Citation Analysis and Grey Literature: Stakeholders in the Grey Circuit

Co-authored together with Christiane Stock, Dominic Farace, and Jerry Frantzen. The goal of this research project is to learn more about the expanding field of information known as ‘grey literature’. Citation analysis allows one the possibility to follow the work of the authors in the GLConference series, as well as authors whom they have cited both in grey and commercial publishing. A further goal of this paper is to examine the value of the GL- Conference Proceedings for research in the field of grey literature by examining among other things, its impact on the work of contributing authors. This study was sparked by a general interest in citation analysis as an instrument used in various sciences including information science. And, in particular by a paper presented at GL5 in which grey literature as a main channel for publication by an International Marine Scientific Advisory Body was investigated (MacDonald et al., 2004). The stakeholders in this study are not first and foremost the authors who produce a document type, which falls within the category of grey literature. Instead this study is directed to those authors who focus their research and writing on the topic of grey literature, these are referred to as the meta-authors on grey literature. They have entered the field of information studies and focussed on a particular area, they entered in small numbers and in the past decade they have become contending stakeholders. In the first five volumes of the GL Conference Proceedings a total of 139 conference papers were published, 30 of which did not contain references. Bibliographic data shows that 152 authors/co-authors, which is a full sample, were responsible for the content of these papers. 108 are 1st authors, 78 of whom are sole authors. 30 of the authors (>20%) have published more than once in the conference series and 6 of whom (>.05%) have published three or more times in this series. It is important that those authors who published within the series are also published outside the series – indicating that their clout extends beyond the grey circuit. In this way, their sphere of influence covers their entire work and reflects well on the conference series as a whole. The direction until now has been grey to commercially published e.g. a conference paper is later published as a journal article; however, with the advent of OAI, Open Archive Initiative, this direction could now even allow for reversal.