Citation patterns in educational science theses at the University of Cordoba.

Maz-Machado, Alexander ; Torralbo-Rodriguez, Manuel ; Gutierrez-Arenas, Ma Pilar 等

Introduction

The origins of the Faculty of Education Sciences Library can be traced back to the nineteenth century. This was a time of cultural and scientific renaissance, marked by the emergence of such centres as the Escuela Normal de Maestros (Teacher Training College) in 1841; this period also saw the full development of the University of Cordoba, and the initial shaping of its library.

The library's archives and historical holdings therefore house all the documentation generated from the founding of the Teacher Training College to the present day, conserving them in excellent order: the collection is virtually complete from 1850, and some records date back as far as the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries.

The books that have come down to us clearly testify to the enormous interest shown by the teaching staff in their Library, particularly at the time of the First Spanish Republic - in the late nineteenth century - and later during the Second Spanish Republic. During these periods, the Teacher Training College played a major role in the city's cultural, social and educational life, and indeed became the true driving force of local culture (Rodriguez and Morillo-Velarde, 1994).

In 1995, the old Cordoba Teacher Training College became the Faculty of Education Sciences; since then, it has trained future infant and primary teachers, as well as producing graduates in educational psychology. The faculty's teaching staff were organised into 18 departments, and three doctoral programmes were launched. The library was continually expanded to support this new academic initiative, and its holdings now comprise 121,200 modern books and 6,000 old volumes dating from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, as well as some 2,000 journal titles, more than 6,000 special media items (DVDs, CDs, maps etc.) and a history archive holding almost a million documents generated since 1850.

The Faculty library is one of eight 'service points' which together make up the University of Cordoba Library. Like the other University libraries, it uses the "Millennium" Integrated Library Management System (Spanish initials: SIGB) comprising circulation, cataloguing and serially-arranged modules, as well as a large number of information and electronic resources accessible through the website.

The faculty library manages journal subscriptions and digital access independently through the EBSCO information agency. In addition, a number of electronic journals are included in packages purchased by the Andalusian University Libraries Consortium (Spanish initials: CBUA) and others found in Open Access (OA), which are centrally managed by the Electronic Resources and Projects Service and are accessed from the university library via the appropriate portal.

In the fifteen years since then, the doctoral programmes have led to the production of numerous doctoral theses, which have served to consolidate research in the field of education at the University of Cordoba. Analysis of the citations in these theses gives a clear idea of the references used by researchers in a whole range of scientific fields, belonging to various departments and faculties. This information is useful in enabling librarians to manage their journal subscriptions and bibliographical holdings. PhD students also benefit because these data provide a starting point for their bibliographical surveys of specific topics and subject areas (Chaparro-Martinez & Marzal, 2008; Pillai & Dileep, 2010).

Review of related literature

A number of studies have shown that citation analysis is a powerful tool in identifying the publications that lend theoretical and empirical support to scientific progress (Garfield, 1978). The social sciences, and specifically Education, are no exception to this.

Recent research has highlighted the importance of identifying resource requirements for doctoral theses in university library collections (Edwards, 1999; Haycock, 2004; Omoba & Ayodeli, 2010). With regard to theses in the field of education, certain findings of interest have been published: for example, among theses on Educational Psychology at the University of Texas, 56% of citations relate to journals and 37% to books (Fuchs, Thompsen, Bias & Davis, 2006); Haycock (2004) reported that 44% of citations related to journals in the field of education sciences. In Nigeria, Okiy (2003) found that 60% of citations refer to books and 24% to journals; similar results are reported by Iya (1996) in an examination of education theses at the University of Maiduguri in Nigeria. No studies have yet been conducted in Spain on education theses produced at one specific university, although there has been research addressing the country as a whole, and focussing on particular areas of knowledge. In Spanish theses on the teaching of mathematics, for example, the average number of citations referring to books is 115, while the average referring to journals is 73 (Vallejo, Fernandez, & Torralbo, 2006).

Given that one of the major tasks of any university library is to evaluate its own impact in terms of usage and loans to users (Iivonen, Nygren, Valtari & Heikkila, 2009), this study sought to analyse citations in doctoral theses in the field of education at a single Spanish institution, the University of Cordoba, with the aim of establishing which documentary sources are commonly used and of ascertaining the degree of correspondence between the journals cited and the journals held and managed at the university's Education Faculty library.

Methodology

This study used bibliometric methods commonly applied in this type of research. Thirty theses were examined, all submitted to the University of Cordoba Faculty of Education Sciences between 1997 and 2010 and deposited in the university library.

The covers of all theses were photocopied, as were as the pages containing bibliographical references. All the information obtained was entered into an ad hoc database with the following fields: a) author b) title c) date d) department; the following data were collected regarding citations: e) number of citations per thesis, f) number of citations per source-type g) frequency of journal titles cited.

All references were listed and grouped by document type: journal articles, books, proceedings, government documents, online resources, theses and other resources. These were subsequently ranked by citation frequency and by source language. The cited journals were classified in descending order according to the number of times they had been cited. The country of publication for the most cited journals was then established in order to determine which region was the most influential. The findings were collated in tables and diagrams.

Results and discussion

The 30 dissertations yielded a total of 8,771 bibliographical references, with an average of 292.4 per thesis. Monographs, chapters of books and published books were grouped generically as citations of books. Book citations accounted for 56% of the total, while journal citations accounted for 34%; there was thus a clear preference among doctoral students towards citing books rather than journals, despite the fact that the faculty library has access to electronic scientific journals in addition to subscriptions to printed journals. Other type of bibliographical source accounted for only 9.6% of total citations (Table 1).

Table 1. Number of citations by source type

Type of citation      No. of citations  Percentage of citations

Books                            4,914                    56.03

Journals                         3,014                    34.36

Proceedings                        212                     2.42

Online resources                   163                     1.86

Government documents               141                     1.61

Theses                             119                     1.36

Other resources                    208                     2.37

Total                            8,771                   100.00

Most of the cited documents were available in printed form. Online resources accounted for only 1.86%, a poor level of usage on the part of doctoral students. However, 65.6% of online citations came from 2009 and 2010, suggesting that this source may be starting to gain momentum in research programmes.

Overall, so-called 'grey literature', in other words unpublished or limited circulation documents not issued with an ISBN or ISSN, such as government documents, online resources, theses and other resources, accounted for 7.19% of the citations.

Comparison of these findings with other citation studies focusing on doctoral theses in education from around the world reveals that the percentage of articles cited lies midway between the figures reported for the USA and for Nigeria, while the book citation figure is much closer to that of Nigeria (Table 2). The average number of article citations per thesis was the highest of all (292.36), almost three times the average noted in Haycock's (2004) study, which had the second highest average (105.62).

Table 2. Comparison of findings with other studies

             Haycock   Beile et    Tunon &   Fuchs et al.
              (2004)        al.     Brydges      (2006)
                         (2004)      (2005)

Country          USA       USA       USA           USA

Area        Education  Education  Education   Educational
                                              Psychology

Period      2000-2002       2000          *     1997-2002

N[degrees]         43         30        143            52
theses

N[degrees]       4542       1842      10023          1560
citations

%                  44         45      67.58         56.41
articles

Books,             56         33      18.51          27.9
book
chapters

              Okiy     Maz-Machado
              (2010)   et al. (this
                          paper)

Country       Nigeria         Spain

Area        Education     Education

Period      1992-2002     1997-2010

N[degrees]         70            30
theses

N[degrees]       4012          8771
citations

%                24.5         34.36
articles

Books,           60.3         56.03
book
chapters

* Not available.

Analysis of the language of citations enabled the relative primacy of each to be determined. Spanish was found to be as the most cited language, accounting for 59.8% of the total, followed by English at 35.2% (Table 3). The presence of French and Portuguese was minimal, indicating that literature in these languages plays a very secondary reference role. Other languages involved in citations tended to be European or local in scope, e.g. Catalan and Galician.

Table 3. Citations by language

Language    N[degrees] of citations    %

Spanish                        5249  59.8

English                        3098  35.2

French                          214   2.4

Portuguese                      113   1.4

Other                            97   1.2

Bradford's Law (Brookes, 2006) claims that a majority of articles are published in a limited number of journals. That law was applied to determine the nucleus and successive Bradford zones for the most cited journals, using a procedure previously tested by various researchers (Ruiz de Osma, 2006; Gorbea, 1996) to identify the nucleus and zones. Table 4 was drawn up on the basis of the number of journals and the number of citations relating to each journal.

Table 4. Distribution of scientific journals in descending order
of number of cita (following the Bradford model)

A #          B #      C Total        D             E         F log
Journals  Citations  citations  Accumulated  Accumulated     (r)
                      A*B         journals   citations
                                                R(r)

1               110        110            1           110   0.0000

1                63         63            2           173   0.3010

1                61         61            3           234   0.4771

1                60         60            4           294   0.6021

1                53         53            5           347   0.6990

1                44         44            6           391   0.7782

1                37         37            7           428   0.8451

2                34         68            9           496   0.9542

3                28         84           12           580   1.0792

1                27         27           13           607   1.1139

1                24         24           14           631   1.1461

1                23         23           15           654   1.1761

2                21         42           17           696   1.2304

1                20         20           18           716   1.2553

2                19         38           20           754   1.3010

2                18         36           22           790   1.3424

1                17         17           23           807   1.3617

2                16         32           25           839   1.3979

2                15         30           27           869   1.4314

5                14         70           32           939   1.5051

3                13         39           35           978   1.5441

3                12         36           38          1014   1.5798

7                11         77           45          1091   1.6532

2                10         20           47          1111   1.6721

5                 9         45           52          1156   1.7160

13                8        104           65          1260   1.8129

13                7         91           78          1351   1.8921

17                6        102           95          1453   1.9777

26                5        130          121          1583   2.0828

28                4        112          149          1695   2.1732

69                3        207          218          1902   2.3385

172               2        344          390          2246   2.5911

789               1        789         1179          3035   3.0715

A #            G       H = E - G     I %     Zone
Journals  Accumulated   Residues   Residues
           citations   R(r)-Rc     H/E
          calculated       (r)
            Rc(r)

1          -1173.1545   1283.1545  1166.50%     0

1           -769.8648    942.8648   545.01%     0

1           -533.9555    767.9555   328.19%     0

1           -366.5752    660.5752   224.69%     0

1           -236.7449    583.7449   168.23%     0

1           -130.6658    521.6658   133.42%     0

1            -40.9773    468.9773   109.57%     0

2            105.2435    390.7565    78.78%     0

3            272.6239    307.3761    53.00%     0

1            319.1946    287.8054    47.41%     0

1            362.3124    268.6876    42.58%     0

1            402.4541    251.5459    38.46%     0

2            475.2771    220.7229    31.71%     0

1            508.5332    207.4668    28.98%     0

2            569.8345    184.1655    24.43%     0

2            625.2882    164.7118    20.85%     0

1            651.1513    155.8487    19.31%     0

2            699.6648    139.3352    16.61%     0

2            744.4426    124.5574    14.33%     0

5            843.2939     95.7061    10.19%     0

3            895.4324     82.5676     8.44%     0

3            943.2805     70.7195     6.97%     0

7           1041.6532     49.3468     4.52%     1

2           1066.9539     44.0461     3.96%     1

5           1125.7740     30.2260     2.61%     1

13          1255.6043      4.3957     0.35%     1

13          1361.6833    -10.6833    -0.79%     1

17          1476.4005    -23.4005    -1.61%     1

26          1617.1516    -34.1516    -2.16%     1

28          1738.2617    -43.2617    -2.55%     1

69          1959.6741    -57.6741    -3.03%     1

172         2298.0930    -52.0930    -2.32%     2

789         2941.7505     93.2495     3.07%     2

Columns A and B are input fields to calculate Bradford. The
remaining columns are calculated as set forth:
A * B = Total number of citations.
R = accumulated number of journals.
R (r) = accumulated number of citations.
Log (r) = the decimal logarithm of r.
Rc (r) = accumulated number of citations, calculated as set by
Bradford model: Y=a+bX, where Y = Rc (r), "a" is the intercept,
"b" is the slope of the line; "X" is the decimal logarithm of the
accumulated number of journals: Log (r).
H = E-G = remainder, difference between actual and calculated
number of accumulated citations.
H / E = Percentage of the remainder compared to the actual number.

For graphical representation, the decimal logarithm of the number of journals was plotted on the X axis and the accumulated number of citations on the Y axis. In terms of Bradford's Law, the graph displayed a curved area corresponding to the nucleus and a linear area corresponding to the successive Bradford zones (Figure 1).

The Bradford distribution shows an initial zone or nucleus followed by a straight section. Sometimes a further zone may be detected beyond this straight line, where the number of articles increases more slowly (Gross, 1967). By clustering the data to the right of the nucleus into groups with numbers of citations similar to the total found in the nucleus, Bradford zones can be identified.

Table 5. Percentages of the number of journals and citations in
each Bradford zone

         Zone   N[degrees]    N[degrees]   % Journals  % Citations
                of Journals  of Citations

Nucleus  0               38          1014       3.22%       33.41%

         1              180           888      15.27%       29.26%

         2              961          1133      81.51%       37.33%

         Total         1179          3035     100.00%      100.00%

Table 6. Bradford nucleus of cited journals

Journal                          N[degrees]  Country of
                                               citation

Ensenanza de las Ciencias               110  Spain

International Journal of                 63  United
Science Education                            Kingdom

Cuadernos de Pedagogia                   61  Spain

Revista de Escuelas Normales             53  USA

Bordon                                   44  Spain

Journal of Personality and               37  Spain
Social Psychology

Infancia y Aprendizaje                   34  USA

Science Education                        34  Spain

European Journal of Science              28  USA
Education

Journal of Research in Science           28  USA
Teaching

Revista de Educacion                     28  USA

Cultura y Educacion                      27  Spain

Revista de Investigacion                 23  USA
Educativa: RIE

Investigacion en la Escuela              21  Spain

Psicothema                               21  Spain

Revista de Psicologia del                20  Spain
Deporte

Revista de Pedagogia                     19  Spain

Developmental Psychology                 18  USA

Journal of Applied Behavior              17  Spain
Analysis

Revista de Psicologia Social             16  Spain

Aula de Innovacion Educativa             14  Spain

Boletin de la Institucion Libre          14  Spain
de Ensenanza

Cuadernos de Literatura                  14  Spain
Infantil y Juvenil

Educational Research                     12  USA

Revista Interuniversitaria de            12  Spain
Formacion del Profesorado

Apuntes de Psicologia                    11  Spain

Journal of Teacher Education             11  USA

Science                                  11  USA

Sex Roles                                11  USA

Alambique                                 9  Spain

Revista Espahola de Pedagogia             9  Spain

International Journal for                 8  Netherlands
Educational and Vocational
Guidance

Journal of Child Psychology and           8  United
Psychiatry                                   Kingdom

Revista de Ciencias de la                 8  Spain
Educacion

Revista de Logopedia, Foniatria           8  Spain
y Audiologia

Cuadernos de Psicologia del               7  Spain
Deporte

Harvard Educational Review                7  USA

Journal of Educational                    7  USA
Psychology

A total of 1179 journals were cited in the doctoral theses surveyed. The data show that the 38 journals contained in the nucleus accounted for 33.41% of all journal citations. Spanish journals accounted for 57.89 % of the nucleus and American journals for 34.21%, suggesting that doctoral theses at the University of Cordoba rely heavily on Spanish research. The most cited publication was the Spanish journal Ensenanza de las ciencias.

The Faculty of Education library stocks and manages 185 of the journals cited, which accounted for only 16.24% of the total, i.e. doctoral students have library access to only 16.24% of the journals cited in their. Of these 185, 122 are Spanish journals, meaning that home-grown publications account for 65.9% of the journals accessed through the library, while foreign publications account for only 34.1%.

Conclusions

The literature cited in education-related theses at the University of Cordoba is written largely in Spanish. Most derives from books, and to a lesser extent from journals. The use of online resources is negligible. The percentages of article and book citations in education theses at the University of Cordoba do not match the figures obtained from research carried out in the USA.

It is clear that the journal collections held and managed by the library are not cited by doctoral students. If journals report the findings of the most recent research and these are not being cited by the doctoral students it implies that the collections chosen do not meet the major needs of the students of the certain faculty This ought to induce a process of reflection on the advisability of persevering with these journals and instead trying to incorporate the journals that are predominantly cited in the theses.

This type of study is particularly valuable in times of crisis, such as the present, when economic resources start to become scarce and need to be optimised. This study in particular will enable library managers to make decisions on the basis of objective findings that will undoubtedly lead to benefits for both the library and its users.

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Alexander Maz-Machado

Universidad de Cordoba - Spain, ma1mamaa@uco.es

Manuel Torralbo-Rodriguez

Universidad de Cordoba - Spain, ma1torom@uco.es

Ma Pilar Gutierrez-Arenas

Universidad de Cordoba - Spain, ue2guarp@uco.es

Francisca Morales Sillero

Universidad de Cordoba - Spain, bg3mosif@uco.es

Maz-Machado, Alexander; Torralbo-Rodriguez, Manuel; Gutierrez-Arenas, Ma Pilar; and Morales Sillero, Francisca, "Citation patterns in Educational Science theses at the University of Cordoba" (2012). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). Paper 853.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/853

Alexander Maz-Machado

Manuel Torralbo-Rodriguez

Ma Pilar Gutierrez-Arenas

Faculty of Education Sciences

University of Cordoba

Cordoba, Spain.

Francisca Morales Sillero

Faculty of Education Sciences Library

University of Cordoba

Cordoba, Spain.