Impact
Grey literature has a role of its own as a means of distributing scientific and technical information. Professionals insist on its importance for two main reasons: research results are often more detailed in reports, doctoral theses and conference proceedings than in journals, and they are distributed in these forms up to 12 or even 18 months before being published elsewhere. Some results simply are not published anywhere else.
A Franco-Dutch study reviews 64 citation analyses published between 1987 and 2005, citing altogether several thousand references. The table below shows the proportion of grey literature cited in publications from different scientific disciplines.
| Field | Grey literature citations in % |
|---|---|
| Soil sciences | 14 |
| Biology | 5-13 |
| Veterinary medicine | 6 |
| Psychiatry (addiction | 1 |
| Psychology | 3 |
| Engineering sciences | 39-42 |
| Economic sciences | 9-17 |
| Sociology | 7-9 |
| Education sciences | 14-19 |
The relative importance of grey literature is largely dependent on research disciplines and subjects, on methodological approaches, and on sources used. In some fields, especially the life sciences and medical sciences, there has been a traditional preference for conventional distribution media (journals), while in others, such as agriculture, aeronautics and the engineering sciences in general, grey literature resources tend to predominate.
In particular, public administrations and public and industrial research laboratories produce a great deal of “grey” material, often for internal and in some cases “restricted” dissemination.
According to another study, grey literature seems also to play a considerable part in the library and information sciences, accounting on average around 20% of all sources used a figure that may be compared with the citation habits in economics and educational sciences. Even so, citations to grey material vary widely between different papers from 0% to 50% and more, depending on subject areas and methodologies.
Read more about this topic: Gray Literature
Famous quotes containing the word impact:
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Conquest is the missionary of valour, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)