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Discovering Fat Studies Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis

This study engages with information literacy with respect to the marginalizing experience of fat oppression. The aim is to illuminate assumptions underlying research and scholarship into the lives of people living in larger bodies and to investigate how researchers can discover studies founded on either a medicalization or fat studies paradigm. A bibliometric analysis reveals where fat studies literature is published and indexed, as well as how keywords differ among authors and indexes. The study is important not only for courses in fat studies, but also as a valuable exemplar for critical thinking in information literacy instruction across disciplines.

Introduction

In recent years, more scholarly and popular discourse has begun to address the treatment of people in larger bodies. Instead of linking body size to moral values (e.g., self-control, vigor, industriousness, health consciousness), this discourse makes space for diversity of body sizes with an understanding that fat people deserve respect and dignity, and that their societal treatment is due to systematic oppression and exclusion. Among other social dynamics, this work shows that medical concerns about body weight are often accepted as neutral scientific discourse, which is not always justified. As Chastain notes, “There are people of the same weight who have vastly different health statuses, and there are people of vastly different weights who have the same health statuses” (2021). Recognizing studies founded on anti-fat bias and distinguishing them from weight-neutral studies can serve as an important exercise, whether students are researching fat lives or building critical thinking skills in general.

This study provides evidence to support academic librarians who seek to provide information literacy (IL) instruction and inform collections decisions in weight-neutral ways. Fat Studies is the only academic journal that declares its commitment to academic inquiry concerning the lived experiences of fat people and the obstacles society constructs to marginalize and exclude them (Fat Studies, n.d.). In addition to the lack of specialized periodicals, inconsistent terminology and limited indexing make it difficult for researchers to identify this work. As Brunskill (2021) shows, this set of challenges is shared by other interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary fields such as disability studies. However, no study has yet investigated fruitful search strategies to discover fat studies research or developed IL approaches with respect to the marginalizing experience of fat oppression.

This study uses a bibliometric analysis method to fill a gap in the IL literature for fat studies. The findings will illuminate the strategies for discovering and evaluating information sources that depart from the dominant discourse around fatness and anti-fatness.

Note on Language

Like many other scholars of fat studies, we use the term fat as a neutral adjective to describe bodies (Wann, 2009). When we discuss other terms from the medical community, such as ob*sity and overw*ight, we mark them to highlight their inherent bias. What is more, we acknowledge that these terms are implicated in anti-Black racism and white supremacy (Strings, 2019; Harrison, 2021), and we find them inappropriate in a scholarly conversation about a marginalized population. When these words fall in titles of works or direct quotations, they will not be altered.

Literature Review

This study is situated in two scholarly conversations, one centered on the interdisciplinary field of fat studies and its criticism of the dominant medical discourse around fatness and health, and the other centered on how information literacy pedagogy can invite students to recognize and interrogate the underlying assumptions of information sources in their relationship to social power.

Paradigms in the Literature

Fatness and fat people appear in academic literature largely under one of two paradigms. The dominant paradigm is medicalization, which frames fat people as diseased, unhealthy, or otherwise a problem to be solved. Alternatively, the fat studies paradigm assumes that fatness is part of normal body diversity, and that fat people are systemically oppressed and excluded across many facets of society (Cooper, 2010).

The medicalization paradigm appears in the bulk of biomedical literature, especially ob*sity research (Bacon & Aphramor, 2011). The so-called ob*sity epidemic was defined in a report by the World Health Organization (2000), which warned of global health implications leading to overly strained health systems and a subsequent financial burden. Works under this paradigm study how ob*sity can be treated and prevented, often leaving fat people out of the conversation entirely (Cooper, 2010). This view of fat people and fatness originated in the nineteenth century (Levy Navarro, 2010). In The Birth of the Clinic, first published in 1963, Foucault noted that the goal of medicine shifted during that time from health to normality, and subsequently organized itself around the binary of “healthy” versus “morbid” (Foucault, 1994).

Stoll and Egner (2021) demonstrate that the medicalization of fatness is strongly tied to the medicalization of disability, as some (but not all) fat people are disabled, and some (but not all) people with disabilities are fat. This synchronous medicalization dates to medieval Europe where body differences were viewed as divine punishment for one’s sins. Fat people were also perceived as lazy and out of control; therefore, fat people and disabled people were similarly maligned. As society became more industrial and capitalist, a person’s perceived worth became tied to their productivity, which upheld moral ideas tied to strength and health (Stoll & Egner, 2021). Disability studies scholars have argued for a more holistic view that considers the built environment and social barriers, framing disability as a social construct (Herndon, 2002). Goldberg (2014) argues that “the problem is not so much with impaired bodies but with social structures (or lack thereof) that disable persons with diverse functionings and body types” (p. 118). In the case of fatness, this can also falsely imply that people are fat because they choose to be, or because they lack the discipline to make their bodies smaller. Discourse on disciplinary medicine is pervasive in Western society, promoting the idea that it is one’s responsibility to cultivate oneself and one’s body (Murray, 2008). This adds to societal views that fat people are lazy or weak-willed for visibly existing outside this ideal.

The fat studies paradigm approaches the subject of fatness through a sociological lens, seeing fatness as a neutral fact of body diversity. However, societal treatment and exclusion of fat bodies is rooted in the medicalization paradigm, and much of the fat studies literature seeks to highlight the stigma and discrimination therein. As noted by one of the first people to use the term fat studies, Wann (2009), “fat studies is defined in part by what it is not” (p. ix). Cooper (2010) also notes that fat studies as a term is “an inherent critique of the medicalised concept obesity” (p. 1021). Furthermore, people in larger bodies dislike being called ob*se, even if they are less aware of fat studies or anti-fatness as areas of study (Robbins et al., 2025).

In opposition to the medicalization paradigm, fat studies takes a neutral stance on the diversity of human bodies and examines why fat people are excluded and oppressed by society (Rothblum, 2012). Works concerning fat embodiment tend to be produced by those who have experienced it firsthand (Cooper, 2010).

It is important for information seekers to understand that all research has a perspective and a point of view. No research is neutral; however, medical science is particularly able to frame itself as neutral when in fact it has many specific perspectives. One such perspective is that fat people should not exist, and medical researchers may have financial interest in perpetuating this harmful paradigm (Stoll, 2019).

Critical Information Literacy and Fat Pedagogy

Teaching students how to think about information in light of social power and privilege is known as critical information literacy (CIL) (Crilly, 2024; Tewell, 2015). CIL is part of a larger pedagogical approach that favors inquiry-driven, learner-centered activities that interrogate how systems of oppression constrain the production and dissemination of information outside the dominant discourse (Cuevas-Cerveró et al., 2023). Research and scholarship on CIL tend to address dominant discourse around race, gender, and class.

There are a few studies in CIL that incorporate the social dynamics of anti-fatness, and there is a rich literature in fat pedagogy outside of CIL. A seminal study by Angell and Price (2012) addresses information bias around fatness not only in scholarly, peer reviewed literature itself, but also in how the counter-paradigm fat studies research is classified in academic libraries. They find that Library of Congress classification has no subject heading for fat studies and tends to class work in the field of medicine, “a decidedly problematic move, as this specific act of classification essentially medicalizes a social and political movement, as well as cements the common stigma of inferiority associated with all things fat” (Angell & Price, 2012, p. 159). A more recent presentation by Chenevey suggests liberatory ways to address this problem in the IL classroom (2022). A study of library research guides that share information about anti-fat bias found 36 relevant guides, primarily in the context of social justice rather than health and medicine. Resources presented on the guides tended to be popular articles, books, podcasts, and blogs rather than academic (Silkotch et al., 2025).

The fat pedagogy movement in education also signals the importance of critical thinking. Cameron and Russell suggest that “Fat pedagogy helps educators and learners build skills and competencies needed to recognize dominant obesity discourse and to develop and maintain alternative discourses” (2021). Regardless of students’ ultimate conclusions about fatness, they will benefit from recognizing anti-fat assumptions in research and considering counter-paradigms. As Bhagat and Teegarden state, “Educators do not need to tell students what to think, but rather offer guidance so that they can learn how to think and develop their own understandings regarding weight and health” (2020, p. 12).

This current study fills a gap in both these streams of research by investigating how and where fat studies research may be identified. The findings will be useful not only in fat studies curricula, but also in the context of health literacy and health communications in service of social justice around anti-fatness.

Methods

With the aim of learning where fat studies literature is to be found and what discovery strategies are effective, we started with techniques drawn from bibliometrics, namely tracing citations. However, this study is unlike most bibliometric studies, which evaluate the impact of articles, journals or researchers (Bornmann, 2020). Rather, we developed our approach to identify which journals, databases, and keywords are most likely to lead to discovery of literature in the fat studies paradigm. To ensure that we were not missing relevant information literacy approaches, we also analyzed research guides compiled by other librarians on fat studies resources.

In was appropriate to start our investigation with Fat Studies, because it is the first and only academic journal with the stated goal of publishing literature in this paradigm. We reasoned that work in the fat studies paradigm published in other journals is likely to cite this key journal. Thus, we set about locating any article that had cited Fat Studies. We used the Scopus database, which has broad coverage across subject domains, to harvest citing articles. Scholars in the arts and humanities frequently publish in monographs or edited volumes rather than in journals. Since 2014, Scopus has added 292,000 book titles, of which 55% cover the arts, humanities, and social sciences (Elsevier, 2023).

We searched for articles in the Scopus database that cited Fat Studies from 2009 through May 2024 and downloaded a report listing 6,878 articles. From the list of citing sources, we identified eight journals that had cited Fat Studies more than 10 times (see Appendix A).

To identify relevant databases, we used the UlrichsWeb Periodicals Directory. UlrichsWeb shows which bibliographic databases index each journal in the directory. We looked up each journal in which at least 10 citations referred to Fat Studies to learn where researchers can find the referring articles. Each author searched UlrichsWeb for half the list of 84 journals. This analysis resulted in a list of 414 databases, from which we omitted three groups of databases: 328 databases that indexed fewer than 10 of the journals that cited Fat Studies more than 10 times; 21 agricultural and veterinary databases that indexed 13–25 of the citing journals; and six databases designated only for alumni use (see Appendix B).

To identify relevant keywords, we downloaded reports of the author keywords and Scopus subject headings for each of the 6,878 articles citing Fat Studies from January 2009 to May 2024. The aggregate of keywords and subject terms were then compared and analyzed. We compiled a table of terms that included fat studies and medical terms together and the number of instances we found in both keywords and subject headings. Related terms like body positive/body positivity and terms with spelling variations like fat phobia/fatphobia were combined in the table.

To identify library research guides, we searched Google in July 2024, using the keyword library and one of the following terms: fat studies; fat liberation; fatmisia; sizeism; weight stigma; or weight bias. The search was also limited to the .edu domain as research guides are usually linked to university or college websites.

Findings

Appendix A lists the 84 sources that cited Fat Studies more than 10 times from 2009 to May 2024. Note that one title on this list is actually an edited volume: Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice (Friedman et al., 2019). Journals with more than 50 citations in that period were Body Image (210 citations), Fat Studies (114), International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (87), Social Science and Medicine (74), Frontiers in Psychology (57), Appetite (55), and Nutrients (54).

Appendix B lists the 59 databases that index at least 10 of these journals. Only three databases indexed more than 50 of them: Web of Science (74), Scopus (73), and PubMed (51).

Table 1

Incidence of Terms as Author Keywords and/or Scopus Index Terms

Term

Author Keywords

Scopus Index Terms

Fat Studies Paradigm

Fat

442

225

Fatness

44

0

Fatphobia

26

5

Anti-fat

22

0

Fat stigma

16

1

Fat acceptance

14

1

Medicalization Paradigm

Ob*se

17

70

Ob*sity

1066

2475

Overw*ight

129

256

Adipose tissue

8

28

Adiposity

3

11

Both Paradigms

Weight bias

176

199

Weight stigma

269

192

Appendix C lists 18 library research guides covering fat studies. None of them addresses information literacy around the fat studies and medicalization paradigms in depth; in addition, research strategies for identifying resources in the fat studies paradigm were limited. All but three guides listed books and videos in the library collections that affirm and celebrate the fat-identifying community and/or call out anti-fat bias. The remaining three research guides provided access to relevant primary resources. Three named databases for research in fat studies, and three listed the key journals—Fat Studies and Body Image—and provided relevant subject headings. However, none of the guides explains how to distinguish articles from the fat studies perspective and the medical (ob*sity) perspective; at least one resource listed on the guides adopted the medicalization perspective suggesting that in an ideally healthy world, fat people would not exist.

Table 1 presents the results of our analysis of metadata for 6,878 articles that cite at least one article in Fat Studies, comparing keywords provided by the authors to index terms provided by Scopus. There were 2,475 total author keywords and 5,695 total Scopus keywords assigned to these 6,878 articles. Ob*sity and overw*ight are present in articles on both sides, though more so in the Scopus index terms. Weight bias and weight stigma are highly represented in both types of articles. However, terms such as fat, fatness, body positive/positivity, anti-fat, and fat stigma were much more (and sometimes exclusively) present in author keywords.

Discussion

Given that Body Image cites Fat Studies more than Fat Studies cites its own literature, it should be considered a key journal in the field of fat studies. Body Image does not focus specifically on fat studies literature, but it does “have a weight-inclusive focus rather than a weight-normative or weight-centric focus” (Body Image, n.d.).

We were surprised by the finding that so few databases index literature central to fat studies as a discipline. Findings from our analysis of research guides show that this fact may be unknown to other reference librarians, as the research guides generally listed databases that one would reasonably assume would cover fat studies research (e.g., Anthropology Plus, APA PsycINFO, GenderWatch, Sociology Source Ultimate). However, the databases suggested in the fat studies research guides do not cover Fat Studies, and some do not cover Body Image. Institutions without access to Web of Science and/or Scopus will be less able to provide discovery options for fat studies literature. Google Scholar, used skillfully, may be able to serve researchers at institutions without one of these expensive databases, and PubMed is freely available.

Language is one of the main methods of determining which paradigm an article belongs to; therefore, we suspected that there would be a large disparity between the author keywords and Scopus index terms. Discrepancies between keywords and subject headings mean that researchers will have to use stigmatizing language in their searches if they want a thorough representation of fat studies literature. While some authors did use ob*sity as a keyword, many more articles were indexed with ob*sity by Scopus. This means that articles which do not belong in the medicalization paradigm are being indexed as though they do, and fat studies researchers (who often identify as fat themselves) cannot avoid stigmatizing and potentially triggering terms as they conduct their research.

Downey (2016) argues that critical information literacy theory shows us the importance of highlighting the power structures inherent in information systems. In the case of fat studies literature, the power structure is apparent by its absence when compared to other population characteristics such as race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender. If the politics of body size were considered a true concern, there would be more literature and more than two journals focusing on the fat studies paradigm.

Building Inclusive Critical Information Literacy

Learning to recognize the governing paradigm of an academic study is an important critical thinking skill. This can serve as a central lesson in a fat studies course, as well as a useful example in a general CIL session or course. One model of such a lesson would start with a mini-lecture to introduce the idea that scientific discourse may rest on biased assumptions, such as the idea that thinness is equivalent to overall health.

Students would then participate in an active learning exercise with a set of article abstracts provided by the instructor about fatness or fat people. Students would have time individually to compare the abstracts and then discuss one-on-one or in small groups. After a discussion of what students noticed about the articles, the instructor can summarize features common to the medicalization paradigm:

  • Stigmatizing language such as “ob*se” and “overw*ight”
  • Uncritical reliance on Body Mass Index (BMI) as a measure of health
  • Implied goal of a world without any fat people

In contrast, articles in the fat studies paradigm tend to:

  • Acknowledge body diversity
  • Acknowledge systemic and structural harms against fat people
  • Treat body differences neutrally

Next, students can be challenged to find articles on their own that fit into each paradigm. In guiding this experience, it is important to acknowledge that researchers will need to use stigmatizing terms to retrieve all relevant materials, regardless of the paradigm.

In preparing for the session, instructors should check whether the institution subscribes to Fat Studies or Body Image, as well as Scopus or Web of Science databases, which give the most access to these two core journals and to the journals that frequently cite them. For institutions without access to Scopus or Web of Science, PubMed or Google Scholar can be useful free options. PubMed indexes Body Image, but not Fat Studies, so Google Scholar is preferred. However, students will need instruction on advanced Google Scholar strategies, such as the following to get beyond the algorithm’s reliance on citations as a measure of relevance:

  • Use quotation marks to stipulate that terms are included in the search (e.g., “body positive,” “anti-fatness,” “fat stigma”)
  • To indicate a Boolean OR, use the | operator (also known as a vertical bar or pipe, located above the Enter key) (e.g., “anti-fatness”|”fat stigma” “weight neutral”|”weight inclusive”|”body positive”)
  • Use the Advanced search from the menu to the left of the Google Scholar logo to limit to specific journals (e.g., “Return articles published in” Fat Studies)

Another important learning outcome for Google Scholar is the concept of citation chaining as a means of following scholarly conversations back in time through references and forward in time through citing articles. Demonstrate the concept using the “cited by” feature in Google Scholar. It is possible to further search keywords within the citing articles to narrow the search to relevant concepts.

Finally, instructors may consider creating a research guide to support fat studies. The analysis by Silkotch et al. (2025) had similar findings to our study: most existing guides lean toward popular sources on social justice, rather than academic resources or information literacy guidelines. A comprehensive guide should (1) spell out the medicalization and fat studies paradigms, with clues on how to recognize each one, (2) provide keyword suggestions (both stigmatizing and inclusive), (3) identify Fat Studies and Body Image as key journals in fat studies, (4) point out that Scopus and Web of Science are the only subscription databases that index both of them, and (5) provide tips on Google Scholar as a free alternative. In our review, the guides from The Chicago School, Simmons University, and Widener University provided both keywords and identified core journals and thus represent good starting points (see Appendix C).

Limitations and Future Research

While this study focused on citations of Fat Studies as a marker of fat studies articles, that choice limited our scope of analyzed literature. It is possible that there are articles related to fat studies that do not cite the titular journal; in that case, we would not have captured them in this study.

There is a critical need for more literature examining anti-fat bias in libraries and library and information science, including critical information literacy and reference. Due to the countercultural aspects of fat studies as a discipline, it would be illuminating to see how many librarians are aware of this problem and know how they are empowered to work against the pervasiveness of these oppressive structures. It is also important that additional research is conducted on critical information literacy and fatness/anti-fatness. Only when fatness is seen as much in library literature as other population characteristics will it be regarded as a valid concern for patron and employee treatment.

Conclusion

Fat people continue to move through a society in which they routinely face anti-fat bias and stigma. This oppression will take time to dismantle; however, one way to start is to make the next generation aware of how a large subset of the population is mistreated and excluded through use of disparaging terminology and medicalization of their identity. The findings of this study will be useful not only in fat studies curricula, but also in the context of health literacy or health communications more generally, as well as in service to social justice around anti-fatness. This study contributes to critical information literacy by identifying pathways to discovering literature in the fat studies paradigm. Similarly to other hegemonic discourse, the medical model of ob*sity is difficult to dismantle because the link between fatness and moral shortcomings is pervasive and internalized. Unpacking the underlying assumptions of anti-fatness is relevant to any social justice issue, as all forms of oppression are connected. Providing a guide to discovering alternative paradigms is a way of inviting students to think critically about power, privilege and prejudice embedded in scholarly research on any topic, which contributes to the creation of the better world we all deserve.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Carl Lehnen for his early review of this manuscript.

References

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Appendix A

Journals Citing Fat Studies More Than 10 Times (2009–May 2024)

Source Title

Citations to Fat Studies 2009–May 2024

Body Image

210

Fat Studies

114

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

87

Social Science and Medicine

74

Frontiers in Psychology

57

Appetite

55

Nutrients

54

BMC Public Health

50

New Media and Society

47

PLoS ONE

47

Qualitative Health Research

40

International Journal of Eating Disorders

37

Journal of Eating Disorders

37

Sociology of Health and Illness

35

Obesity Reviews

35

Eating Behaviors

34

Eating and Weight Disorders

33

Health Communication

33

Critical Public Health

32

Social Media and Society

31

Feminist Media Studies

31

Journal of Health Psychology

28

Sport, Education and Society

27

Archives of Sexual Behavior

27

Obesity Science and Practice

27

Feminism and Psychology

26

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems—Proceedings

25

Health Promotion International

25

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

25

BMJ Open

24

Journal of Medical Internet Research

24

Stigma and Health

23

Clinical Obesity

22

Eating Disorders

22

Computers in Human Behavior

20

Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health

20

Frontiers in Public Health

19

Journal of Sex Research

19

Current Psychology

18

Obesity

18

International Journal of Obesity

18

Food, Culture and Society

17

Health (United Kingdom)

17

Gender and Education

16

Social Sciences

15

The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies

15

Frontiers in Psychiatry

15

Childhood Obesity

15

Frontiers in Nutrition

14

American Journal of Human Biology

14

Social Theory and Health

14

BMC Health Services Research

14

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

14

Psychology and Health

14

Geoforum

14

Social and Cultural Geography

14

Gender, Place and Culture

13

First Monday

13

The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies

13

Canadian Journal of Public Health

13

SSM—Qualitative Research in Health

13

Disability and Society

13

Nutrition and Dietetics

13

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

12

Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences

12

Medical Anthropology Quarterly

12

Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice

12

Journal of Applied Social Psychology

12

Sexualities

12

Journal of Social Issues

12

ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

12

Obesity Surgery

12

Women’s Studies International Forum

12

Patient Education and Counseling

12

Midwifery

12

Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

12

Healthcare (Switzerland)

12

Sustainability (Switzerland)

11

Current Obesity Reports

11

Media, Culture and Society

11

Psychology and Sexuality

11

Journal of Lesbian Studies

11

Health Promotion Journal of Australia

11

Digital Health

11

Appendix B

Databases Indexing More Than 10 Journals Citing Fat Studies

Database

Total Citing Journals Indexed

Web of Science

74

Scopus

73

PubMed

51

Essential Science Indicators

44

Current Contents

38

TOC Premier

34

Academic Search Complete

32

Current Abstracts (EBSCO)

32

APA PsycINFO

31

EMBASE

28

ProQuest Central

28

Academic Search Elite / Academic Search Premier

27

MEDLINE

26

Gale Academic OneFile

25

Global Health

24

ArticleFirst (OCLC)

23

Ovid MEDLINE

23

CINAHL Complete / CINAHL Plus with Full Text

22

Leisure Tourism

22

Nutrition and Food Science Database

22

PsycFIRST (OCLC)

22

Rural Development Abstracts

22

InfoTrac Custom

21

Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews, Series A: Human and Experimental

21

ProQuest Health Research Premium Collection

21

Abstracts on Hygiene and Communicable Diseases

20

Environmental Impact

20

ProQuest Hospital Premium Collection

20

Reactions Weekly

20

SocINDEX

20

ProQuest Health & Medical Collection

19

Social Science Premium Collection

19

Academic Search Ultimate

18

Electronic Collections Online (OCLC)

18

Sociological Abstracts

18

Tropical Diseases Bulletin

18

Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management

17

Professional ProQuest Central

17

SocINDEX with full text

17

STM Source

17

Biotechnology Source

16

Food Science and Technology (FSTA) Abstracts

16

Biomedical Reference Collection, Corporate Edition

15

E-psyche

14

Biological Sciences

13

Food Science Source

13

Health Reference Center Academic

13

ProQuest 5000 International

13

Public Affairs Index

13

Research Library (ProQuest)

13

Europe PubMed Central

12

Health and Safety Science Abstracts

12

Risk Abstracts

12

SciTech Premium Collection

12

Sociology Collection

12

GALE Literature: Book Review Index

11

ProQuest 5000

11

Social Services Abstracts

11

Studies on Women and Gender Abstracts

11

Appendix C

Library Research Guides Relevant to Fat Studies

Copyright Emily Gilbert, Paula R. Dempsey


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