–2018.

The results show that poor sustainability reporting readability is associated with longer assurance delays. Indeed, assurance providers spend more effort assuring clients when sustainability reports are less readable, as shown by long assurance delay. In addition, increases in assurance delay associated with poor sustainability reporting readability are driven by accounting assurance providers. These results hold after controlling for endogeneity using Heckman's (1979) analysis and other measures of assurance delay readability used in prior literature. By checking the specialization of assurance provider partners and setting aside dominant countries, the authors provide insight into the impact of assurance provider specialization on the association between sustainability report readability and assurance provider effort measured by assurance delay and thus, lending further confidence to the strength of the study’s main findings.

This research provides preliminary evidence on the relationship between sustainability reporting readability and assurance delay as well as the influence of accounting assurance providers.

Sustainability assurance practice is viewed as a tool to add or enhance credibility. This study could be considered as another step into driving the standardization of sustainability reporting practice internationally.

This is the first investigation conducted in the sustainability literature on the assurance provider's response to the readability of sustainability reports.

In 2015, Bursa Malaysia Berhad (BMB) issued the first edition of the Sustainability Reporting Guide (SRG 1.0) to aid Malaysian public listed companies (PLCs) in preparing corporate social responsibility reporting (CSRR). After receiving users' commentaries, BMB issued the second edition of SRG (SRG 2.0) in 2018. Given the major amendments in CSRR regulatory guidelines, there is a need to analyze the readability of CSRR in light of the new guide and to investigate the combined effects of SRG 2.0 and the assurance of CSR information on the readability of CSRR.

This study employs two readability indices to compare the readability of CSRR ex-ante and ex-post the implementation of SRG 2.0 across a sample of Malaysian PLCs that maintained their market capitalization among the top 100 companies.

The practical findings of the multivariate regression revealed that the readability of CSRR is reduced after the introduction of SRG 2.0. Meanwhile, the readability of CSRR is positively influenced by combining the effect of SRG 2.0 and CSRR assurance.

This study provides empirical evidence that the amendment to CSRR has made CSR reports more challenging to read and thus reduces their communicative value. Therefore, in their quest to mandate more CSRR information from companies, regulators might need to consider advocating that such data is reported in a readable manner. This study also shows the influential role of CSR information assurance in enhancing the readability of CSRR.

This study helps assess the readability of CSRR among Malaysian companies after the adoption of SRG 2.0. It also contributes to the literature on CSRR, as the readability of such reporting within the context of Malaysia has not been widely examined in previous studies.

Understanding the determinants of a corporate initial public offering (IPO) success is essential for reducing investors' valuation uncertainty when participating in share offerings. In this sense, this study contributes to the existing debate by examining IPO prospectus readability. The authors specifically investigate how clear and more informative insights into pure corporate key financial numbers can lead to a higher valuation for the company after the listing process.

Through a sample of European IPOs, the authors employ a cross-sectional regression to test the relationship between prospectus readability through the Flesch reading ease (FRE) score and companies' market-to-book ratio at the period end date after the listing process.

The study findings show a positive impact of higher readability on the post-IPO market-to-book ratio. Thus, clear and more informative communication results in stocks being traded at a premium to their book value. This study presents a concrete call for firms to increase corporate documents’ readability to mitigate the risk of withdrawing or spoiling corporate market access. Specifically, enhanced clarity and transparency increase investors' confidence, facilitating a better understanding of companies' intrinsic value and the overall IPO process. The authors conducted several tests to validate the results.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first works to explore the relationship between the readability of corporate prospectus and the sustained IPO success in the European context.

The worldwide imposition of lockdown measures to control the 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has shifted most executive communications with external stakeholders online, resulting in quick responses from stakeholders. This study aims to understand how presentational styles exhibited in online communication induce immediate audience responses and empirically test the effectiveness of reactive impression management tactics.

The authors analyze presentational styles using MP3 files containing executive utterances during earnings call conferences held by S&P 100-listed firms after June 2020, the quarter after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Using timestamps, the authors link each utterance to a 1-minute interval change in the ask/bid prices of the stocks that occurs a minute after the corresponding utterance begins.

Exhibiting an informational presentation style in earnings calls leads to positive and immediate audience responses. Managers tend to increase their reliance on promotional presentation styles rather than on informational ones when quarterly earnings exceed market forecasts.

Drawing on organizational genre theory, this research identifies the discrepancy between the presentation styles that audiences positively respond to and those that managers tend to exhibit in earnings calls and provides a reactive impression management typology for immediate responses from online audiences.