People have different formulas, but the thing to remember about credit rolls is that you don't want to create a stroboscopic effect with the text. It's all about how far the letters move per frame.
In practical terms, you want to move text no more than the width of the character line ("stroke width" in typography) per frame. Otherwise, the human eye will see a gap between the location of the text character strokes on each frame. and this will appear as a stroboscopic effect. This is why I'm credit rolls it's better to use sans-serif fonts that have large stroke width - at least the strokes that are perpendicular to the on-screen motion of the credits.
For example, for a vertical text roll you want to use a font that has healthy horizontal lines - because you'll be limited in far you can move the credits per frame by the width of the horizontal strokes in the credits text. For horizontal scrolling text you need fat verticals in your font. And so on.
Personally I think horizontal scrolls are nicer and more legible than vertical credit rolls. But a truly confident filmmaker might consider using well-designed static text for credits and forgoing this credit roll jazz.
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