IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v127y2022i6d10.1007_s11192-022-04398-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The high scholarly value of grey literature before and during Covid-19

Author

Listed:
  • Kayvan Kousha

    (University of Wolverhampton)

  • Mike Thelwall

    (University of Wolverhampton)

  • Matthew Bickley

    (University of Wolverhampton)

Abstract

New academic knowledge in journal articles is partly built on peer reviewed research already published in journals or books. Academics can also draw from non-academic sources, such as the websites of organisations that publish credible information. This article investigates trends in the academic citing of this type of grey literature for 17 health, media, statistics, and large international organisations, with a focus on Covid-19. The results show substantial and steadily increasing numbers of citations to all 17 sites, with larger increases from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, Covid-19 citations to these websites were particularly common for news organisations, the WHO, and the UK Office for National Statistics, apparently for up-to-date information in the rapidly changing circumstances of the pandemic. Except for the UN, the most cited URLs of each organisation were not traditional report-like grey literature but were other types, such as news stories, data, statistics, and general guidance. The Covid-19 citations to most of these websites originated primarily from medical research, commonly for coronavirus data and statistics. Other fields extensively cited some of the non-health websites, as illustrated by social science (including psychology) studies often citing UNESCO. The results confirm that grey literature from major websites has become even more important within academia during the pandemic, providing up-to-date information from credible sources despite a lack of academic peer review. Researchers, reviewers, and editors should accept that it is reasonable to cite this information, when relevant, and evaluators should value academic work that supports these non-academic outputs.

Suggested Citation

  • Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall & Matthew Bickley, 2022. "The high scholarly value of grey literature before and during Covid-19," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3489-3504, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04398-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04398-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04398-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-022-04398-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wolfgang Glänzel & Ping Zhou, 2011. "Publication activity, citation impact and bi-directional links between publications and patents in biotechnology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(2), pages 505-525, February.
    2. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall & Mahshid Abdoli, 2012. "The role of online videos in research communication: A content analysis of YouTube videos cited in academic publications," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(9), pages 1710-1727, September.
    3. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall & Mahshid Abdoli, 2012. "The role of online videos in research communication: A content analysis of YouTube videos cited in academic publications," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(9), pages 1710-1727, September.
    4. Thelwall, Mike, 2019. "Should citations be counted separately from each originating section?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 658-678.
    5. Nicola Di Girolamo & Reint Meursinge Reynders, 2020. "Characteristics of scientific articles on COVID-19 published during the initial 3 months of the pandemic," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 795-812, October.
    6. Matthew S. Bickley & Kayvan Kousha & Michael Thelwall, 2020. "Can the impact of grey literature be assessed? An investigation of UK government publications cited by articles and books," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1425-1444, November.
    7. Henry Small, 2004. "On the shoulders of Robert Merton: Towards a normative theory of citation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(1), pages 71-79, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Török, Ádám & Konka, Boglárka & Nagy, Andrea Magda, 2023. "A koronavírus-járvány a közgazdasági szakirodalomban. Egy új határterület tudománymetriai elemzése [The coronavirus pandemic in the economics literature. The scientometric analysis of a new discipl," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 284-304.
    2. Haunschild, Robin & Bornmann, Lutz, 2023. "Which papers cited which tweets? An exploratory analysis based on Scopus data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    3. Abdul Rahman Shaikh & Hamed Alhoori & Maoyuan Sun, 2023. "YouTube and science: models for research impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(2), pages 933-955, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haunschild, Robin & Bornmann, Lutz, 2023. "Which papers cited which tweets? An exploratory analysis based on Scopus data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    2. Isidro F. Aguillo, 2020. "Altmetrics of the Open Access Institutional Repositories: a webometrics approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1181-1192, June.
    3. Hiep-Hung Pham & Kelly Farrell & Huyen-Minh Vu & Quan-Hoang Vuong & Nancy K. Napier, 2017. "Using YouTube video to promote university: a content analysis," Working Papers CEB 17-004, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Qianjin Zong & Yafen Xie & Rongchan Tuo & Jingshi Huang & Yang Yang, 2019. "The impact of video abstract on citation counts: evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1715-1727, June.
    5. Dongqing Lyu & Xuanmin Ruan & Juan Xie & Ying Cheng, 2021. "The classification of citing motivations: a meta-synthesis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3243-3264, April.
    6. Shenmeng Xu & Houqiang Yu & Bradley M. Hemminger & Xie Dong, 2018. "Who, what, why? An exploration of JoVE scientific video publications in tweets," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 845-856, November.
    7. Hamid R. Jamali & Majid Nabavi & Saeid Asadi, 2018. "How video articles are cited, the case of JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1821-1839, December.
    8. Angel Meseguer-Martinez & Alejandro Ros-Galvez & Alfonso Rosa-Garcia & Jose Antonio Catalan-Alarcon, 2019. "Online video impact of world class universities," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 29(3), pages 519-532, September.
    9. , Aisdl, 2020. "Using YouTube Videos to Promote Universities : A Content Analysis," OSF Preprints weh9t, Center for Open Science.
    10. Yu, Houqiang & Xu, Shenmeng & Xiao, Tingting & Hemminger, Brad M. & Yang, Siluo, 2017. "Global science discussed in local altmetrics: Weibo and its comparison with Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 466-482.
    11. Hou, Jianhua & Wang, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Yang & Wang, Dongyi, 2022. "How do scholars and non-scholars participate in dataset dissemination on Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    12. Ponomariov, Branco & Toivanen, Hannes, 2014. "Knowledge flows and bases in emerging economy innovation systems: Brazilian research 2005–2009," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 588-596.
    13. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Maurizio Galetto & Domenico Maisano & Luca Mastrogiacomo, 2012. "The success-index: an alternative approach to the h-index for evaluating an individual’s research output," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(3), pages 621-641, September.
    14. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Telescopic and panoramic views of library and information science research 2011–2018: a comparison of four weighting schemes for author co-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 255-270, July.
    15. Wang, Jean J. & Ye, Fred Y., 2021. "Probing into the interactions between papers and patents of new CRISPR/CAS9 technology: A citation comparison," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    16. Horbach, Serge & Aagaard, Kaare & Schneider, Jesper W., 2021. "Meta-Research: How problematic citing practices distort science," MetaArXiv aqyhg, Center for Open Science.
    17. Constantin Bürgi & Klaus Wohlrabe, 2022. "The influence of Covid-19 on publications in economics: bibliometric evidence from five working paper series," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5175-5189, September.
    18. Huang, Mu-Hsuan & Huang, Wei-Tzu & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2014. "Technological impact factor: An indicator to measure the impact of academic publications on practical innovation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 241-251.
    19. Chieh Liu & Mu-Hsuan Huang, 2022. "Exploring the relationships between altmetric counts and citations of papers in different academic fields based on co-occurrence analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4939-4958, August.
    20. Mariia Shkolnykova, 2021. "Who shapes plant biotechnology in Germany? Joint analysis of the evolution of co-authors’ and co-inventors’ networks," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 27-54, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04398-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.