Pelzer Nancy L, Wiese William H
Cataloging Department, William Robert Parks and Ellen Sorge Parks Library, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA.
J Med Libr Assoc. 2003 Oct;91(4):434-41.
Grey literature has been perceived by many as belonging to the primary sources of information and has become an accepted method of nonconventional communication in the sciences and medicine. Since little is known about the use and nature of grey literature in veterinary medicine, a systematic study was done to analyze and characterize the bibliographic citations appearing in twelve core veterinary journals.
Citations from 2,159 articles published in twelve core veterinary journals in 2000 were analyzed to determine the portion of citations from grey literature. Those citations were further analyzed and categorized according to the type of publication.
Citation analysis yielded 55,823 citations, of which 3,564 (6.38%) were considered to be grey literature. Four veterinary specialties, internal medicine, pathology, theriogenology, and microbiology, accounted for 70% of the total number of articles. Three small-animal clinical practice journals cited about 2.5-3% grey literature, less than half that of journals with basic research orientations, where results ranged from almost 6% to approximately 10% grey literature. Nearly 90% of the grey literature appeared as conferences, government publications, and corporate organization literature.
The results corroborate other reported research that the incidence of grey literature is lower in medicine and biology than in some other fields, such as aeronautics and agriculture. As in other fields, use of the Internet and the Web has greatly expanded the communication process among veterinary professionals. The appearance of closed community email forums and specialized discussion groups within the veterinary profession is an example of what could become a new kind of grey literature.
许多人认为灰色文献属于主要信息来源，并且已成为科学和医学领域中一种公认的非传统交流方式。由于对兽医医学中灰色文献的使用和性质了解甚少，因此开展了一项系统研究，以分析和描述12种核心兽医期刊中出现的文献引用情况。
对2000年发表在12种核心兽医期刊上的2159篇文章的引用进行分析，以确定灰色文献引用的比例。这些引用根据出版物类型进一步分析和分类。
引用分析得出55823条引用，其中3564条（6.38%）被认为是灰色文献。四个兽医专业，即内科、病理学兽医学、产科学和微生物学，占文章总数的70%。三种小动物临床实践期刊引用的灰色文献约为2.5%-3%，不到以基础研究为导向的期刊的一半，后者的灰色文献比例从近6%到约10%不等。近90%的灰色文献表现为会议文献、政府出版物和企业组织文献。
研究结果证实了其他已报道的研究，即医学和生物学领域中灰色文献的发生率低于航空航天和农业等其他一些领域。与其他领域一样，互联网和网络的使用极大地扩展了兽医专业人员之间的交流过程。兽医行业内封闭社区电子邮件论坛和专门讨论组的出现就是可能成为一种新型灰色文献的一个例子。
