Transcript Citation Analysis of Theses/Dissertations

A basic analysis of sources, dates, authors for a Marine Biological Laboratory
SAIL meeting - Wilmington, N.C. - May 14, 2009
Kathleen 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.
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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)
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CBL has always had very strong ties to the University
Maryland
1925 Founded under Dr. Truitt from Univ. of Md.
1930’s Start of summer programs
of
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.
1976 Graduate students formally
began work during the school year
as part of their graduate school
experience
 The first degrees were issued in :
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◦ 1976 MS under the Dept of Botany
University of Maryland College Park
◦ 1981 PhD Under the Dept of Microbiology
University of Maryland College Park
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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
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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.
 Sort
by year
 Graph
 Hope to get to soon -
◦ Use find replace function to
switch years to age
1700
1800
PhD year spans
1900
quantity
120
1910
100
1920
1930
80
1940
1950
60
1960
1970-4
40
1975-9
1980-4
20
1985-9
1990-4
0
Ki 04
Fr 04 Ch 04 Ro 04 Sc 05 Me 05 Cr 06 Ko 06 Eg 06 KL 07
students
Tr 07
Fi 07 Men 07 Ma 08
1995-9
2000-4
2005-
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A/V
B
C
D/TH
Go
Gr
J
M
N
P
S
T
W
Audio tape / Video
Monograph
Conference Paper
Dissertation / Thesis
Government document/web site
Grey Literature
Journal
Magazine
Newspaper
Personal Communication
Software
Technical report
Web site/ web page
Ma
J
g
a
Pe New zin
rso sp e
na ape
lC
r
om
So m
f
Te twa
ch re
Re
Th pt
W esi s
eb
Si
te
Vi
de
o
tap
e
Co Boo
nfe ks
re
nc
e
Di
ss
Go
v
Gr
ey
Au
dio
quantity
Source types
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Series1
type
Title
dispersion
Proportion
of journals
cited
Most cited Journals
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I reviewed a merged listing of publications
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After doing sort on material type
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There were 40 journal titles that had over 10
citations
Range from 10 to 119
The highest used title was Environmental
Science and technology
T o p
5
ci t ed
p ub l i c a t i o ns
14 0
12 0
10 0
8 0
6 0
4 0
2 0
0
M ar i
n e Chemi
st r y
E st uar i
es
J. Geophys. Res
A t mospher i
c E n vi
r on .
E n v.
S ci & T ech.
SOURCES USED
600
500
400
300
Series1
200
100
0
BOOKS
DISS
CONF
JOUR
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
ES&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
Water Air & Soil Poll
13
5
284
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