Should you avoid hyphens in paper titles?

New research published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering finds that the simple presence of hyphens in a paper title reduces its citation rate, regardless of the quality of the research. The researchers applied statistical methods to investigate citation rates for journals listed in Scopus and Web of Science and verified that the effect was one of causation and not just a simple correlation.

This hyphen handicap seems to be independent of the specific field of study, applying equally well to chemistry, physics, math, medicine, etc.
This research follows up on previous work that indicated that papers with shorter titles are cited more often than papers with longer titles. However, the new research indicates that the hyphen handicap outweighs the effect of length of the title.

For the original article, see Zhi Quan Zhou et al., Metamorphic Robustness Testing: Exposing Hidden Defects in Citation Statistics and Journal Impact Factors, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (2019). DOI: 10.1109/TSE.2019.2915065.