A Bibliometric Study on the Use of Grey Literature in the Savannah Journal of Agriculture

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

A Bibliometric Study on the Use of Grey Literature in the Savannah Journal of Agriculture A Bibliometric Study on the Use of Grey Literature in the Savannah Journal of Agriculture M. K. Usman1, A. Y. Dansale2 & M. S. Kabir3 Bayero University, Kano. mkusman.lib@buk.edu.ng1 Abstract Purpose: The study used the Bradford’s Law of scattered dispersion to measure how grey literatures are used by scholars in the field of agriculture. Methodology: Citation analysis was used to study a cross-section of articles published in The Savannah Journal of Agriculture (SJA) from 2006 to 2015, of which 131 articles and 2,422 bibliography citations were analyzed. Findings: Findings of the study show an 8.6% improvement on the 20% Bradford’s assumption underlying the study, yet, a dismal use of grey literature exist in the Savannah Journal of Agriculture, only 694(28.6%) of the 2,422 citations were grey literature, compared to published literatures such as books and journals. 6 types of grey literatures were used in the journal of which conference proceeding was the most used while handbook/manual was the least used. The online accessibility of grey literature was awful, only 42(6.1%) of the 694 grey literatures identified had online links that were used to access them. Implications: Findings of the study shows that there is a wide gap between the use of published and unpublished resources and this buttress the need to embark on the marketing of unpublished resources commonly known as grey literature. Originality/value: It was recommended that there is the need to embark on marketing the benefits to be derived from grey literatures, so that their use would catch up with other published literatures. There is also the need for scholars to improve their citation technique such that grey literatures obtained online are duly acknowledged with their URL. Keywords: Agriculture, Bibliometrics, Bradford’s Law, Grey Literature, Savannah Journal of Agriculture, Citation Analysis Paper type: Bibliometrics/Citation Analysis organization in electronic and print formats not Introduction controlled by commercial publishing i.e. where Bibliometrics entails document verification and publishing is not the primary activity of the publication analysis, it is synonymous with producing body, (www.greynet.org). Aina scientometrics. It is an old preoccupation of (2000) corroborates that the debate over what librarians that has taken a center stage in exactly constitutes grey or fugitive literature promoting information work. Essentially, its resulted in a consensus definition at the third virtue begins with determining the use of library International Conference on Grey Literature held resources, to a scale of ascertaining growth rate in Luxembourg in 1997. The consensus of publications to portray the growth and definition stated that “Grey literature is that development of areas of knowledge overtime. which is produced by government, academies, Bibliometrics as an approach of measuring businesses and industries, both in print and scientific publications looks at how scholars cite electronic formats, but which is not controlled one another in their publications, with a view to by any commercial publishing interests and facilitate building a network of scholarly where publishing is not the primary activity of communication. the [authoring individual] or organization”. Grey literature is a field in library and Pelzer and Wiese (2003) corroborated that what Information science that deals with the is known as grey literature are intended for low production, distribution, and access to multiple distribution to a limited readership, never document types produced on all levels of reaching dispersion through normal book trade government, academics, business, and channels. 33 | Page Journal of Applied Information Science and Technology, 10 (2) (2017) A Bibliometric Study on the Use of Grey Literature in the Savannah Journal of Agriculture Though an information system called ‘Greynet’ exist for over two decades ago to facilitate dialogue, research, and communication between information resource. This study is carried out persons and organisations in the field of grey with the aim of; literature, its mandate as an information system lacks touch with articles from Nigeria. Measuring the use of grey literature in the Essentially, it needs to be upgraded based on the savannah journal of agriculture observed inadequate coverage of Nigeria in the Identifying the types of grey literatures Greynet information system. used in articles published in the journal The fact that grey literature publications begin Estimating online versus offline access to and end with their authors still undermines its grey literatures access for scholarship and researchers. In a Literature Review study, Lisée, Larivière and Archambault (2008) informed that, “despite that it has been shown by Earliest bibliometric studies and even a great several researchers that other types of literature majority of the subsequent ones serve as library are often published and cited by researchers, the records that shed light on issues such as; trends most frequently used source material in in publication, the relative importance of bibliometric studies which consist of published different special fields, title dispersion, subject scientific papers”. Similarly, Kousha, scattering, time span and period of usefulness, (2008)noted that researchers’ interest in language distribution of pertinent literature and bibliometrics has predominantly concentrated on the national origin of published materials. In the citation relationships within formal recent times, bibliometric studies have grown publications such as books and journals, beyond the level of publication analysis; many neglecting informal publications such as communities utilize them as a strategy for conference proceedings, thesis and dissertation, gathering information that could be useful in government publications and etcetera that are understanding a phenomenon or even the growth classified as grey literatures. Some of the of their local science (Nwagwu, 2006). established cases whereby grey literatures were Bibliometrics is best addressed based on the neglected include, Harande (2013); Grandbo is application of fundamental theoretical and Behesti (2014); Bhanudasrao and Khaparde frameworks that influence and leverage the (2016); Tupe & Khaparde (2016). The fourth understanding of library users’ information issue in the sixth volume of the International interest and needs. Accordingly, fundamental Journal of Library and Information Studies bibliometric laws such as Bradford’s law, Hirsh (2016) proves it all regarding the neglect of grey index law, Leimkuhler Law, Lotka Law as well literatures in the work of bibliometrics. as the Zipf Law, (Iskra, 2013), are some of the Essentially, the journal had a total of 21 articles possible hypothetical basis of denoting the out of which 9 articles had to do with growth in the production and use of grey bibliometrics, scienctometrics or even literatures. webometrics, but only 1 had done a bibliometrics on a grey literature coming as This study adopted the Bradford’s law to portray Ph.D dissertation, (Reddy & Babu, 2016). that if the bibliographies of citation in a given article are grouped (preferentially) based on Thus, apart from the fact that greynet.com is still forms of information resources, they may be deficient in covering developing countries like divided into a nucleus of bibliographies that Nigeria, the need to have a general balance in represent different types of information presenting the information available about the resources, thereby forming a basis of gauging use and growth of both published and the extent of using publications that emanated unpublished documents, makes this study more from commercial publishing outlets from those imperative. It is hoped that this study portray the that are not from commercial publishing outlets. growth in the production and use of grey literatures in support of teaching, learning and The Bradford’s law of scattered dispersion has research. The implication thereof is to; establish been the most popular theoretical law of a basis for an aggressive marketing of grey bibliometrics and has attracted a lot of interest in literature in libraries that collect them as an studies such as Iskra (2013); Harande (2013); Manley (2011) and Hiremath, et al (2016) whose studies have predominantly portrayed inquiries 34 | Page Journal of Applied Information Science and Technology, 10 (2) (2017) M. K. Usman1, A. Y. Dansale2 & M. S. Kabir3 carried out with a view of ascertaining those scientific research”, whose value ought to be characteristics inherent in a document, especially ascertained. Though, the study revealed that a those that aim at looking at how authors have slight growth was recorded from 8% to 10% created a chain of scholarly reference among references on cited conference proceedings in themselves in a particular field of knowledge. engineering documentsfrom1980 to 2005,an increase from 0.32 in the 1980s to 0.38 as at The Bradford’s law is also adopted to guide this 2005 was the average number of proceedings study with a view of discovering how grey citations per paper in 25 years. It was proven literature has taken a center stage in the literary that conference proceedings have a relatively output of scholars in the field of life science, limited impact which is approximately 2% of most specifically agriculture. Basically, the total citations; in essence, it represents only Bradford’s law is anchored on portraying the 1.7% of reference citations that were made
Recommended publications
  • Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln 2010 Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies Dominic J. Farace GreyNet International Joachim Schöpfel University of Lille Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons, Scholarly Communication Commons, and the Scholarly Publishing Commons Farace, Dominic J. and Schöpfel, Joachim, "Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies" (2010). Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.. 162. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/162 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies Edited by Dominic J. Farace and Joachim Schöpfel De Gruyter Saur An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org ISBN 978-3-11-021808-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-021809-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-021806-2 ISSN 0179-0986 e-ISSN 0179-3256 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License, as of February 23, 2017.
    [Show full text]
  • Guidelines for Including Grey Literature and Conducting Multivocal Literature Reviews in Software Engineering
    This is a pre-print of the paper that has been accepted for publication in the Information and Software Technology (IST) journal: www.journals.elsevier.com/information-and-software-technology Guidelines for including grey literature and conducting multivocal literature reviews in software engineering Vahid Garousi Michael Felderer Mika V. Mäntylä Information Technology Group University of Innsbruck, Austria & M3S, Faculty of Information Technology Wageningen University, Netherlands Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden and Electrical Engineering vahid.garousi@wur.nl michael.felderer@uibk.ac.at University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland mika.mantyla@oulu.fi Abstract: Context: A Multivocal Literature Review (MLR) is a form of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) which includes the grey literature (e.g., blog posts, videos and white papers) in addition to the published (formal) literature (e.g., journal and conference papers). MLRs are useful for both researchers and practitioners since they provide summaries both the state-of-the art and –practice in a given area. MLRs are popular in other fields and have recently started to appear in software engineering (SE). As more MLR studies are conducted and reported, it is important to have a set of guidelines to ensure high quality of MLR processes and their results. Objective: There are several guidelines to conduct SLR studies in SE. However, several phases of MLRs differ from those of traditional SLRs, for instance with respect to the search process and source quality assessment. Therefore, SLR guidelines are only partially useful for conducting MLR studies. Our goal in this paper is to present guidelines on how to conduct MLR studies in SE.
    [Show full text]
  • GL21 Proceedings Twentieth-First International Conference on Grey Literature “Open Science Encompasses New Forms of Grey Literature”
    Twenty-First International Conference on Grey Literature Open Science Encompasses New Forms of Grey Literature German National Library of Science and Technology Hannover, Germany ● October 22-23, 2019 Program and Conference Sponsors GL21 Program and Conference Bureau Javastraat 194-HS, 1095 CP Amsterdam, Netherlands www.textrelease.com ▪ conference@textrelease.com TextRelease Tel. +31-20-331.2420 CIP GL21 Proceedings Twentieth-First International Conference on Grey Literature “Open Science Encompasses New Forms of Grey Literature”. - German National Library of Science and Technology, Hannover, Germany, October 22-23, 2019 / compiled by D. Farace and J. Frantzen ; GreyNet International, Grey Literature Network Service. – Amsterdam : TextRelease, February 2020. – 173 p. – Author Index. – (GL Conference Series, ISSN 1386-2316 ; No. 21). TIB (DE), DANS-KNAW (NL), CVTISR (SK), EBSCO (USA), ISTI CNR (IT), KISTI (KR), NIS IAEA (UN), NTK (CZ), and the University of Florida (USA) are Corporate Authors and Associate Members of GreyNet International. These proceedings contain full text conference papers presented during the two days of plenary, panel, and poster sessions. The papers appear in the same order as in the conference program book. Included is an author index with the names of contributing authors and researchers along with their biographical notes. A list of 55 participating organizations as well as sponsored advertisements are likewise included. ISBN 978-90-77484-37-1 © TextRelease, 2020 2 Foreword O P E N S C I E N C E E NCOMPASSES N EW F O R M S O F G R E Y L ITERATURE For more than a quarter century, grey Literature communities have explored ways to open science to other methods of reviewing, publishing, and making valuable information resources publicly accessible.
    [Show full text]
  • Grey Literature Search Methodology
    Searching the grey literature to access research on illicit drug use, HIV and viral hepatitis A resource to identify drug-related databases and websites Louisa Degenhardt, Gabrielle Gibson, Janni Leung, Mary Kumvaj and Sarah Larney Technical Report Number 334 ISBN: 978-0-7334-3650-5 ©NATIONAL DRUG AND ALCOHOL RESEARCH CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, SYDNEY, 2016 This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. All other rights are reserved. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the information manager, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................. 3 1. Introduction................................................................................... 5 1.1 What is grey literature? ............................................................................................... 5 1.2 Why use grey literature? ............................................................................................. 5 2. Methodology ................................................................................. 7 2.1 Searching for grey literature ........................................................................................ 7 2.2 Non-English websites ..................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Identifying, Discovering and Marketing Grey Literature in Science in the English-Speaking Caribbean: a Case Study of Jamaica’S Scientific Information Units
    Submitted on: 26.09.2019 Title of the Satellite Meeting: Grey Literature: Scholarly Communication in a Digital World Date: August 23, 2019 Location: National Library of Greece, Greece Identifying, discovering and marketing grey literature in Science in the English-speaking Caribbean: A Case Study of Jamaica’s Scientific Information Units Karlene Robinson Head, Public Services, The University of the West Indies Mona Library, Kingston, Jamaica West Indies Email address: karlene.robinson@uwimona.edu.jm Maureen Kerr-Campbell Head, Digitization Unit, The University of the West Indies Mona Library, Kingston, Jamaica West Indies Email address: maureen.kerrcampbell@uwimona.edu.jm Sonia Patrickson-Stewart Cataloguer, The University of the West Indies Mona Library, Kingston, Jamaica West Indies Email address: sonia.stewart@uwimona.edu.jm Copyright © 2019 by Karlene Robinson, Maureen Kerr-Campbell and Sonia Patrickson-Stewart. This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Abstract: The English-speaking Caribbean produces its fair share of grey literature to the global scientific community. However, it has been a great challenge for information seeking communities to acquire and create access to these Caribbean resources. This research identified the factors contributing to the status of grey literature in Science in the English-speaking Caribbean, in particular Jamaica, and raises the profile by advocating for its proper organisation, greater accessibility, and marketing. It is a mixed method survey of twenty one (21) librarians working in information units that disseminate science information within the Scientific and Technical Information Network (STIN) in 1 Jamaica.
    [Show full text]
  • There Are Three Specific Categories of Grey Literature That We Search: Regulatory Information, Trial Registries, Abstracts and Conferences
    There are three specific categories of grey literature that we search: Regulatory Information, Trial Registries, Abstracts and Conferences. On the tracking worksheet (at the end of this document) please find listed all the sources the SRC routinely searches (bulleted titles) for its own reports, others listed serve as reminders that they are available if further research is needed or if somebody asks for suggestions of additional places to locate grey literature. Regulatory Materials: FDA ‐ this is the bulk of the work for grey literature searching. Both from a searching perspective as well as the amount of material to be reviewed by the EPCs, it is also the source that we're most likely to find otherwise unpublished clinical trials that are relevant to the systematic review. The Drugs@FDA is THE website. Unfortunately, the only way to search this site is to search specifically by a drug name. This is why it is important to get a specific drug list from the EPC's ‐ drug categories such as "beta blockers" is not useful. If the report is an update, use the advanced search options so you can limit the search by date. Unfortunately, this is the extent of the search capability of Drugs@FDA, specific drug name and date. Once you search by the specific drug name, you will get a long list of related drugs. As you click on each name, there may be one or more levels of lists. Keep clicking through all list levels looking for a page which has a link that says "Approval History, Letters, Reviews, and Related Documents".
    [Show full text]
  • Benefitting from the Grey Literature in Software Engineering Research
    This is the pre-print of a book chapter to be published in the upcoming book on “Contemporary Empirical Methods in Software Engineering” by Springer Benefitting from the Grey Literature in Software Engineering Research Vahid Garousi Queen’s University Belfast Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK v.garousi@qub.ac.uk Michael Felderer University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria & Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden michael.felderer@uibk.ac.at Mika V. Mäntylä University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland mika.mantyla@oulu.fi Austen Rainer Queen’s University Belfast Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK a.rainer@qub.ac.uk Abstract: Researchers generally place the most trust in peer-reviewed, published information, such as journals and conference papers. By contrast, software engineering (SE) practitioners typically do not have the time, access or expertise to review and benefit from such publications. As a result, practitioners are more likely to turn to other sources of information that they trust, e.g., trade magazines, online blog-posts, survey results or technical reports, collectively referred to as Grey Literature (GL). Furthermore, practitioners also share their ideas and experiences as GL, which can serve as a valuable data source for research. While GL itself is not a new topic in SE, using, benefitting and synthesizing knowledge from the GL in SE is a contemporary topic in empirical SE research and we are seeing that researchers are increasingly benefitting from the knowledge available within GL. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview to GL in SE, together with insights on how SE researchers can effectively use and benefit from the knowledge and evidence available in the vast amount of GL.
    [Show full text]
  • GREY LITERATURE in LIBRARY and INFORMATION STUDIES Edited by Dominic J
    GREY LITERATURE IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION STUDIES Edited by Dominic J. Farace and Joachim Schöpfel x The further rise of electronic publishing has come to change the scale and diversity of grey literature facing librarians and other information practition- ers. This compiled work brings together research and authorship over the past decade dealing with both the supply and demand sides of grey literature. While this book is written with students and instructors of Colleges and Schools of Library and Information Science in mind, it likewise serves as a reader for information professionals working in any and all like knowledge- based communities. Dominic Farace, GreyNet, Grey Literature Network Service, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Joachim Schöpfel, Université Lille 3, Villeneuve, France Approx. 280 pages Hardcover RRP € 89.95 / *US$ 126.00 ISBN 978-3-598-11793-0 eBook RRP € 89.95 / *US$ 126.00 ISBN 978-3-598-44149-3 TO BE PUBLISHED 09/2010 LANGUAGE English SUBJECT Library & Information Science > Libraries, Information and Documentation READERSHIP Libraries Worldwide; Library and Information Science Professionals; Schools and Departments for LIS Education Genthiner Straße 13 · 10785 Berlin, Germany *For orders placed in North America. eBooks are currently only available for Libraries/Institutions. Prices are subject to change. T +49 (0)30.260 05-0 · F +49 (0)30.260 05-251 · info@degruyter.com · www.degruyter.com Prices do not include postage and handling. 07/10 Contents Introduction Grey Literature (Farace and Schöpfel) Part I – Producing, Processing,
    [Show full text]
  • Characteristics and Use of Grey Literature in Scientific Journals Articles of Algerian Researchers
    Characteristics and use of grey literature in scientific journals articles of Algerian researchers: Case study of University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene ( Physics, Chemistry and computer sciences) Lydia CHALABI DRDSI, CERIST research center, Algiers, Algeria; Information Science Department, University of Algeirs2, Algeria lchalabi@mail.cerist.dz, net_lydia@yahoo.fr Abstract. This paper examines grey literature in research articles of Algerian teachers-researchers across the STM( Physics, Chemistry & Computer science) sciences at Algerian University of Science and Technology “USTHB”. Each of these disciplines is respectively high ranked according to the report of Algerian general directorate of scientific research and technological development about Top emerged disciplines in Algeria. The purpose of the study is to reports the important and use of electronic resources particularly grey literature resources in their scientific journal papers and to identify the characteristics of these kinds of resources. The methodology is based on quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative part of our sample consists of five articles per year for each discipline: physic, chemistry, computer science. 1028 references were examined; derived from 60 Algerian teachers- researchers articles journals published in international scientific journals and reflected in Scopus. The study attempts to provide insights into the characteristics of grey literature in a range of disciplines. Keywords. Grey Literature, Open Access, Algerian University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB), Algerians researchers, Algerians teachers, STM, Physics, Chemistry, Computer science. Introduction The advent of the World Wide Web and the Internet in particular has a huge impact on the publishing of science where new forms of circulation and access to knowledge have emerged namely open access, as well as , a strong need to assess the effectiveness of scientific research has emerged.
    [Show full text]
  • Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies Dominic Farace, Joachim Schöpfel
    Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies Dominic Farace, Joachim Schöpfel To cite this version: Dominic Farace, Joachim Schöpfel. Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies. 2010, 9783598441493. hal-01981296 HAL Id: hal-01981296 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01981296 Submitted on 14 Jan 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies Grey Literature in Library and Information Studies Edited by Dominic J. Farace and Joachim Schöpfel De Gruyter Saur An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libra- ries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org ISBN 978-3-11-021808-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-021809-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-021806-2 ISSN 0179-0986 e-ISSN 0179-3256 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License, as of February 23, 2017.
    [Show full text]
  • 57 the EVALUATION of GREY LITERATURE USING BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS a METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL Rosa Di Cesare, Roberta Ruggieri CN
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Woods Hole Open Access Server Anderson, K.L. & C. Thiery (eds.). 2006. Information for Responsible Fisheries : Libraries as Mediators : proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference: Rome, Italy, October 10 – 14, 2005. Fort Pierce, FL: International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers. THE EVALUATION OF GREY LITERATURE USING BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS A METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL Rosa Di Cesare, Roberta Ruggieri CNR – Istituto di Ricerche sulla Popolazione e le Politiche Sociali Via Nizza, 128 00198 Roma Tel +39 06 49932841 r.di cesare@irpps.cnr.it ABSTRACT: Grey Literature (GL), defined as material in print and electronic format not readily available through regular market channels or not widely distributed, has received increasing attention in the last decade. Widespread agreement exists on its importance as an information source. However, problems related to the actual use of GL have not been adequately investigated. This paper proposes a methodology to analyze the use of GL in bibliographic references of journal articles, already applied in some disciplinary fields (Physics, 1994, Agricultural economics, 1995; Demography & Computer sciences, 2004). In order to verify to what extent GL contributes to scientific work, we use bibliometric indicators (frequency of GL use, frequency of GL citing), similar to the ones widely used for conventional literature. A specific bibliometric indicator, that seems useful for measuring GL impact namely the intensity of GL citing, i.e., the average frequency of GL references per article containing GL, is described. Moreover, the potential use of the impact factor as an indicator of variability in GL use is considered.
    [Show full text]
  • The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases
    The Top 21 Free Online Journal and Research Databases 1. CORE https://core.ac.uk/ is a multidisciplinary aggregator of open access research. It allows users to search more than 66 million open access articles. While most of these link to the full-text article on the original publisher's site, five million records are hosted directly on CORE. In addition to a straightforward keyword search, CORE offers advanced search options to filter results by publication type, year, language, journal, repository, and author. 2. ScienceOpen Functioning as a research and publishing network, https://www.scienceopen.com/ offers open access to more than 28 million articles in all areas of science. Although you do need to register to view the full text of the articles, registration is free. The advanced search function is highly detailed, allowing you to find precisely the research you're looking for. 3. Directory of Open Access Journals A multidisciplinary, community-curated directory, https://doaj.org/ (DOAJ) gives researchers access to high-quality, peer- reviewed journals. It has archived more than two million articles from 9,519 journals, allowing you to either browse by subject or search by keyword. The site was launched in 2003 with the aim of increasing the visibility of open access scholarly journals. Content on the site covers subjects from science to law to fine arts and everything in between. 4. Education Resources Information Center The https://eric.ed.gov/ (ERIC), of the Institution of Education Sciences, allows you to search by topic for material related to the field of education. Links lead to other sites, where you may have to purchase the information, but you can search for full-text articles only.
    [Show full text]