  Context: Citations are a key measure of scientific performance in most
fields, including software engineering. However, there is limited research that
studies which characteristics of articles' metadata (title, abstract, keywords,
and author list) are driving citations in this field. Objective: In this study,
we propose a simple theoretical model for how citations come to be with respect
to article metadata, we hypothesize theoretical linkages between metadata
characteristics and citations of articles, and we empirically test these
hypotheses. Method: We use multiple regression analyses to examine a data set
comprising the titles, abstracts, keywords, and authors of 16,131 software
engineering articles published between 1990 and 2020 in 20 highly influential
software engineering venues. Results: We find that number of authors, number of
keywords, number of question marks and dividers in the title, number of
acronyms, abstract length, abstract propositional idea density, and
corresponding authors in the core Anglosphere are significantly related to
citations. Conclusion: Various characteristics of articles' metadata are linked
to the frequency with which the corresponding articles are cited. These results
partially confirm and partially go counter to prior findings in software
engineering and other disciplines.
