How video articles are cited, the case of JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments

Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes video articles. In order to find out about the impact of video articles and how they are used in other journal articles, a random sample of 500 articles that cited at least one JoVE article was drawn and citation content analysis was conducted to find out about reasons for citation, frequency of citation mentions, location of citation and any relation between in-text citation characteristics and times cited. The results showed that JoVE articles are mostly cited for methodological reasons (72.4%) and in method sections of articles (53.2%). The context of 44.1% of citation mentions included phrases such as ‘as previously described’. More than a third (38.8%) of citations to JoVE articles were self-citations. JoVE articles that were self-cited were more likely to have a larger number of citation mentions, be cited for different reasons and in different sections of citing articles. They were also more likely to have more authors. The majority of the articles (75.6%) were mentioned only once in the citing articles. The median impact factor (MIF) of the journals of citing articles was higher than MIF of any Web of Science subject category, indicating that the citing articles were mostly from journals with relatively high impact factors. Overall, JoVE articles play an important role in transparency and transfer of methodologies and processes in research.