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A systematic method for identifying references to academic research in grey literature
Matthew S Bickley1, Kayvan Kousha1, Michael Thelwall1
1Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group (SCRG), University of Wolverhampton, Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY UK.
Scientometrics
|June 29, 2022
Summary
A new semi-automatic method accurately matches academic research to grey literature citations. This approach helps assess the societal impact of research, with economics and environmental science frequently cited in UK government publications.
Area of Science:
- Bibliometrics
- Information Science
- Research Impact Assessment
Background:
- Grey literature, including government reports and guidelines, significantly influences policy and practice.
- Assessing the societal impact of academic research is crucial but challenging due to varied citation formats in grey literature.
- Existing methods struggle to accurately link academic outputs with their citations in non-traditional publications.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a semi-automatic method for matching academic journal articles with unstandardized references in grey literature.
- To evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of this method for large-scale societal impact assessment.
- To identify patterns in the citation of academic research within UK government grey literature.
Main Methods:
- A semi-automatic matching heuristic was developed using metadata (lead author last name, title, year) from 2.45 million UK Russell Group university outputs.
- 21 matching heuristics were tested against a 100-document sample of UK government grey literature.
- The optimal heuristic (lead author last name and title, order-independent, within 200 characters) was applied to 3347 government publications.
Main Results:
- The optimal heuristic demonstrated sufficient accuracy and scalability for matching research outputs to grey literature references.
- Approximately 23% of the analyzed UK government grey literature cited at least one UK Russell Group university output.
- An average of 3.79 references to UK university research were found per citing document, with economics and environmental science being most frequently cited between 2010-2018.
Conclusions:
- The developed semi-automatic method provides a feasible approach to quantifying the societal impact of academic research through grey literature.
- UK government grey literature frequently incorporates findings from UK university research, particularly in economics and environmental science.
- This methodology enhances the ability to trace research influence in policy-making and other societal domains.
Keywords:
Academic referencesBland–Altman analysisCitation analysisGrey literatureImpact assessmentUK governmentMore Related Videos
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