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The role of online videos in research communication: A content analysis of YouTube videos cited in academic publications

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  • Kayvan Kousha
  • Mike Thelwall
  • Mahshid Abdoli

Abstract

Although there is some evidence that online videos are increasingly used by academics for informal scholarly communication and teaching, the extent to which they are used in published academic research is unknown. This article explores the extent to which YouTube videos are cited in academic publications and whether there are significant broad disciplinary differences in this practice. To investigate, we extracted the URL citations to YouTube videos from academic publications indexed by Scopus. A total of 1,808 Scopus publications cited at least one YouTube video, and there was a steady upward growth in citing online videos within scholarly publications from 2006 to 2011, with YouTube citations being most common within arts and humanities (0.3%) and the social sciences (0.2%). A content analysis of 551 YouTube videos cited by research articles indicated that in science (78%) and in medicine and health sciences (77%), over three fourths of the cited videos had either direct scientific (e.g., laboratory experiments) or scientific‐related contents (e.g., academic lectures or education) whereas in the arts and humanities, about 80% of the YouTube videos had art, culture, or history themes, and in the social sciences, about 63% of the videos were related to news, politics, advertisements, and documentaries. This shows both the disciplinary differences and the wide variety of innovative research communication uses found for videos within the different subject areas.

Suggested Citation

  • Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall & Mahshid Abdoli, 2012. "The role of online videos in research communication: A content analysis of YouTube videos cited in academic publications," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(9), pages 1710-1727, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:9:p:1710-1727
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22717
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    Cited by:

    1. Hou, Jianhua & Wang, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Yang & Wang, Dongyi, 2022. "How do scholars and non-scholars participate in dataset dissemination on Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1).
    2. , Aisdl, 2020. "Using YouTube Videos to Promote Universities : A Content Analysis," OSF Preprints weh9t, Center for Open Science.
    3. Hiep-Hung Pham & Kelly Farrell & Huyen-Minh Vu & Quan-Hoang Vuong & Nancy K. Napier, 2017. "Using YouTube video to promote university: a content analysis," Working Papers CEB 17-004, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Qianjin Zong & Yafen Xie & Rongchan Tuo & Jingshi Huang & Yang Yang, 2019. "The impact of video abstract on citation counts: evidence from a retrospective cohort study of New Journal of Physics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1715-1727, June.
    5. Shenmeng Xu & Houqiang Yu & Bradley M. Hemminger & Xie Dong, 2018. "Who, what, why? An exploration of JoVE scientific video publications in tweets," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 845-856, November.
    6. Yu, Houqiang & Xu, Shenmeng & Xiao, Tingting & Hemminger, Brad M. & Yang, Siluo, 2017. "Global science discussed in local altmetrics: Weibo and its comparison with Twitter," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 466-482.
    7. Hamid R. Jamali & Majid Nabavi & Saeid Asadi, 2018. "How video articles are cited, the case of JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1821-1839, December.
    8. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall & Matthew Bickley, 2022. "The high scholarly value of grey literature before and during Covid-19," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3489-3504, June.
    9. Isidro F. Aguillo, 2020. "Altmetrics of the Open Access Institutional Repositories: a webometrics approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(3), pages 1181-1192, June.
    10. Angel Meseguer-Martinez & Alejandro Ros-Galvez & Alfonso Rosa-Garcia & Jose Antonio Catalan-Alarcon, 2019. "Online video impact of world class universities," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 29(3), pages 519-532, September.
    11. Haunschild, Robin & Bornmann, Lutz, 2023. "Which papers cited which tweets? An exploratory analysis based on Scopus data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).

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