Press Release from the University of Jyväskylä,
February 21st, 2023
As part of the joint research project between the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences and the Open Science Centre at the University of Jyväskylä, a Finnish-language databank on Finnish sports journalism, including an extensive bibliography, has been published. The open access and peer-reviewed web publication offers research information intended for a wide range of users in an easily accessible and popular form.
Under the direction of Antti Laine, a senior researcher specialising in media sports at the University of Jyväskylä, the Suomalaisen urheilujournalismin bibliografia [Bibliography of Finnish Sports Journalism] databank has been published. The open access Finnish-language web publication introduces, among other things, characteristics and key concepts specific to sports journalism, as well as the history of Finnish sports journalism and the research topics dealing with it. At the heart of the publication is a bibliography containing annually updated data. At present, more than 2200 publications on Finnish sports journalism are included in the bibliography, subdivided by themes and publication types. More than 400 of these are available online. The publication includes an English language summary and a browsing option by language. In addition to the publications in Finnish, the bibliography includes 53 publications in English, 81 in Swedish, 15 in German, 5 in Russian, and 4 in French.
– The aim was to design a user-friendly online publication that is written in easy-to-read language, popularised with more than a hundred illustrative photos, and available to the widest number of Finnish users. As a peer-reviewed academic work, the publication obviously contains a detailed description of the methods used, but those have been separated into their own subpages, notes Joakim Särkivuori, a researcher in the project.
Research on sports journalism has increased significantly
It took a long time, until the late 1990’s, for research on Finnish sports journalism to become more common, but after that, it has increased significantly. Nowadays there is a considerable amount of diverse research material on sports journalism available also in Finland. For example, more than ten Doctoral theses, around 50 peer-reviewed research articles, and several hundred Master’s theses have been prepared on the subject. In addition, there are around a thousand articles intended for the professional community and around 500 other popular articles. These figures do not include texts published in the newspapers, which have been excluded from the bibliography.
Despite a large number of publications, information on Finnish sports journalism has been rather fragmented and appropriate study materials in Finnish have been unavailable. This publication tries to fix such shortcomings. The authors of the publication also consider the publication type to be especially noteworthy. Most academic research is currently published in international scientific journals, which are of interest only to a limited readership. Researchers communicate with each other through these publications and try to move forward in their career by building up their list of publications. Such information rarely reaches the general public.
– There are a number of serious shortcomings in the scientific publishing and funding system. Actions are based on the monitoring of specific indicators, which supports publishing in the journals of certain international publishers. The system does not motivate domestic publishing that tries to reach a wider home audience. However, in order for science to have an impact, information should be easily available. With this project, we wanted to act as pioneers for a new type of peer-reviewed domestic scientific publishing, says Laine.
The publication has been published in JYU Studies series of the Open Science Centre at the University of Jyväskylä. Full reference: Laine, A. & Särkivuori, J. 2023. Suomalaisen urheilujournalismin bibliografia [Bibliography of Finnish Sports Journalism]. Jyväskylän yliopisto. JYU Studies 2. https://doi.org/10.17011/jyustudies/2
