The World Bank’s policy reports in Google Scholar. Are they visible, cited, and downloaded?

Abstract

Although the main goal of this work is to assess the use and impact of the World Bank’s reports, it is included in the Google Scholar’s Digest reviews because the authors not only analyse the visibility of those documents in Google Scholar but also use this database to measure the impact of these reports through their citations. In any case, we only address in this review the results that are directly associated with Google Scholar. Since the study reviewed only analyses a limited sample of certain document types (those classified as “Economic and Sector Work” or as “Technical Assistance”) and a very specific timespan (2008-2012), in the discussion section we intend to find out in which degree the reports published by the World Bank are indexed and cited in Google Scholar. To do this, the contents of the World’s Bank Knowledge Repository (OKR) are analysed finding that only the 17.1% of the 15,319 documents deposited in the OKR are indexed in Google Scholar, and 60% have received at least one citation.