Burning grey: The worldwide influence of a locally published grey literature

Abstract

Rice is a major staple crop in the Philippines, which produces a large amount of rice each year. On the other hand, rice production generates biomass waste in the form of rice husks. In consideration of the rice husks’ potential as a biomass energy source and support the development of the rice husk gas stove technology in the Philippines, Engineer Alexis T. Belonio had published a grey literature (GL) entitled “Rice Husk Gas Stove Handbook.” Hence, to fully understand the impact of the technology, a citation analysis was conducted. The works that cited the GL were retrieved from Google Scholar using Harzing’s Publish or Perish software. The complete title of the GL was used as keywords for the search string. Results revealed that the GL was cited by 155 literatures written by 398 authors from 31 countries. Seventy-five (48.4%) of the 155 literatures were cited 797 times. The results showed the wide utilization and the impact of locally-published GL, thereby confirming GL’s value in research and development.