Citation Analysis of Theses/Dissertations

A basic analysis of sources, dates, authors for a Marine Biological Laboratory

SAIL meeting - Wilmington, N.C. - May 14, 2009Kathleen Heil, UMCES, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Solomons, MD

In these tough financial times when science is becoming more interdisciplinary and subfields are expanding as are number of titles in the sciences I wanted a way to evaluate material usage.

Since most of our journals are now accessible on-line I had lost my major source of input on usage, which was re-shelving and observation.

Introduction:

Citation analysis has merits and limitations, but has many applications beyond collection development.

Although I haven’t gotten further than the collection development access at this point.

My future goal is to show institutional relatedness. (How broad or limited are our institutional connections)

CBL has always had very strong ties to the University of Maryland

1925 Founded under Dr. Truitt from Univ. of Md. 1930’s Start of summer programs 1941 Sponsored by the Md. Conservation Dept and became

the chief component of the State Dept. of Research and Education

1961 Md. Legislature created the Natural Resources Institute as part of the University of Maryland◦ Summer Classes began as Credit courses toward degrees

1973 Became part of a new Campus of the University of Maryland System - The Center for Environmental & Estuarine

Studies (UMCEES) 1997 Became UMCES (University of Maryland Center for

Environmental Science.

Background:

Background/History (continued) 1976 Graduate students formally began work during the school year as part of their graduate school experience

The first degrees were issued in : ◦1976 MS under the Dept of Botany

University of Maryland College Park◦1981 PhD Under the Dept of Microbiology

University of Maryland College Park

Compare and contrast literature citations from MS & PhD theses/dissertations◦Identify citation patterns◦Formats of materials used◦Most frequently cited material◦Differences between subject areas

Objective:

Use DRUM, the University of Maryland Dspace Open Access archive to pull UMCES-CBL theses/dissertations from the last 5 years.

http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum Copy and paste references into Word and

then move them into Excel. Put each thesis/dissertation into a new tab Sort data into uniform format: author, year,

title, source.

Methodology:

Sort by yearGraphHope to get to soon -

◦Use find replace function to switch years to age

Find usage by year

Sh '05 Dy '05 Ku '06 Ke '07 Ja '08 Totals

1950's 0 0 0 0 2 2

1960's 0 0 3 0 1 4

1970's 3 4 4 1 6 18

1980's 21 23 20 6 8 78

1990's 56 45 43 43 25 212

2000's 1 95 38 75 24 233

81 169 108 125 67 547

PhD year spans

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Ki 04 Fr 04 Ch 04 Ro 04 Sc 05 Me 05 Cr 06 Ko 06 Eg 06 KL 07 Tr 07 Fi 07 Men 07 Ma 08

students

quan

tity1700

1800

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970-4

1975-9

1980-4

1985-9

1990-4

1995-9

2000-4

2005-

A / V Audio tape / Video B Monograph C Conference Paper D/TH Dissertation / Thesis Go Government document/web site Gr Grey Literature J Journal M Magazine N Newspaper P Personal Communication S Software T Technical report W Web site/ web page

Identify Materials Cited

Source types

0200400600800

100012001400

type

quan

tity

Series1

Title dispersionProportion of journals

citedMost cited Journals

Journal usage trends:

Quantity

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Most Heavily Cited Journals I reviewed a merged listing of publications

After doing sort on material type

There were 40 journal titles that had over 10 citations

Range from 10 to 119

The highest used title was Environmental Science and technology

Top 5 cited journalsTop 5 cited publications

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Marine Chemistry Estuaries J . Geophys. Res Atmospheric Environ. Env. Sci & Tech.

MS These Sources by type

SOURCES USED

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

BOOKS DISS CONF JOUR

Series1

MS Theses Top 20 Journals

Top titles used

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Journals with over 5 Cites

Ann Rev Microb 5

Appl Envir. Micro 85

Aquat Microb Ecol 18

Aquat Tox 5

Arch Env.Cont.&Tox 4

Ecotox & Envir. Safety 5

Environ. Microbiol 10

E S & T 24

Environ. Tox & Chem 20

FEMS Microbiology Ecol 8

Geochi et Cosmo Acta 7

J. Bact. 8

L & O 18

Marine Biology 5

MEPS 9

Microbial Ecol 8

Nature 10

Organic Geochem 8

Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 9

Science 13

Water Air & Soil Poll 5

284

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(3): 381-389, 2005. Cordes, Ruth, “Is grey literature ever used? Using citation analysis to measure the impact of GESAMP, an

international marine scientific advisory body” Can. J. Infor & Lib. Sci v.28 (1): 49-69, 2004 Cox, Janice E. “Citation analysis of graduate dental theses references: implications for collection

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citation analysis” Portal: Libraries and the academy v. 8 (4): 2008, pp. 387-405. Moed, Henk F. “new developments in citation analysis and research evaluation” Information Services & Use

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