Which types of research are newsworthy? An analysis of UK newspapers citing Web of Science journals

Newspapers sometimes write about research that they believe will interest the public. Nevertheless, little is known about the types of research and the academic journals that are covered in the news. In response, ProQuest was searched for citations to 9,639 Science and 3,412 Social Science journals from eight UK daily newspapers during 2006-2015. A small percentage of Science (5.2%) and Social Science (5.7%) journals were cited at least once by the newspapers. About half of the Science journals with at least one newspaper citation covered medial or health-related topics, whereas in the Social Sciences 43% were from <i>Psychiatry/Psychology</i>. These findings confirm the importance of health issues in the news, although <i>Nature</i>, and <i>Science </i>magazines<i> </i>were also highly cited and there were differences between newspapers, with some citing more journals related to political issues. There was no general trend for coverage of science to increase or decrease over time. A content analysis of the citing news stories found that almost all (94%) mentioned Science journals to report research findings. From these, 60% described research extensively and most (53%) used more than one source. There were variations in the extent to which the newspapers reported good or bad news and most news stories had no conclusions about the quality of the reported research. Finally, research from a small number of prestigious British journals (e.g., BMJ journals) were particularly well covered in UK newspapers.