How do authors select keywords? A preliminary study of author keyword selection behavior

Wei Lu, Zhifeng Liu, Yong Huang, Yi Bu, Xin Li, Qikai Cheng

Abstract: Highlights•This paper studies author keyword selection behavior, and proposes three influencing channels (content channel, prior knowledge channel, and background channel).•The average percentages of author keywords appearing in content channel, prior knowledge channel, and background channel are 56.7%, 41.6% and 56.1%, respectively.•Author keywords of papers written by core authors appear less frequently in content channel but more frequently in prior knowledge and background channels.•Percentage of author keywords appearing in high-frequency keywords is positively related with citation counts of papers.