<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><sec id="j_jdis-2019-0016_s_012_w2aab3b7b6b1b6b1aab1c17b1Aa"><h3>Purpose</h3><p>Communicating scientific results to the public is essential to inspire future researchers and ensure that discoveries are exploited. News stories about research are a key communication pathway for this and have been manually monitored to assess the extent of press coverage of scholarship.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2019-0016_s_013_w2aab3b7b6b1b6b1aab1c17b2Aa"><h3>Design/methodology/Approach</h3><p>To make larger scale studies practical, this paper introduces an automatic method to extract citations from newspaper stories to large sets of academic journals. Curated ProQuest queries were used to search for citations to 9,639 Science and 3,412 Social Science Web of Science (WoS) journals from eight UK daily newspapers during 2006–2015. False matches were automatically filtered out by a new program, with 94% of the remaining stories meaningfully citing research.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2019-0016_s_014_w2aab3b7b6b1b6b1aab1c17b3Aa"><h3>Findings</h3><p>Most Science (95%) and Social Science (94%) journals were never cited by these newspapers. Half of the cited Science journals covered medical or health-related topics, whereas 43% of the Social Sciences journals were related to psychiatry or psychology. From the citing news stories, 60% described research extensively and 53% used multiple sources, but few commented on research quality.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2019-0016_s_015_w2aab3b7b6b1b6b1aab1c17b4Aa"><h3>Research Limitations</h3><p>The method has only been tested in English and from the ProQuest Newspapers database.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2019-0016_s_016_w2aab3b7b6b1b6b1aab1c17b5Aa"><h3>Practical implications</h3><p>Others can use the new method to systematically harvest press coverage of research.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2019-0016_s_017_w2aab3b7b6b1b6b1aab1c17b6Aa"><h3>Originality/value</h3><p>An automatic method was introduced and tested to extract citations from newspaper stories to large sets of academic journals.</p></sec></abstract>

PurposeCommunicating scientific results to the public is essential to inspire future researchers and ensure that discoveries are exploited. News stories about research are a key communication pathway for this and have been manually monitored to assess the extent of press coverage of scholarship.Design/methodology/ApproachTo make larger scale studies practical, this paper introduces an automatic method to extract citations from newspaper stories to large sets of academic journals. Curated ProQuest queries were used to search for citations to 9,639 Science and 3,412 Social Science Web of Science (WoS) journals from eight UK daily newspapers during 2006–2015. False matches were automatically filtered out by a new program, with 94% of the remaining stories meaningfully citing research.FindingsMost Science (95%) and Social Science (94%) journals were never cited by these newspapers. Half of the cited Science journals covered medical or health-related topics, whereas 43% of the Social Sciences journals were related to psychiatry or psychology. From the citing news stories, 60% described research extensively and 53% used multiple sources, but few commented on research quality.Research LimitationsThe method has only been tested in English and from the ProQuest Newspapers database.Practical implicationsOthers can use the new method to systematically harvest press coverage of research.Originality/valueAn automatic method was introduced and tested to extract citations from newspaper stories to large sets of academic journals.

An Automatic Method to Identify Citations to Journals in News Stories: A Case Study of UK Newspapers Citing Web of Science Journals

Journal of Data and Information Science

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

PurposeCommunicating scientific results to the public is essential to inspire future researchers and ensure that discoveries are exploited. News stories about...

An Automatic Method to Identify Citations to Journals in News Stories: A Case Study of UK Newspapers Citing Web of Science Journals

Article Category: Research Paper

Published Online: Aug 30, 2019

Page range: 73 - 95

Received: Feb 16, 2019

Accepted: Apr 12, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2019-0016

Keywords
Citation analysis, News stories, Public engagement, Public impact, UK newspapers, Web of Science journals

© 2019 Kayvan Kousha, Mike Thelwall, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

An Automatic Method to Identify Citations to Journals in News Stories: A Case Study of UK Newspapers Citing Web of Science Journals

Article Category: Research Paper

Published Online: Aug 30, 2019

Page range: 73 - 95

Received: Feb 16, 2019

Accepted: Apr 12, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2019-0016

KeywordsCitation analysis, News stories, Public engagement, Public impact, UK newspapers, Web of Science journals

© 2019 Kayvan Kousha, Mike Thelwall, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
Citation analysis, News stories, Public engagement, Public impact, UK newspapers, Web of Science journals