Abstract
New Scientist is a British weekly magazine that is half-way between a newspaper and a scientific journal. It has many news items, and also longer feature articles, both of which cite biomedical research papers, and thus serve to make them better known to the public and to the scientific community, mainly in the UK but about half overseas. An analysis of these research papers shows (in relation to their presence in the biomedical research literature) a strong bias towards the UK, and also one to the USA, Scandinavia and Ireland. There is a reasonable spread of subject areas, although neuroscience is favoured, and coverage of many journals—not just the leading weeklies. Most of the feature articles (but not the news items) in New Scientist include comments by other researchers, who can put the new results in context. Their opinions appear to be more discriminating than those of commentators on research in the mass media, who usually enthuse over the results while counselling patience before a cure for the disease is widely available.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) (2009) Data available at: http://www.newscientist.com/data/pdf/ns/mediacenter/us/ns_worldwide_abc.pdf.
Adelman, R. C., & Verbrugge, L. M. (2000). Death makes news: The social impact of disease on newspaper coverage. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 41, 347–367.
Anderson, P. (1999). Another media scare about MMR vaccine hits Britain. British Medical Journal, 318, 1578.
Brittle, C., & Zint, M. (2003). Do newspapers lead with lead? A content analysis of how lead health risks to children are covered. Journal of Environmental Health, 65, 17–22.
De Bruin, R. H., & Moed, H. F. (1993). Delimitation of scientific fields using cognitive words from corporate addresses in scientific publications. Scientometrics, 40, 423–436.
Durant, J., & Lindsey, N. (2000). The ‘great GM food debate’: A survey of media coverage in the first half of 1999. London: Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology; Report 138.
Glänzel, W., & Schubert, A. (2005). Domesticity and internationality in co-authorship, references and citations. Scientometrics, 65, 323–342.
Hertog, J. K., Finnegan, J. R., & Kahn, E. (1994). Medic coverage of AIDS, cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases: A test of the public arenas model. Journalism Quarterly, 71, 291–304.
King, D. A. (2004). The scientific impact of nations. Nature, 430, 311–317.
Lewison, G. (2002). From biomedical research to health improvement. Scientometrics, 54, 179–192.
Lewison, G. (2008). The reporting of the risks from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the news media, 2003–2004. Health, Risk and Society, 10, 241–262.
Lewison, G. (2009). Biomedical news items and feature articles in New Scientist magazine and the research papers that they cite. Proceedings of the 12th meeting of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp. 719–729). Brazil: Rio de Janeiro.
Lewison, G., & Paraje, G. (2004). The classification of biomedical journals by research level. Scientometrics, 60, 145–157.
Lewison, G., & Roe, P. (2010). BBC stories of mental disorder and neuroscience research, 1999–2008, and the papers that they cite. Report to the Mental Health Research Network. Available at: http://www.mhrn.info/index/news/newsItems/BBC-report/mainColumnParagraphs/0/text_files/file/BBC%20report.pdf.
Lewison, G., Tootell, S., Roe, P., & Sullivan, R. (2008). How do the media report cancer research? A study of the UK’s BBC website. British Journal of Cancer, 99, 569–576.
Moyer, A., Greener, S., Beauvais, J., & Salovey, P. (1995). Accuracy of health research reported in the popular press: breast cancer and mammography. Health Communication, 7, 147–161.
Nichols, S., & Chase, N. (2005). A content analysis of health research reported by the daily newspapers of Trinidad and Tobago. West Indian Medical Journal, 54, 308–314.
Phillips, D. P., Kanter, E. J., Bednarczyk, B., & Tastad, P. L. (1991). Importance of the lay press in the transmission of medical knowledge to the scientific community. New England Journal of Medicine, 325, 1180–1183.
Raufu, A. (2002). Polio cases rise in Nigeria as vaccine is shunned for fear of AIDS. British Medical Journal, 324, 1414.
Rezza, G., Marino, R., Farchi, F., & Taranto, M. (2004). SARS epidemic in the press. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 10, 381–382.
Shulman, S. (2007). Undermining science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24702-4.
Webster, B. M. (2005). International presence and impact of the UK biomedical research, 1989–2000. Aslib Proceedings, 57, 22–47.
Acknowledgments
Much of the analysis was made possible by means of Excel macros written by Philip Roe, whose contribution is hereby appreciatively acknowledged. We are also grateful to Shaoni Bhattacharya for a very helpful discussion on policy and practice at New Scientist magazine.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lewison, G., Turnbull, T. News in brief and features in New Scientist magazine and the biomedical research papers that they cite, August 2008 to July 2009. Scientometrics 85, 345–359 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0221-9
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0221-9