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News stories as evidence for research? BBC citations from articles, Books, and Wikipedia

Authors:

Mike ThelwallAuthors Info & Claims

Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Volume 68, Issue 8

Pages 2017 - 2028

https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23862

Published: 01 August 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Although news stories target the general public and are sometimes inaccurate, they can serve as sources of real-world information for researchers. This article investigates the extent to which academics exploit journalism using content and citation analyses of online BBC News stories cited by Scopus articles. A total of 27,234 Scopus-indexed publications have cited at least one BBC News story, with a steady annual increase. Citations from the arts and humanities 2.8% of publications in 2015 and social sciences 1.5% were more likely than citations from medicine 0.1% and science <0.1%. Surprisingly, half of the sampled Scopus-cited science and technology 53% and medicine and health 47% stories were based on academic research, rather than otherwise unpublished information, suggesting that researchers have chosen a lower-quality secondary source for their citations. Nevertheless, the BBC News stories that were most frequently cited by Scopus, Google Books, and Wikipedia introduced new information from many different topics, including politics, business, economics, statistics, and reports about events. Thus, news stories are mediating real-world knowledge into the academic domain, a potential cause for concern.

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Cited By

Tomaszewski R(2023)Visibility, impact, and applications of bibliometric software tools through citation analysisScientometrics10.1007/s11192-023-04725-2128:7(4007-4028)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11192-023-04725-2
Kong YWang YPeng GZhang B(2021)Spatial-Temporal Distribution and Cross Impact of “Big Health” Policies, News and PatentsHCI International 2021 - Late Breaking Papers: HCI Applications in Health, Transport, and Industry10.1007/978-3-030-90966-6_4(41-53)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-90966-6_4
Jokić MMervar AMateljan S(2019)Comparative analysis of book citations in social science journals by Central and Eastern European authorsScientometrics10.1007/s11192-019-03176-y120:3(1005-1029)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11192-019-03176-y

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cover image Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology

Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology Volume 68, Issue 8

August 2017

230 pages

ISSN:2330-1635

EISSN:2330-1643

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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 2017

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Cited By

Tomaszewski R(2023)Visibility, impact, and applications of bibliometric software tools through citation analysisScientometrics10.1007/s11192-023-04725-2128:7(4007-4028)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11192-023-04725-2
Kong YWang YPeng GZhang B(2021)Spatial-Temporal Distribution and Cross Impact of “Big Health” Policies, News and PatentsHCI International 2021 - Late Breaking Papers: HCI Applications in Health, Transport, and Industry10.1007/978-3-030-90966-6_4(41-53)Online publication date: 24-Jul-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-90966-6_4
Jokić MMervar AMateljan S(2019)Comparative analysis of book citations in social science journals by Central and Eastern European authorsScientometrics10.1007/s11192-019-03176-y120:3(1005-1029)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11192-019-03176-y

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