Does newspapers coverage influence the citations count of scientific publications? An analysis of biomedical studies

Estelle Dumas-Mallet (), André Garenne, Thomas Boraud and François Gonon
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Estelle Dumas-Mallet: Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases
André Garenne: Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases
Thomas Boraud: Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases
François Gonon: Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases

Scientometrics, 2020, vol. 123, issue 1, No 20, 413-427

Abstract: Abstract Scientific results traditionally disseminate to the scientific community via scientific journals. Studies’ importance is assessed through the number of citations in those journals. The medialization concept postulates an increasing orientation of science towards the mass media. Here, taking up this concept, we hypothesized that if science is indeed medialized, studies reported in newspaper will receive a higher number of citations. Three studies, focusing on publications in a few prestigious scientific journals and a single year, already concluded towards a citation’s advantage for studies featured in the press. Here, we analyzed the citation counts of 496 biomedical studies published between 1988 and 2013 in 38 distinct peer-reviewed journals with impact factors ranging from 5 to 51.7. To disentangle the effects of the impact factor and of the media coverage on the citation counts, we associated studies covered in English-speaking newspapers with similar studies (i.e. on the same subject published the same year and in the same scientific journal) not reported in the press. We confirmed that, for the whole period, studies reported in newspapers received on average more citations. Comparing across three impact factor levels, we showed that the citations’ advantage was more pronounced for lower impact factors (IF

Keywords: Citations; Newspapers; Biomedical science; Medialization; Research dissemination; Impact factor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-020-03380-1

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