Sounds like a candidate for a content analysis of literature review articles published recently and 15 or 20 years ago (e.g., all of Psychological Review for a 5 year period in each "era" of publishing). A count of the number of citations 5 years or older in the reference section should reflect any increased bias to not cite work older than 5 years old. It is an interesting idea. I don't know that anyone has done it.
I wonder if this tendency is related to the conventions for the Annual Review series, where the editorial policy is to focus on work in the most recent 5 years. For Annual Review content areas that repeat every 5 years, the logic behind this is that you can get the historical picture by going back to earlier reviews on the same topic. We often train our students to focus on the most recent literature when writing lit reviews for grad classes, although the assignments tend to tell students that they must cite work published in the most recent 3 years rather than forbidding older citations. I do this in my lit review assignments just to ensure that students don't rely on secondary sources (or lift a literature review from who knows where). I wonder if other journals that publish literature reviews have similar formal policies, or if this just become a convention set by Annual Review? Claudia _____________________________________________ Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor NSF UWF Faculty ADVANCE Scholar School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 Phone: (850) 857-6355 (direct) or 473-7435 (CUTLA) [email protected] CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 7:58 AM, MiguelRoig <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > Dear TIPSters, I am sure that you have heard the complaint that some > (many?) literature reviews these days tend to only cite recent literature > and that sometimes they miss older, but highly relevant papers. I have > spent the last hour and a half trying to locate documentation for this type > of situation through Psychinfo and PubMed but I keep coming up empty. If > you are aware of a relevant paper dealing with this type of issue or might > have suggestions for conducting a more productive search for such material, > your input would be greatly appreciated. > > Miguel > > --- > > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. > > To unsubscribe click here: > http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d550&n=T&l=tips&o=30221 > > (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) > > or send a blank email to > leave-30221-13144.1572ed60024e708cf21c4c6f19e7d...@fsulist.frostburg.edu > > > > > --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=30224 or send a blank email to leave-30224-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
