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Citation analysis of PhD thesis at Wuhan University, China
Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services 33 (2009) 8–16
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l c a t s
Citation analysis of PhD thesis at Wuhan University, China Shi-Jian Gao ⁎, Wang-Zhi Yu, Feng-Ping Luo Wuhan University Library, China
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online 16 April 2009 Keywords: Citation analysis PhD thesis China Library collection Library services
a b s t r a c t This case study is a citation analysis of 56 PhD theses submitted in 2005 at Wuhan University (www.whu.edu.cn) in China. The authors analyzed 10,222 citations in theses in Library and Information Science, Biology, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Stomatology and reviewed and compared the characteristics of the literature cited in the four disciplines. The results revealed that in Biology and Stomatology mainly English language publications were cited whereas in the field of Library and Information Science, the cited literature came primarily from Chinese sources. In Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, citations were almost evenly split between English and Chinese sources. An appendix with tables of the journal titles cited most frequently may be used to evaluate serial holdings and to serve as a guide for students preparing their theses. In addition, the implications for library collection development policies and other technical services are discussed. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Wuhan University is a major university directly under the administration of the Education Ministry of the People's Republic of China. The university was established in 1893 as Ziqiang Institute by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces during the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). The institution's name changed several times before it became National Wuhan University in July 1928. In August 2000, the original Wuhan University, Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electrical Engineering, Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, and Hubei Medical University merged to form the new Wuhan University. The new Wuhan University ranks 7th among postgraduate educational institutions in China and has been authorized by the State Council to award doctoral degrees in eleven disciplines including Philosophy, Economics, Law, Education, Literature, History, the sciences, Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Management [1]. Wuhan University has four branch libraries, each serving the faculty and students of the original institution to which it belonged. The collection of each branch library consists primarily of material that was in the collection when the libraries were affiliated with the independent institutions. Recommendations for new acquisitions for the branch libraries are made by the branch librarians, but the final purchasing decisions and the administration of the budget are controlled by the dean of the library. In addition there are a number of departmental libraries, which are also under the administration of the main library. 2. Rationale In 2000, a number of events coincided that gave impetus to this study. With the merger of the libraries into a centrally administered institution, management and other efficiencies were realized, however no additional funds were allocated for acquisitions and collection development, creating very serious budget concerns for the library. Another impetus for this study was the dramatic change in access to scholarship and research necessitated by China's entrance into the World Trade Organization
⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.-J. Gao). 1464-9055/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lcats.2009.03.001
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(WTO). Prior to 2001, there was little regulation and enforcement of copyright in China, and researchers were able to obtain unauthorized or pirated photocopies of journal articles easily and inexpensively. Once China's membership in the WTO was ratified in September 2001, illegally obtained photocopies of journal articles became a thing of the past. In order to provide scholars, researchers, and students with access to the most current scholarship, Chinese libraries quickly realized that they would have to subscribe to journals which they had previously acquired through some sort of back channel. The cost of adhering to copyright law by subscribing to foreign journals is ten times the cost of obtaining the “unauthorized” photocopies. These factors, coupled with inflation, led to this review of the library's collection strengths and weaknesses. A university library serving a multi-disciplinary population must understand the research and scholarly needs of its faculty and students. While faculty at Wuhan University were accustomed to using traditional (i.e.: print) resources for conducting research, students were increasingly more at home with online resources. One of the challenges facing the library was to find ways to increase library use and access to resources for scholars within existing limitations. The librarians of Wuhan University decided that it was important to study the needs of scholars in several disciplines in order to determine which collections were most heavily used and what formats were preferred, so that they could recommend alternative strategies to the library administration for resolving the budget crisis and complying with WTO regulations, but more importantly, to improve the level of access to scholarly material in the target disciplines to facilitate faculty research. The citation analysis would also allow the librarians to make informed decisions about collection policy, remain accountable for the limited resources, and continue to provide scholars with access to the most critical journals in their fields. Librarians have used several different quantitative methods to understand patrons' needs, including circulation and shelving data, the analysis of interlibrary loan requests, as well as citation analysis. Citation analysis has advantages over the others methods in a number of ways. First, citing a publication may be the best indication of its importance since the citation implies that researchers read the publication and considered it important enough to include as a reference. Second, managing a citation study is relatively simple — it can be conducted by a single person. Third, citation studies are reliable, valid, rapid, and economical and the data may be obtained unobtrusively. Fourth, and perhaps most valuable for an academic librarian is the fact that a citation is a component of the most important product of the academic enterprise. Any attempt to determine, for a given field, the journals that are important for an academic library is suspect unless it includes analysis of citations [2]. 3. Literature review Since Gross and Gross published their landmark article in 1927, citation analysis has been used to determine the value of individual journal titles and the characteristics of sources cited by researchers in individual disciplines [3]. In 1991 Walcott collected 70,032 citations in the geosciences from 500 PhD theses accepted at United States academic institutions between 1981 and 1985. An analysis of the results showed that 59.3% were classified as Geology; 79.6% were serials; 96.6% were written in English; and three decades were needed to cover 90% of all citations [4]. Cullars selected a random sample of 581 citations from 158 monographs published in 1985 and 1986 and indexed in RILA (Répertoire international de la literature de l′art). His study determined the characteristics of citations found in monographs in the fine arts and compared to those of other humanities citation studies [5]. Walcott analyzed 2030 citations from biological thesis and dissertations completed between 1989 and 1992 to investigate form, language dispersion, title dispersion and time span of the citations [6]. In 1995 Sylvia and Lesher collected 1732 citations for journals from thesis and dissertations written by students in Psychology and Counseling at St. Mary's University over a six year period. Three hundred seventy-six titles were cited; the top 75 titles (20%) constituted 62% of the citations [7]. In 1996 research conducted by Zipp indicated that the data derived from research on graduate students does more than provide valuable insight into student research behavior. Zipp found that citation analyses of thesis and dissertations are a reliable “surrogate for faculty publication citations in evaluations of the research portion of library collection use because the research interests of graduate students often reflect the interests of their faculty advisors” [8]. Edwards analyzed 5874 citations of doctoral dissertations and masters thesis written at the University of Akron in the area of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering from 1990 to 1996 to determine the characteristics of the materials being cited by graduate students[9]. Black examined 11,704 citations from every issue of two particular journals for a three-year period in order to identify a core collection in communication disorders [10]. Kelsey and Diamond focused their citation analysis on identifying core journals in the interdisciplinary field of Forestry. Citation differences among the three groups for assistant, associate, and full professors are analyzed and the core list of journals is compared with the list of primary forestry serials compiled by the Cornell Core Agricultural Literature Project [11]. Waugh and Ruppel analyzed citations of 265 dissertations, thesis, and graduate research papers in Workforce Education and Development at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. They hoped to identify the core titles in the field, inform serials acquisition and maintenance, and provide future students with a core list of journals in the field [12]. Haycock analyzed 4542 citations from forty-three education dissertations completed at the University of Minnesota during calendar years 2000 through 2002. Their research results were used to guide journal selection, retention, and cancellation decisions and to provide a basis for conversations with faculty [13]. Burright, Hahn, and Antonisse collected 170 journal articles published in 134 different journals by the 105 faculty and doctoral student members of the Department of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. The authors analyzed 7647 cited references in the 170 articles to help inform library decisions about collecting journals and other types of literature [14]. Recently Knievel and Kellsey analyzed 9131 citations from the 2002 volumes of journals in eight humanities fields: Art, Classics, History, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, and Religion. Their study compared language distribution and the rate at which monographs were cited [15].
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4. Methodology In order to make informed decisions about collection policy and provide superior service for patrons, it is important that the patrons' information needs be thoroughly investigated and understood. A review of the literature showed that citation analysis is often used to investigate and understand patrons' information needs and determine the value of individual journal titles in specific disciplines. For this study, which represents a pioneering effort using citation analysis at the local level, the ten articles mentioned in the literature review were examined to gain an understanding of the literature of citation analysis and to help establish a foundation for further innovation and study. At Wuhan University, the library's collection development efforts have focused primarily on a number of key disciplines. Although in recent years fewer funds were available to purchase materials, the libraries have always tried to satisfy the teaching and research needs of the faculty and students in these key areas. In order to understand the relationship between the patrons' needs for research materials and the collection development plans maintained by the library, citations in dissertations in four key areas, Library and Information science (LIS), Biology, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (PRS), and Stomatology1 were selected. Three of the four majors chosen for the study – Library and Information Science, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and Stomatology – represent topics that ranked first in the Evaluation Report of Chinese Postgraduate Education in 2005–2006.2 Biology ranked ninth. They also represent four broad subject areas — the humanities, the physical sciences, engineering, and medicine, representative of a good cross-section of scholarly research at Wuhan University. Citation analysis enjoys a long history as a methodology. It generally examines bibliographic data from journal articles, theses, monographs, published bibliographies, and electronic indexes in order to understand researchers' specific information needs and to explain trends in library use. Of the various forms of bibliographic analyses, PhD thesis citation analysis provides a very effective and convenient method to gauge local user needs for a university library collection. At Wuhan University, supporting faculty scholarship is very important, yet it is easier to obtain access to PhD dissertations than to faculty scholarship. Students engaged in post-baccalaureate research represent an important and active group of library users and much can be learned about the strengths and weaknesses of library collections from a citation analysis of their research. As a result, the decision was made to concentrate this study on citations found in PhD dissertations. The theses topics reflect a higher academic level than that of undergraduate students and the literature they cite provides useful indicators about the nature of the resources suggested by their faculty advisors. Analyzing citations in PhD thesis is also a reflection of faculty interests and the number of referenced articles in theses is often much larger than the number of articles cited in published faculty papers. Keeping these factors in mind helped to establish the parameters for this research project. In 2005, a search of the postgraduate thesis database maintained by Wuhan University identified 21 PhD theses in Library and Information Science, 53 in Biology, 30 in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and 40 in Stomatology — 144 in all. In order to keep the data set small enough to be manageable, yet large enough to provide a reasonably accurate snapshot of the information, 56 PhD theses were selected for the study; 14 in each discipline.3 Based on the format of the material, each citation was coded: periodical, monograph, conference proceeding, thesis, website, and other. Items categorized as “other” included manuscripts, teaching materials, standards, patents, technical reports, as well as material of uncertain format. For each journal citation, the journal title, language and publication year were also recorded. An Excel spreadsheet containing worksheets for material type, publication year of journal, language of journal, and journal title was created for each of the four disciplines. In order to eliminate confusion caused by variations or similarities in journal titles, each title was standardized based on information from sources including the Wuhan University Library OPAC, OCLC, the China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS), and the Union Service System of the Chinese National Science Digital Library (USSCNSDL). Journal titles which could not be positively identified were incorporated in the “other” category. A formula was devised based on the date of publication of the citation and the submission year of the dissertation — for example, if the date of publication of the citation was the same as the submission year of the thesis the citation received a rank of zero. Finally, the total citation counts were combined, percentages were calculated for each category, and the twenty most frequently cited journal titles were identified. The authors analyzed and compared the characteristics of the data sets in the four subject areas in order to inform library collection development policies and other services. 5. Analysis Overall, the 56 PhD theses yielded 10,222 citations: 2470 from Library and Information Science, 3008 from Biology, 2332 from Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and 2412 from Stomatology. Table 1 indicates that Biology had the highest average number of citations as well as the highest and lowest number of actual citations, suggesting that Biology requires access to the largest number of documents. The number of citations in the other three disciplines was very similar, although in Stomatology the difference between the highest and lowest number of citations was larger than in the other disciplines, suggesting that the Stomatology collection required enhancing.
1 Stomatology is the branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the mouth. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ stomatology (accessed 22 November 2008). 2 Evaluation report. 3 Instead of developing a formula based on the number of dissertations in each subject vis a vis the entire number of dissertations, the authors decided that the analysis and comparison would be simplified and uniformity would be maintained if 14 dissertations in each discipline were selected.
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Table 1 Summary of citations. Majors
Number of thesis
Number of citations
Average number of citations
Highest number of citations
Lowest number of citations
LIS Biology PRS Stomatology Total
14 14 14 14 56
2470 3008 2332 2412 10222
176.43 214.86 166.57 172.29 182.54
247 300 252 293
129 163 98 93
Table 2 illustrates the frequency of material types cited. In all four disciplines, journal articles were cited most frequently, however in Biology and Stomatology, journal citations accounted for significantly more citations (91 and 94% respectively) than in the other two majors, a finding that is consistent with international research. Hurd examined the information needs of a small population of molecular biologists and pointed out that of the cited references, 91% were to journal articles [16]. In a study of citations for doctoral research in Library and Information Science, Buttlar found that 46% of the citations were to journal articles [17]. As Table 2 indicates, the analysis identifies an overwhelming emphasis on citations from the journal literature. Subject and reference librarians as well as library administrators must pay close attention to this information. Knowing which journals were cited most often and which were most favored by researchers will help librarians develop collection development strategies to satisfy the research and scholarship needs for future generations. Monographs were the second most cited type of material in all fields, except in the area of Library and Information Science. In fact, dissertations in Biology and Stomatology cited less monographic material (4.7 and 2.7% respectively) than the dissertations in the other two subjects, which suggests that collection development allocations for monographs in these areas could be adjusted in order to provide additional resources in areas where there is greater need. The research also pointed out that students studying Library and Information Science were more likely than students in the other disciplines to refer to websites in conducting their research. Megnigbeto's study showed that in Benin, Library and Information Science students surveyed between 1997 and 2004 rarely cited websites but that by 2003, the number of citations to websites began to increase significantly, to approximately 20% of total citations [18]. On this point the Wuhan study parallels results found in other international research. Perhaps one reason for the increased instance of citations to websites has to do with the ease of use of the Internet for communication and sharing of information in an emerging subject area not bound by traditions of printed scholarship. The study also revealed that postgraduates in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing are more likely to cite conference proceedings (11%) than students in the other fields. More research may be needed to understand the significance of this information. Table 3 shows that PhD postgraduate students primarily used journals in two languages – English and Chinese – but significant differences in how the four majors used foreign language sources were observed. Chinese language journals were cited far more often in Library and Information Science (74%) and in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (48%), whereas English language journals were cited more often in Biology (89%) and Stomatology (92%). Citations to journals in foreign languages other than English were rare and account for less than 10% of the total number of citations in each subject. For example, in Library and Information Science only material from Chinese and English journals was cited. These results are not consistent with other international studies that show that authors most frequently tend to cite material written in their mother tongue. For humanities scholars in the United States for example, Kellsey and Knievel reported that English represented 78.6% of all citations while foreign language citations represented 21.3% of all citations. Of those foreign languages, they found that German and French accounted for 7.8 and 5.7% respectively of the total citations, while Italian and Latin accounted for 2.0 and 1.2% [19]. Similarly Cullars found that in French fine arts books 68.7% the of citations were French, 10.5% were English, 8.2% were German, 5.2% Italian, and 2.2% were Dutch. In German books, 69.9% of citations were in German, whereas French, Italian, English and Latin accounted for 10.9, 6.6, 6.3 and 4.7% respectively [20]. In the Wuhan study, the authors speculated that the reason most of the foreign language citations were to English publications was due to the overwhelming majority of Chinese doctoral
Table 2 Frequency of material type cited. Majors
Total
Journals
Monographs
Conference proceedings
Thesis
Websites
Other
LIS % Biology % PRS % Stomatology % Total %
2470 100 3008 100 2332 100 2412 100 10222 100
1232 49.88 2732 90.82 1340 57.46 2277 94.40 7581 74.16
468 18.95 140 4.65 526 22.56 65 2.70 1199 11.73
56 2.26 118 3.92 262 11.24 51 2.12 487 4.76
78 3.16 2 0.07 56 2.40 3 0.12 139 1.36
520 21.05 6 0.20 54 2.31 2 0.08 582 5.69
116 4.70 10 0.34 94 4.03 14 0.58 234 2.29
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Table 3 Language distribution of cited journals. Majors
Chinese
%
English
%
Japanese
%
German
%
French
%
LIS Biology PRS Stomatology
908 284 640 169
73.70 10.40 47.76 7.42
324 2424 684 2083
26.30 88.73 51.05 91.48
0 18 14 14
0.00 0.66 1.04 0.61
0 2 2 4
0.00 0.07 0.15 0.18
0 4 0 7
0.00 0.14 0.00 0.31
students who have at least a reading knowledge of English, as opposed to a familiarity with other foreign languages. Thus they quite naturally gravitate toward English language sources. In addition, English is recognized as the international language of scholarship, so it seems quite natural that the preponderance of citations in the Wuhan dissertations should cite English language material. The authors also examined the distribution levels of the cited titles in the four disciplines. Table 4 shows the number of citations in all journals. In Library and Information Science 153 (42.5%) of the cited journals covered 80% of all citations. In Biology, 150 (27.8%) of the cited journals represented 80% of all citations. In Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 139 titles (38.9%) represented 80% of citations and in Stomatology 119 titles (26.9%) covered 80% of the citations. Table 4 shows the relationship between the number of journals and the number of referenced articles. For example, in Library and Information Science, five journals satisfy 20% of the need. The data indicates that the distribution level of journals cited in Library and Information Science and Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing was rather similar and quite surprising and significantly different from the findings of other international studies. For instance, Udofia analyzed more than 1500 journal citations from journals in the field of veterinary medicine and found that just over 15% of the journals accounted for 80% of the citations [21]. Clearly, the interdisciplinary nature of Library and Information Science and Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing plays an important role in these two fields of study and had an impact on the nature of the citations. The results for Biology were similar to those in Stomatology and their core title numbers seem to correlate closely with traditionally observed distributions in which 20% of the titles account for 80% of the citations. Table 5 shows the age distribution for all journals cited by the theses in the four disciplines. The average age of a journal cited in Library and Information Science was 4.23 years, in Biology 8 years, in Stomatology 9 years and in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 7.2 years. While the journal cited most frequently in Library and Information Science and in Stomatology was only a year old, 90% of the citations in those two disciplines were actually from older publications. On the whole this study, unlike that of Burright et al. who found that 70% of citations in the field of Neuroscience were published within the last 15 years, found that in the four fields that were studied, students tended to use more recently published material [22]. The age distribution table of cited journals could be used to guide the library's journal management policies in the areas of accessibility, storage and weeding. For instance, journals with high use rates – those published within the last three years – should be readily accessible. Tables A1–A4 [Appendix A] show both the top twenty titles in each discipline cited most frequently in theses submitted at Wuhan University in 2005 and the twenty most frequently cited journals held by the library. A status of “P” means that the library acquires the print version of the journal; a status of “E” means that the library acquires an electronic version of the journal; a status of “B” means that both the print and the electronic formats are acquired. “N” means that the title is not held by the library. Of the top twenty journal titles cited in Biology and Stomatology, titles in English accounted for 95% of the citations whereas in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, only 60% of the cited journals were in English and in Library and Information Science, just 10% were in English. Based on holdings information, the library holds more than 95% of the journals cited, except in Stomatology, where the holdings rate is lower, at only 75%. It is also worth noting that of the top six most frequently cited journal titles in Stomatology, four titles – all in English – were not in the library's collection.4 Since English language journal literature is the primary source of information in Stomatology, additional collection analysis of the journal collection is indicated. In the dissertations reviewed for this study, 1699 journal titles in the four disciplines were cited. This relatively small group of journals provides a significant portion of support in these four key subjects. Although not all the titles are regarded as the most important in their respective disciplines, they are important resources in terms of library collection development and management, faculty teaching and research needs, as well as for students preparing theses. 6. Conclusion In most universities in China, academic librarians are responsible for collection development, user education, reference and consultation services, including working one-on-one with students. Librarians are expected to know enough about key subjects in order to assist patrons with their research needs. During this study, the authors noted that the use of periodical material, especially in the sciences and medicine, was quite similar. This appears to be due to the fact that in these disciplines, periodical literature tends to be the most current and up-to-date and the information is accessible through a variety of channels. As a result, scholars are very interested in reviewing periodical material and the libraries have stressed the need to develop those collections aggressively. 4 An administratively independent library devoted to Stomatology is connected to the teaching hospital of Wuhan University. However, this library's collection is not readily accessible through the university's online catalog, therefore its holdings were not considered as part of this study.
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Table 4 Title distribution of cited journals. Majors
No. of titles and 20% of total
No. of titles and 40% of total
No. of titles and 60% of total
No. of titles and 80% of total
No. of titles and 100% of total
LIS Biology PRS Stomatology
5 4 8 6
19 17 25 20
59 50 59 47
153 150 139 119
360 539 357 443
The study also revealed that the majority of foreign language citations – across all disciplines – were to English language publications and that there were very few citations to material in other foreign languages. There appear to be several reasons for this: 1) a long history of participation in international scholarship, interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, is regaining momentum. English language publications are now easier to obtain and are much more widely available. In many disciplines, particularly in the sciences, the lingua franca is English and since most Chinese scholars are now conversant in English, naturally they tend consult and study research published in English; 2) the library acquires resources representing an international level of research and is attempting to meet the needs of postgraduates by a vigorous acquisitions program of English language material; 3) most graduate students have at least a reading knowledge of English, having studied it for a number of years, but have only a limited knowledge of other foreign languages. In order to assess the value of acquiring resources in foreign languages other than English, additional citation studies in a variety of disciplines would be needed. In a 2005 study of Master of Science theses, the average number of citations per dissertation was 30 [23]. Since the average number of citations for PhD theses in this study was 182.54, this suggests very clearly that research for PhD dissertations requires access to a larger number of resources and to resources of greater sophistication. This is not completely surprising, for in order to support research at the highest level, particularly in the sciences, a significant number of advanced resources are essential. Armed with the information that PhD theses had a significantly higher number of citations than master's theses, libraries may wish to re-evaluate their collection development plans in order to build their collections in ways that more completely support the research being performed and the theses being written. Since the resources needed for scientific research are extremely expensive and the library's budget is finite, a greater emphasis on interlibrary loan and document delivery, rather than on outright acquisition, should also be considered. Of the four disciplines that were studied, Biology and Stomatology have the greatest similarity in terms of the types of documents consulted and the language of the documents. Both subjects required a great many individual journal titles and even more significantly, the majority of the titles they used were English language publications. In fact, the study indicated that English language titles accounted for more than 80% of the total number of citations. These findings are not completely unexpected, since Chinese scientists and medical researchers rely heavily on scholarship published abroad. The study also revealed that four of the top six English language journals cited in the Stomatology dissertations were not available in the university library in either print or electronic form. Some of the results of this study would have been different if the collection from the Stomatology College had been part of the study, since that special library has a significant English language Table 5 Age distribution of cited journals. Year
LIS
%
Cumulative %
Biology
%
Cumulative %
PRS
%
Cumulative %
Stomatology
%
Cumulative %
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–41 45–49 ≥50
12 270 234 166 114 148 74 74 26 30 28 20 0 6 8 8 2 2 2 4 2 0 2
0.97 21.92 18.99 13.48 9.25 12.01 6.01 6.01 2.11 2.43 2.27 1.63 0.00 0.49 0.65 0.65 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.33 0.16 0.00 0.16
0.97 22.89 41.88 55.36 64.61 76.62 82.63 88.64 90.75 93.18 95.45 97.08 97.08 97.57 98.22 98.87 99.03 99.19 99.35 99.68 99.84 99.84 100
10 160 268 288 266 278 228 192 156 122 114 96 60 70 58 186 100 34 22 12 8 2 2
0.37 5.85 9.81 10.54 9.74 10.18 8.34 7.03 5.71 4.47 4.17 3.51 2.20 2.56 2.12 6.81 3.66 1.25 0.81 0.44 0.29 0.07 0.07
0.37 6.22 16.03 26.57 36.31 46.49 54.83 61.86 67.57 72.04 76.21 79.72 81.92 84.48 86.6 93.41 97.07 98.32 99.13 99.57 99.86 99.93 100
12 88 170 202 126 146 110 84 46 32 30 40 26 36 22 98 34 20 16 0 0 2 0
0.90 6.57 12.69 15.07 9.40 10.89 8.21 6.27 3.43 2.39 2.24 2.98 1.94 2.69 1.64 7.31 2.54 1.5 1.19 0.00 0.00 0.15 0.00
0.90 7.47 20.16 35.23 44.63 55.52 63.73 70.00 73.43 75.82 78.06 81.04 82.98 85.67 87.31 94.62 97.16 98.66 99.85 99.85 99.85 100 100
25 224 212 180 212 199 158 147 117 82 82 84 61 65 31 154 112 33 33 25 25 0 16
1.10 9.84 9.31 7.90 9.31 8.74 6.94 6.46 5.14 3.60 3.60 3.69 2.68 2.85 1.36 6.76 4.92 1.45 1.45 1.1 1.1 0.00 0.7
1.10 10.94 20.25 28.15 37.46 46.2 53.14 59.6 64.74 68.34 71.94 75.63 78.31 81.16 82.52 89.28 94.2 95.65 97.1 98.2 99.3 99.3 100
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collection and has the highest delivery and usage rates compared to the collections of the four branch libraries which were part of the study. Library subject specialists should pay close attention to patterns of use and find ways to make collections, especially those in highly specialized areas, more widely accessible to researchers. One way this could be accomplished would be to convert the bibliographic records for specialized collections into machine readable form, so that details about their holdings are integrated into the holdings of the university library. This would not only facilitate complex research and improve research services but at the same time allow the library to maximize its limited fiscal resources. In Library and Information Science the study revealed that the number of references to English language publications was relatively small. This may be attributed to the fact that in the humanities and social sciences, the need for a reading knowledge of English is less critical than it is for scientists, for whom a familiarity with English is essential in order to complete their studies and conduct research. It is also worth noting that considerable work is being done in China in the field of information science so more primary source material is available in Chinese. The study also revealed that more and more citations are being made to websites and other electronic sources. This shift in the type of information being cited is one which collection development librarians should be aware of, since it impacts library acquisitions and research services. In developing a collection development strategy for the Wuhan University library, care should be taken to make sure that the top twenty most frequently cited journals in each discipline (listed in Tables A1–A4) are readily available in order to introduce students at an early stage in their research to the outstanding publications in the field. Collection development librarians also need to be responsive to statistical indicators that show that 20% of the titles being cited account for 80% of the citations. While this study and its findings are specific to Wuhan University, the citation analysis methodology that was employed would be applicable in other settings as well, for it provides a model that libraries could use to identify the primary sources used in research. In addition, the results from a study of this type may be used in budget planning so that limited funds are used effectively and disciplines requiring more periodicals in foreign languages, especially those published in English, receive additional allocations. The study also may be used to guide collection maintenance, including withdrawal of unused material, to cancel unused or underused subscriptions, and to monitor circulation and in-house use. It may be possible, based on the statistics, to concentrate on providing material in alternative formats, rather than on relying exclusively on expanding the collection of printed material. Libraries should look for ways to make resources accessible to the widest possible audience. One way to accomplish this goal would be to find ways to integrate collections so that researchers throughout the institution are able to access the entire spectrum of library resources. This would be beneficial on many levels and enhance the library's role as a key player in the research process. Acknowledgments This article was edited and revised with the assistance of Yalan Qi, Systems Librarian, University of Maryland, College Park, MD and Pamela Bluh, Associate Director for Technical Services & Administration, Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD. Appendix A. Most frequently cited journals Space limitations prevent the entire list of titles from being listed. The entire list may be obtained from the authors upon request.
Table A1 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in LIS. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Journal of the China Society for Scientific and Technical Information Library and Information Service Information Science China Publishing Update Bulletin of the Library Science in China Publishing Science Knowledge of Library and Information Science Publishing Research Journal of Information Journal of Information Science New Technology of Library and Information Science Fresh Reading International Journal of Electronic Commerce Information Studies: Theory & Application Electronic publishing Application Research of Computers Editors' Friend Computer Engineering Computer Engineering and Applications Science-Technology & Publication
71 60 49 40 35 28 25 25 22 22 19 16 14 14 13 12 10 10 10 10
5.76 4.87 3.98 3.25 2.84 2.27 2.03 2.03 1.79 1.79 1.54 1.30 1.14 1.14 1.06 0.97 0.81 0.81 0.81 0.81
Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese English Chinese Chinese English Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese
B B B B B P B B B B B B E B B B B B B B
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Table A2 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in Biology. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Journal of Virology Virology Nature Genetics The Journal of General Virology Science The Journal of Biological Chemistry AIDS AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses Nucleic Acids Research Molecular Cell Biology Research Communications Cell Archives of Virology Journal of Invertebrate Pathology The Lancet Chinese Journal of Epidemiology Journal of Molecular Biology Nature Neuroscience Virus Research The Journal of Biological Chemistry Journal of virology
287 101 95 89 82 80 52 40 40 38 38 30 30 30 28 25 25 25 24 24
10.51 3.7 3.48 3.26 3.00 2.93 1.90 1.46 1.46 1.39 1.39 1.10 1.10 1.10 1.02 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.88 0.88
English English English English English English English English English English English English English English Chinese English English English English English
P B B P B P P N P E B E E B B E E E P P
Table A3 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in PRS. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing Bulletin of Surveying and Mapping Geography and GEO-Information Science Geo-information Science International Journal of Remote Sensing International Journal of Geographical Information Science Transportation Research Part C Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica Journal of computer graphics Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing Computer Engineering and Application Remotesensing Technology and Application Color Research and Application IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Journal of Soil and Water Conservation Pattern Recognition Transportation Research. B. Methological Computer Engineering
62 60 28 26 26 24 24 22 20 18 18 18 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 14
4.63 4.48 2.09 1.94 1.94 1.79 1.79 1.64 1.49 1.34 1.34 1.34 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.05
Chinese English English Chinese Chinese Chinese English English English Chinese English English Chinese Chinese English English English English English Chinese
B P P B B B B B E B P E B B P P E E E B
Table A4 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in Stomatology. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry Journal of Dental Research Archives of Oral Biology The International Journal of Prosthodontics Journal of Periodontology Caries Research Nature Genetics Science The Journal of Biological Chemistry Dental materials Infection and Immunity Chinese Journal of Stomatology The International Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Implants Development Journal of Oral Rehabilitation Cell Quintessence International The Journal of Cell Biology The Journal of Immunology British Dental Journal
151 92 69 65 51 50 41 39 36 35 35 35 33 31 30 28 26 26 26 26
6.63 4.04 3.03 2.85 2.24 2.2 1.8 1.71 1.58 1.54 1.54 1.54 1.45 1.36 1.32 1.23 1.14 1.14 1.14 1.14
English English English English English English English English English English English Chinese English English English English English English English English
E N E N N N B B P E P B N N E E N P P E
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References [1] Qiu, J. P., et al. (2005). Zhong Guo Yan Sheng Jiao Yu Ping Jia Bao Gao 2005–2006. An Evaluation Report of Postgraduates Education in China 2005–2006 (pp. 181–182). Beijing: Science Press. [2] Woberley, S. E. (1982). Journal rankings from citation studies: A comparison of national and local data from social work. Library Quarterly, 52 (4), 348–359. [3] Gross, P. L. K., & Gross, E. M. (Oct. 1927). College libraries and chemical education. Science, 66, 385–389. [4] Walcott, R. (1991). Characteristics of citations in geoscience doctoral dissertations accepted at United States academic institutions 1981–1985. Science & Technology Libraries, 12 (2), 5–15. [5] Cullars, J. (1992). Citation characteristics of monographs in the fine arts. Library Quarterly, 62 (3), 325–342. [6] Walcott, R. (1994). Local citation studies — A shortcut to local knowledge. Science & Technology Libraries, 14 (3), 1–14. [7] Sylvia, M., & Lesher, M. (July 1995). What journals do psychology graduate students need? A citation analysis of thesis references. College & Research Libraries, 56, 313–318. [8] Zipp, L. S. (Oct. 1996). Thesis and dissertation citations as indicators of faculty research use of university journal collections. Library Resources & Technical Services, 40, 335–342. [9] Edwards, S. (1999). Citation analysis as a collection development tool: A bibliometric study of polymer science thesis and dissertations. Serials Review, 25, 11–20. [10] Black, S. (Jan. 2001). Using citation analysis to pursue a core collection of journals for communication disorders. Library Resources & Technical Services, 45, 3–9. [11] Kelsey, P., & Diamond, T. (Sept. 2003). Establishing a core list of journals for forestry: A citation analysis from faculty at Southern Universities. College & Research Libraries, 64, 357–377. [12] Waugh, C. K., & Ruppel, M. (2004). Citation analysis of dissertation, thesis, and research paper references in workforce education and development. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30 (4), 276–284. [13] Haycock, Laurel A. (2004). Citation analysis of education dissertations for collection development. Library Resources & Technical Services, 48 (2), 102–106. [14] Burright, M. A., Hahn, T. B., & Antonisse, M. J. (2005). Understanding information use in a multidisciplinary field: A local citation analysis of neuroscience research. College & Research Libraries, 66 (3), 198–210. [15] Knievel, J. E., & Kellsey, C. (2005). Citation analysis for collection development: A comparative study of eight humanities fields. Library Quarterly, 75 (2), 142–168. [16] Hurd, J. M., Blecic, D. D., & Vishwanatham, R. (Jan. 1999). Information use by molecular biologists: Implications for library collections and services. College & Research Libraries, 60, 31–43. [17] Buttlar, L. (1999). Information sources in library and information science doctoral research. Library & Information Science Research, 21 (2), 227–245. [18] Megnigbeto, E. (2006). Internet-based resources citation by undergraduate students: A case study of library and information science students. International Information & Library Review, 38, 49–55. [19] Kellsey, C., & Knievel, J. E. (2004). Global English in the humanities? A longitudinal citation study of foreign-language use by humanities scholars. College & Research Libraries, 62 (3), 194–204. [20] Cullars, J. M. (1996). Citation characteristics of French and German fine arts monographs. Library Quarterly, 66 (2), 138–160. [21] Udofia, U. I. (1997). Selecting veterinary medical periodicals through citation analysis. Library Review, 46 (2), 105–112. [22] Burright, Hahn, and Antonisse. [23] S. J. Gao, et al., “A longitudinal investigation into the changing citing behavior of geomatics postgraduate students at Wuhan University, China, 1988–2004: Implications for collection development,” Library Collections Acquisitions & Technical Services 31(1) (2007): 42–57. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. lcats.2006.12.001
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / l c a t s
Citation analysis of PhD thesis at Wuhan University, China Shi-Jian Gao ⁎, Wang-Zhi Yu, Feng-Ping Luo Wuhan University Library, China
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online 16 April 2009 Keywords: Citation analysis PhD thesis China Library collection Library services
a b s t r a c t This case study is a citation analysis of 56 PhD theses submitted in 2005 at Wuhan University (www.whu.edu.cn) in China. The authors analyzed 10,222 citations in theses in Library and Information Science, Biology, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Stomatology and reviewed and compared the characteristics of the literature cited in the four disciplines. The results revealed that in Biology and Stomatology mainly English language publications were cited whereas in the field of Library and Information Science, the cited literature came primarily from Chinese sources. In Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, citations were almost evenly split between English and Chinese sources. An appendix with tables of the journal titles cited most frequently may be used to evaluate serial holdings and to serve as a guide for students preparing their theses. In addition, the implications for library collection development policies and other technical services are discussed. © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Wuhan University is a major university directly under the administration of the Education Ministry of the People's Republic of China. The university was established in 1893 as Ziqiang Institute by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces during the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). The institution's name changed several times before it became National Wuhan University in July 1928. In August 2000, the original Wuhan University, Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electrical Engineering, Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, and Hubei Medical University merged to form the new Wuhan University. The new Wuhan University ranks 7th among postgraduate educational institutions in China and has been authorized by the State Council to award doctoral degrees in eleven disciplines including Philosophy, Economics, Law, Education, Literature, History, the sciences, Engineering, Agriculture, Medicine and Management [1]. Wuhan University has four branch libraries, each serving the faculty and students of the original institution to which it belonged. The collection of each branch library consists primarily of material that was in the collection when the libraries were affiliated with the independent institutions. Recommendations for new acquisitions for the branch libraries are made by the branch librarians, but the final purchasing decisions and the administration of the budget are controlled by the dean of the library. In addition there are a number of departmental libraries, which are also under the administration of the main library. 2. Rationale In 2000, a number of events coincided that gave impetus to this study. With the merger of the libraries into a centrally administered institution, management and other efficiencies were realized, however no additional funds were allocated for acquisitions and collection development, creating very serious budget concerns for the library. Another impetus for this study was the dramatic change in access to scholarship and research necessitated by China's entrance into the World Trade Organization
⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.-J. Gao). 1464-9055/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.lcats.2009.03.001
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(WTO). Prior to 2001, there was little regulation and enforcement of copyright in China, and researchers were able to obtain unauthorized or pirated photocopies of journal articles easily and inexpensively. Once China's membership in the WTO was ratified in September 2001, illegally obtained photocopies of journal articles became a thing of the past. In order to provide scholars, researchers, and students with access to the most current scholarship, Chinese libraries quickly realized that they would have to subscribe to journals which they had previously acquired through some sort of back channel. The cost of adhering to copyright law by subscribing to foreign journals is ten times the cost of obtaining the “unauthorized” photocopies. These factors, coupled with inflation, led to this review of the library's collection strengths and weaknesses. A university library serving a multi-disciplinary population must understand the research and scholarly needs of its faculty and students. While faculty at Wuhan University were accustomed to using traditional (i.e.: print) resources for conducting research, students were increasingly more at home with online resources. One of the challenges facing the library was to find ways to increase library use and access to resources for scholars within existing limitations. The librarians of Wuhan University decided that it was important to study the needs of scholars in several disciplines in order to determine which collections were most heavily used and what formats were preferred, so that they could recommend alternative strategies to the library administration for resolving the budget crisis and complying with WTO regulations, but more importantly, to improve the level of access to scholarly material in the target disciplines to facilitate faculty research. The citation analysis would also allow the librarians to make informed decisions about collection policy, remain accountable for the limited resources, and continue to provide scholars with access to the most critical journals in their fields. Librarians have used several different quantitative methods to understand patrons' needs, including circulation and shelving data, the analysis of interlibrary loan requests, as well as citation analysis. Citation analysis has advantages over the others methods in a number of ways. First, citing a publication may be the best indication of its importance since the citation implies that researchers read the publication and considered it important enough to include as a reference. Second, managing a citation study is relatively simple — it can be conducted by a single person. Third, citation studies are reliable, valid, rapid, and economical and the data may be obtained unobtrusively. Fourth, and perhaps most valuable for an academic librarian is the fact that a citation is a component of the most important product of the academic enterprise. Any attempt to determine, for a given field, the journals that are important for an academic library is suspect unless it includes analysis of citations [2]. 3. Literature review Since Gross and Gross published their landmark article in 1927, citation analysis has been used to determine the value of individual journal titles and the characteristics of sources cited by researchers in individual disciplines [3]. In 1991 Walcott collected 70,032 citations in the geosciences from 500 PhD theses accepted at United States academic institutions between 1981 and 1985. An analysis of the results showed that 59.3% were classified as Geology; 79.6% were serials; 96.6% were written in English; and three decades were needed to cover 90% of all citations [4]. Cullars selected a random sample of 581 citations from 158 monographs published in 1985 and 1986 and indexed in RILA (Répertoire international de la literature de l′art). His study determined the characteristics of citations found in monographs in the fine arts and compared to those of other humanities citation studies [5]. Walcott analyzed 2030 citations from biological thesis and dissertations completed between 1989 and 1992 to investigate form, language dispersion, title dispersion and time span of the citations [6]. In 1995 Sylvia and Lesher collected 1732 citations for journals from thesis and dissertations written by students in Psychology and Counseling at St. Mary's University over a six year period. Three hundred seventy-six titles were cited; the top 75 titles (20%) constituted 62% of the citations [7]. In 1996 research conducted by Zipp indicated that the data derived from research on graduate students does more than provide valuable insight into student research behavior. Zipp found that citation analyses of thesis and dissertations are a reliable “surrogate for faculty publication citations in evaluations of the research portion of library collection use because the research interests of graduate students often reflect the interests of their faculty advisors” [8]. Edwards analyzed 5874 citations of doctoral dissertations and masters thesis written at the University of Akron in the area of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering from 1990 to 1996 to determine the characteristics of the materials being cited by graduate students[9]. Black examined 11,704 citations from every issue of two particular journals for a three-year period in order to identify a core collection in communication disorders [10]. Kelsey and Diamond focused their citation analysis on identifying core journals in the interdisciplinary field of Forestry. Citation differences among the three groups for assistant, associate, and full professors are analyzed and the core list of journals is compared with the list of primary forestry serials compiled by the Cornell Core Agricultural Literature Project [11]. Waugh and Ruppel analyzed citations of 265 dissertations, thesis, and graduate research papers in Workforce Education and Development at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. They hoped to identify the core titles in the field, inform serials acquisition and maintenance, and provide future students with a core list of journals in the field [12]. Haycock analyzed 4542 citations from forty-three education dissertations completed at the University of Minnesota during calendar years 2000 through 2002. Their research results were used to guide journal selection, retention, and cancellation decisions and to provide a basis for conversations with faculty [13]. Burright, Hahn, and Antonisse collected 170 journal articles published in 134 different journals by the 105 faculty and doctoral student members of the Department of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. The authors analyzed 7647 cited references in the 170 articles to help inform library decisions about collecting journals and other types of literature [14]. Recently Knievel and Kellsey analyzed 9131 citations from the 2002 volumes of journals in eight humanities fields: Art, Classics, History, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, and Religion. Their study compared language distribution and the rate at which monographs were cited [15].
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4. Methodology In order to make informed decisions about collection policy and provide superior service for patrons, it is important that the patrons' information needs be thoroughly investigated and understood. A review of the literature showed that citation analysis is often used to investigate and understand patrons' information needs and determine the value of individual journal titles in specific disciplines. For this study, which represents a pioneering effort using citation analysis at the local level, the ten articles mentioned in the literature review were examined to gain an understanding of the literature of citation analysis and to help establish a foundation for further innovation and study. At Wuhan University, the library's collection development efforts have focused primarily on a number of key disciplines. Although in recent years fewer funds were available to purchase materials, the libraries have always tried to satisfy the teaching and research needs of the faculty and students in these key areas. In order to understand the relationship between the patrons' needs for research materials and the collection development plans maintained by the library, citations in dissertations in four key areas, Library and Information science (LIS), Biology, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (PRS), and Stomatology1 were selected. Three of the four majors chosen for the study – Library and Information Science, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and Stomatology – represent topics that ranked first in the Evaluation Report of Chinese Postgraduate Education in 2005–2006.2 Biology ranked ninth. They also represent four broad subject areas — the humanities, the physical sciences, engineering, and medicine, representative of a good cross-section of scholarly research at Wuhan University. Citation analysis enjoys a long history as a methodology. It generally examines bibliographic data from journal articles, theses, monographs, published bibliographies, and electronic indexes in order to understand researchers' specific information needs and to explain trends in library use. Of the various forms of bibliographic analyses, PhD thesis citation analysis provides a very effective and convenient method to gauge local user needs for a university library collection. At Wuhan University, supporting faculty scholarship is very important, yet it is easier to obtain access to PhD dissertations than to faculty scholarship. Students engaged in post-baccalaureate research represent an important and active group of library users and much can be learned about the strengths and weaknesses of library collections from a citation analysis of their research. As a result, the decision was made to concentrate this study on citations found in PhD dissertations. The theses topics reflect a higher academic level than that of undergraduate students and the literature they cite provides useful indicators about the nature of the resources suggested by their faculty advisors. Analyzing citations in PhD thesis is also a reflection of faculty interests and the number of referenced articles in theses is often much larger than the number of articles cited in published faculty papers. Keeping these factors in mind helped to establish the parameters for this research project. In 2005, a search of the postgraduate thesis database maintained by Wuhan University identified 21 PhD theses in Library and Information Science, 53 in Biology, 30 in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and 40 in Stomatology — 144 in all. In order to keep the data set small enough to be manageable, yet large enough to provide a reasonably accurate snapshot of the information, 56 PhD theses were selected for the study; 14 in each discipline.3 Based on the format of the material, each citation was coded: periodical, monograph, conference proceeding, thesis, website, and other. Items categorized as “other” included manuscripts, teaching materials, standards, patents, technical reports, as well as material of uncertain format. For each journal citation, the journal title, language and publication year were also recorded. An Excel spreadsheet containing worksheets for material type, publication year of journal, language of journal, and journal title was created for each of the four disciplines. In order to eliminate confusion caused by variations or similarities in journal titles, each title was standardized based on information from sources including the Wuhan University Library OPAC, OCLC, the China Academic Library and Information System (CALIS), and the Union Service System of the Chinese National Science Digital Library (USSCNSDL). Journal titles which could not be positively identified were incorporated in the “other” category. A formula was devised based on the date of publication of the citation and the submission year of the dissertation — for example, if the date of publication of the citation was the same as the submission year of the thesis the citation received a rank of zero. Finally, the total citation counts were combined, percentages were calculated for each category, and the twenty most frequently cited journal titles were identified. The authors analyzed and compared the characteristics of the data sets in the four subject areas in order to inform library collection development policies and other services. 5. Analysis Overall, the 56 PhD theses yielded 10,222 citations: 2470 from Library and Information Science, 3008 from Biology, 2332 from Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and 2412 from Stomatology. Table 1 indicates that Biology had the highest average number of citations as well as the highest and lowest number of actual citations, suggesting that Biology requires access to the largest number of documents. The number of citations in the other three disciplines was very similar, although in Stomatology the difference between the highest and lowest number of citations was larger than in the other disciplines, suggesting that the Stomatology collection required enhancing.
1 Stomatology is the branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the mouth. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ stomatology (accessed 22 November 2008). 2 Evaluation report. 3 Instead of developing a formula based on the number of dissertations in each subject vis a vis the entire number of dissertations, the authors decided that the analysis and comparison would be simplified and uniformity would be maintained if 14 dissertations in each discipline were selected.
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Table 1 Summary of citations. Majors
Number of thesis
Number of citations
Average number of citations
Highest number of citations
Lowest number of citations
LIS Biology PRS Stomatology Total
14 14 14 14 56
2470 3008 2332 2412 10222
176.43 214.86 166.57 172.29 182.54
247 300 252 293
129 163 98 93
Table 2 illustrates the frequency of material types cited. In all four disciplines, journal articles were cited most frequently, however in Biology and Stomatology, journal citations accounted for significantly more citations (91 and 94% respectively) than in the other two majors, a finding that is consistent with international research. Hurd examined the information needs of a small population of molecular biologists and pointed out that of the cited references, 91% were to journal articles [16]. In a study of citations for doctoral research in Library and Information Science, Buttlar found that 46% of the citations were to journal articles [17]. As Table 2 indicates, the analysis identifies an overwhelming emphasis on citations from the journal literature. Subject and reference librarians as well as library administrators must pay close attention to this information. Knowing which journals were cited most often and which were most favored by researchers will help librarians develop collection development strategies to satisfy the research and scholarship needs for future generations. Monographs were the second most cited type of material in all fields, except in the area of Library and Information Science. In fact, dissertations in Biology and Stomatology cited less monographic material (4.7 and 2.7% respectively) than the dissertations in the other two subjects, which suggests that collection development allocations for monographs in these areas could be adjusted in order to provide additional resources in areas where there is greater need. The research also pointed out that students studying Library and Information Science were more likely than students in the other disciplines to refer to websites in conducting their research. Megnigbeto's study showed that in Benin, Library and Information Science students surveyed between 1997 and 2004 rarely cited websites but that by 2003, the number of citations to websites began to increase significantly, to approximately 20% of total citations [18]. On this point the Wuhan study parallels results found in other international research. Perhaps one reason for the increased instance of citations to websites has to do with the ease of use of the Internet for communication and sharing of information in an emerging subject area not bound by traditions of printed scholarship. The study also revealed that postgraduates in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing are more likely to cite conference proceedings (11%) than students in the other fields. More research may be needed to understand the significance of this information. Table 3 shows that PhD postgraduate students primarily used journals in two languages – English and Chinese – but significant differences in how the four majors used foreign language sources were observed. Chinese language journals were cited far more often in Library and Information Science (74%) and in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (48%), whereas English language journals were cited more often in Biology (89%) and Stomatology (92%). Citations to journals in foreign languages other than English were rare and account for less than 10% of the total number of citations in each subject. For example, in Library and Information Science only material from Chinese and English journals was cited. These results are not consistent with other international studies that show that authors most frequently tend to cite material written in their mother tongue. For humanities scholars in the United States for example, Kellsey and Knievel reported that English represented 78.6% of all citations while foreign language citations represented 21.3% of all citations. Of those foreign languages, they found that German and French accounted for 7.8 and 5.7% respectively of the total citations, while Italian and Latin accounted for 2.0 and 1.2% [19]. Similarly Cullars found that in French fine arts books 68.7% the of citations were French, 10.5% were English, 8.2% were German, 5.2% Italian, and 2.2% were Dutch. In German books, 69.9% of citations were in German, whereas French, Italian, English and Latin accounted for 10.9, 6.6, 6.3 and 4.7% respectively [20]. In the Wuhan study, the authors speculated that the reason most of the foreign language citations were to English publications was due to the overwhelming majority of Chinese doctoral
Table 2 Frequency of material type cited. Majors
Total
Journals
Monographs
Conference proceedings
Thesis
Websites
Other
LIS % Biology % PRS % Stomatology % Total %
2470 100 3008 100 2332 100 2412 100 10222 100
1232 49.88 2732 90.82 1340 57.46 2277 94.40 7581 74.16
468 18.95 140 4.65 526 22.56 65 2.70 1199 11.73
56 2.26 118 3.92 262 11.24 51 2.12 487 4.76
78 3.16 2 0.07 56 2.40 3 0.12 139 1.36
520 21.05 6 0.20 54 2.31 2 0.08 582 5.69
116 4.70 10 0.34 94 4.03 14 0.58 234 2.29
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Table 3 Language distribution of cited journals. Majors
Chinese
%
English
%
Japanese
%
German
%
French
%
LIS Biology PRS Stomatology
908 284 640 169
73.70 10.40 47.76 7.42
324 2424 684 2083
26.30 88.73 51.05 91.48
0 18 14 14
0.00 0.66 1.04 0.61
0 2 2 4
0.00 0.07 0.15 0.18
0 4 0 7
0.00 0.14 0.00 0.31
students who have at least a reading knowledge of English, as opposed to a familiarity with other foreign languages. Thus they quite naturally gravitate toward English language sources. In addition, English is recognized as the international language of scholarship, so it seems quite natural that the preponderance of citations in the Wuhan dissertations should cite English language material. The authors also examined the distribution levels of the cited titles in the four disciplines. Table 4 shows the number of citations in all journals. In Library and Information Science 153 (42.5%) of the cited journals covered 80% of all citations. In Biology, 150 (27.8%) of the cited journals represented 80% of all citations. In Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 139 titles (38.9%) represented 80% of citations and in Stomatology 119 titles (26.9%) covered 80% of the citations. Table 4 shows the relationship between the number of journals and the number of referenced articles. For example, in Library and Information Science, five journals satisfy 20% of the need. The data indicates that the distribution level of journals cited in Library and Information Science and Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing was rather similar and quite surprising and significantly different from the findings of other international studies. For instance, Udofia analyzed more than 1500 journal citations from journals in the field of veterinary medicine and found that just over 15% of the journals accounted for 80% of the citations [21]. Clearly, the interdisciplinary nature of Library and Information Science and Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing plays an important role in these two fields of study and had an impact on the nature of the citations. The results for Biology were similar to those in Stomatology and their core title numbers seem to correlate closely with traditionally observed distributions in which 20% of the titles account for 80% of the citations. Table 5 shows the age distribution for all journals cited by the theses in the four disciplines. The average age of a journal cited in Library and Information Science was 4.23 years, in Biology 8 years, in Stomatology 9 years and in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 7.2 years. While the journal cited most frequently in Library and Information Science and in Stomatology was only a year old, 90% of the citations in those two disciplines were actually from older publications. On the whole this study, unlike that of Burright et al. who found that 70% of citations in the field of Neuroscience were published within the last 15 years, found that in the four fields that were studied, students tended to use more recently published material [22]. The age distribution table of cited journals could be used to guide the library's journal management policies in the areas of accessibility, storage and weeding. For instance, journals with high use rates – those published within the last three years – should be readily accessible. Tables A1–A4 [Appendix A] show both the top twenty titles in each discipline cited most frequently in theses submitted at Wuhan University in 2005 and the twenty most frequently cited journals held by the library. A status of “P” means that the library acquires the print version of the journal; a status of “E” means that the library acquires an electronic version of the journal; a status of “B” means that both the print and the electronic formats are acquired. “N” means that the title is not held by the library. Of the top twenty journal titles cited in Biology and Stomatology, titles in English accounted for 95% of the citations whereas in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, only 60% of the cited journals were in English and in Library and Information Science, just 10% were in English. Based on holdings information, the library holds more than 95% of the journals cited, except in Stomatology, where the holdings rate is lower, at only 75%. It is also worth noting that of the top six most frequently cited journal titles in Stomatology, four titles – all in English – were not in the library's collection.4 Since English language journal literature is the primary source of information in Stomatology, additional collection analysis of the journal collection is indicated. In the dissertations reviewed for this study, 1699 journal titles in the four disciplines were cited. This relatively small group of journals provides a significant portion of support in these four key subjects. Although not all the titles are regarded as the most important in their respective disciplines, they are important resources in terms of library collection development and management, faculty teaching and research needs, as well as for students preparing theses. 6. Conclusion In most universities in China, academic librarians are responsible for collection development, user education, reference and consultation services, including working one-on-one with students. Librarians are expected to know enough about key subjects in order to assist patrons with their research needs. During this study, the authors noted that the use of periodical material, especially in the sciences and medicine, was quite similar. This appears to be due to the fact that in these disciplines, periodical literature tends to be the most current and up-to-date and the information is accessible through a variety of channels. As a result, scholars are very interested in reviewing periodical material and the libraries have stressed the need to develop those collections aggressively. 4 An administratively independent library devoted to Stomatology is connected to the teaching hospital of Wuhan University. However, this library's collection is not readily accessible through the university's online catalog, therefore its holdings were not considered as part of this study.
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Table 4 Title distribution of cited journals. Majors
No. of titles and 20% of total
No. of titles and 40% of total
No. of titles and 60% of total
No. of titles and 80% of total
No. of titles and 100% of total
LIS Biology PRS Stomatology
5 4 8 6
19 17 25 20
59 50 59 47
153 150 139 119
360 539 357 443
The study also revealed that the majority of foreign language citations – across all disciplines – were to English language publications and that there were very few citations to material in other foreign languages. There appear to be several reasons for this: 1) a long history of participation in international scholarship, interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, is regaining momentum. English language publications are now easier to obtain and are much more widely available. In many disciplines, particularly in the sciences, the lingua franca is English and since most Chinese scholars are now conversant in English, naturally they tend consult and study research published in English; 2) the library acquires resources representing an international level of research and is attempting to meet the needs of postgraduates by a vigorous acquisitions program of English language material; 3) most graduate students have at least a reading knowledge of English, having studied it for a number of years, but have only a limited knowledge of other foreign languages. In order to assess the value of acquiring resources in foreign languages other than English, additional citation studies in a variety of disciplines would be needed. In a 2005 study of Master of Science theses, the average number of citations per dissertation was 30 [23]. Since the average number of citations for PhD theses in this study was 182.54, this suggests very clearly that research for PhD dissertations requires access to a larger number of resources and to resources of greater sophistication. This is not completely surprising, for in order to support research at the highest level, particularly in the sciences, a significant number of advanced resources are essential. Armed with the information that PhD theses had a significantly higher number of citations than master's theses, libraries may wish to re-evaluate their collection development plans in order to build their collections in ways that more completely support the research being performed and the theses being written. Since the resources needed for scientific research are extremely expensive and the library's budget is finite, a greater emphasis on interlibrary loan and document delivery, rather than on outright acquisition, should also be considered. Of the four disciplines that were studied, Biology and Stomatology have the greatest similarity in terms of the types of documents consulted and the language of the documents. Both subjects required a great many individual journal titles and even more significantly, the majority of the titles they used were English language publications. In fact, the study indicated that English language titles accounted for more than 80% of the total number of citations. These findings are not completely unexpected, since Chinese scientists and medical researchers rely heavily on scholarship published abroad. The study also revealed that four of the top six English language journals cited in the Stomatology dissertations were not available in the university library in either print or electronic form. Some of the results of this study would have been different if the collection from the Stomatology College had been part of the study, since that special library has a significant English language Table 5 Age distribution of cited journals. Year
LIS
%
Cumulative %
Biology
%
Cumulative %
PRS
%
Cumulative %
Stomatology
%
Cumulative %
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–41 45–49 ≥50
12 270 234 166 114 148 74 74 26 30 28 20 0 6 8 8 2 2 2 4 2 0 2
0.97 21.92 18.99 13.48 9.25 12.01 6.01 6.01 2.11 2.43 2.27 1.63 0.00 0.49 0.65 0.65 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.33 0.16 0.00 0.16
0.97 22.89 41.88 55.36 64.61 76.62 82.63 88.64 90.75 93.18 95.45 97.08 97.08 97.57 98.22 98.87 99.03 99.19 99.35 99.68 99.84 99.84 100
10 160 268 288 266 278 228 192 156 122 114 96 60 70 58 186 100 34 22 12 8 2 2
0.37 5.85 9.81 10.54 9.74 10.18 8.34 7.03 5.71 4.47 4.17 3.51 2.20 2.56 2.12 6.81 3.66 1.25 0.81 0.44 0.29 0.07 0.07
0.37 6.22 16.03 26.57 36.31 46.49 54.83 61.86 67.57 72.04 76.21 79.72 81.92 84.48 86.6 93.41 97.07 98.32 99.13 99.57 99.86 99.93 100
12 88 170 202 126 146 110 84 46 32 30 40 26 36 22 98 34 20 16 0 0 2 0
0.90 6.57 12.69 15.07 9.40 10.89 8.21 6.27 3.43 2.39 2.24 2.98 1.94 2.69 1.64 7.31 2.54 1.5 1.19 0.00 0.00 0.15 0.00
0.90 7.47 20.16 35.23 44.63 55.52 63.73 70.00 73.43 75.82 78.06 81.04 82.98 85.67 87.31 94.62 97.16 98.66 99.85 99.85 99.85 100 100
25 224 212 180 212 199 158 147 117 82 82 84 61 65 31 154 112 33 33 25 25 0 16
1.10 9.84 9.31 7.90 9.31 8.74 6.94 6.46 5.14 3.60 3.60 3.69 2.68 2.85 1.36 6.76 4.92 1.45 1.45 1.1 1.1 0.00 0.7
1.10 10.94 20.25 28.15 37.46 46.2 53.14 59.6 64.74 68.34 71.94 75.63 78.31 81.16 82.52 89.28 94.2 95.65 97.1 98.2 99.3 99.3 100
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collection and has the highest delivery and usage rates compared to the collections of the four branch libraries which were part of the study. Library subject specialists should pay close attention to patterns of use and find ways to make collections, especially those in highly specialized areas, more widely accessible to researchers. One way this could be accomplished would be to convert the bibliographic records for specialized collections into machine readable form, so that details about their holdings are integrated into the holdings of the university library. This would not only facilitate complex research and improve research services but at the same time allow the library to maximize its limited fiscal resources. In Library and Information Science the study revealed that the number of references to English language publications was relatively small. This may be attributed to the fact that in the humanities and social sciences, the need for a reading knowledge of English is less critical than it is for scientists, for whom a familiarity with English is essential in order to complete their studies and conduct research. It is also worth noting that considerable work is being done in China in the field of information science so more primary source material is available in Chinese. The study also revealed that more and more citations are being made to websites and other electronic sources. This shift in the type of information being cited is one which collection development librarians should be aware of, since it impacts library acquisitions and research services. In developing a collection development strategy for the Wuhan University library, care should be taken to make sure that the top twenty most frequently cited journals in each discipline (listed in Tables A1–A4) are readily available in order to introduce students at an early stage in their research to the outstanding publications in the field. Collection development librarians also need to be responsive to statistical indicators that show that 20% of the titles being cited account for 80% of the citations. While this study and its findings are specific to Wuhan University, the citation analysis methodology that was employed would be applicable in other settings as well, for it provides a model that libraries could use to identify the primary sources used in research. In addition, the results from a study of this type may be used in budget planning so that limited funds are used effectively and disciplines requiring more periodicals in foreign languages, especially those published in English, receive additional allocations. The study also may be used to guide collection maintenance, including withdrawal of unused material, to cancel unused or underused subscriptions, and to monitor circulation and in-house use. It may be possible, based on the statistics, to concentrate on providing material in alternative formats, rather than on relying exclusively on expanding the collection of printed material. Libraries should look for ways to make resources accessible to the widest possible audience. One way to accomplish this goal would be to find ways to integrate collections so that researchers throughout the institution are able to access the entire spectrum of library resources. This would be beneficial on many levels and enhance the library's role as a key player in the research process. Acknowledgments This article was edited and revised with the assistance of Yalan Qi, Systems Librarian, University of Maryland, College Park, MD and Pamela Bluh, Associate Director for Technical Services & Administration, Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD. Appendix A. Most frequently cited journals Space limitations prevent the entire list of titles from being listed. The entire list may be obtained from the authors upon request.
Table A1 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in LIS. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Journal of the China Society for Scientific and Technical Information Library and Information Service Information Science China Publishing Update Bulletin of the Library Science in China Publishing Science Knowledge of Library and Information Science Publishing Research Journal of Information Journal of Information Science New Technology of Library and Information Science Fresh Reading International Journal of Electronic Commerce Information Studies: Theory & Application Electronic publishing Application Research of Computers Editors' Friend Computer Engineering Computer Engineering and Applications Science-Technology & Publication
71 60 49 40 35 28 25 25 22 22 19 16 14 14 13 12 10 10 10 10
5.76 4.87 3.98 3.25 2.84 2.27 2.03 2.03 1.79 1.79 1.54 1.30 1.14 1.14 1.06 0.97 0.81 0.81 0.81 0.81
Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese English Chinese Chinese English Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese
B B B B B P B B B B B B E B B B B B B B
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Table A2 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in Biology. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Journal of Virology Virology Nature Genetics The Journal of General Virology Science The Journal of Biological Chemistry AIDS AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses Nucleic Acids Research Molecular Cell Biology Research Communications Cell Archives of Virology Journal of Invertebrate Pathology The Lancet Chinese Journal of Epidemiology Journal of Molecular Biology Nature Neuroscience Virus Research The Journal of Biological Chemistry Journal of virology
287 101 95 89 82 80 52 40 40 38 38 30 30 30 28 25 25 25 24 24
10.51 3.7 3.48 3.26 3.00 2.93 1.90 1.46 1.46 1.39 1.39 1.10 1.10 1.10 1.02 0.92 0.92 0.92 0.88 0.88
English English English English English English English English English English English English English English Chinese English English English English English
P B B P B P P N P E B E E B B E E E P P
Table A3 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in PRS. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing Bulletin of Surveying and Mapping Geography and GEO-Information Science Geo-information Science International Journal of Remote Sensing International Journal of Geographical Information Science Transportation Research Part C Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica Journal of computer graphics Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing Computer Engineering and Application Remotesensing Technology and Application Color Research and Application IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Journal of Soil and Water Conservation Pattern Recognition Transportation Research. B. Methological Computer Engineering
62 60 28 26 26 24 24 22 20 18 18 18 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 14
4.63 4.48 2.09 1.94 1.94 1.79 1.79 1.64 1.49 1.34 1.34 1.34 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.19 1.05
Chinese English English Chinese Chinese Chinese English English English Chinese English English Chinese Chinese English English English English English Chinese
B P P B B B B B E B P E B B P P E E E B
Table A4 Top 20 most frequently cited journal in Stomatology. Rank
Journal titles
No. of citation
% of citation
Language
Holding status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry Journal of Dental Research Archives of Oral Biology The International Journal of Prosthodontics Journal of Periodontology Caries Research Nature Genetics Science The Journal of Biological Chemistry Dental materials Infection and Immunity Chinese Journal of Stomatology The International Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Implants Development Journal of Oral Rehabilitation Cell Quintessence International The Journal of Cell Biology The Journal of Immunology British Dental Journal
151 92 69 65 51 50 41 39 36 35 35 35 33 31 30 28 26 26 26 26
6.63 4.04 3.03 2.85 2.24 2.2 1.8 1.71 1.58 1.54 1.54 1.54 1.45 1.36 1.32 1.23 1.14 1.14 1.14 1.14
English English English English English English English English English English English Chinese English English English English English English English English
E N E N N N B B P E P B N N E E N P P E
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