Measuring production and scholarly use of National Center for Health Statistics publications: a citation analysis in US government information

Tara Das ()
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Tara Das: Columbia University

Scientometrics, 2016, vol. 108, issue 3, No 16, 1287-1298

Abstract: Abstract This study falls under a broad research agenda for measurement of U.S. government information with a focus on federal statistics and data. It examines patterns in both production and scholarly use of National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) publications, using a fixed set of NCHS publications as the benchmark. Of 563 publications issued between January 1, 2010 and August 31, 2015, 168 (29.9 %) were cited at least once between January 1, 2010 and November 1, 2015. There were a total 20,550 cites to NCHS publications with an average 122 cites per publication. Fifty NCHS publications were cited at least 100 times, with Prevalence of Obesity in the United States, 2009–2010 (1669 cites); deaths: final data for 2009 (927 cites); and births: final data for 2007 (809 cites) as the top 3 cited publications. Overall, summary statistics for obesity, birth, and mortality were the most highly cited publications. This study is consistent with a previous citation analysis of federal statistics in identifying mortality as a predominant topic for production and use of NCHS publications. It also highlights several topics, including obesity, that were cited with high frequency compared to their lower publishing coverage. Future studies under this research agenda will investigate non-scholarly uses of government information, and remain focused on government statistics and data. Given trends in open government data, big data, and analytics, government statistics and data has been widely adopted in community activism and data journalism, but such use has yet to be analyzed indepth.

Keywords: Citation analysis; Government information; Open data; Statistics; Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2018-y

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