The chapter attempts to identify the information needs of educationists based on the citations in Master's degree dissertations in Education. The source for the study is the Master's degree dissertations submitted to the Manonmanium Sundaranar University during the period 1996 - 2006 from N.V.K.S.D. College of Education. The citation-based approach is followed in the study. Number of citations, cited articles, authors, frequency and percentage distributions were the tools used to analyze the data. Findings showed that journals were the most utilized reference materials in the dissertations. Indian periodicals are ranked first, followed by that from the USA. Mostly cited periodicals are published in the year 1993 with 181 citations (14.23%) and mostly-cited books were published in the year 1996 with 71 (13.95%) citations. Moreover, highest number of citations was in the year 1997 with 702(10.19%) citations and the lowest number of citations was during the year 2001 with 337(4.89%) citations.
TopIntroduction
Information is produced every now and then across the globe, as a result of scientific, academic and industrial research. The new information is communicated to the users through scientific publications. This has led to the growth of literature. Bibliometrics includes the study of the relationship among the documents. Typically, these descriptions focus on constituent patterns involving authors, monographs, journals, subject language etc. Bibliometrics have established itself as a viable and distinctive technique for evaluation of science based on bibliographical and citation data.
Citation analysis is the examination of pattern, frequency of citations in books and articles. It was citation in scholarly works to establish links to another work or other researchers. The study of the relationship between cited and citing documents come under the purview of citation analysis. A cited document is one which is taken as a source of reference in this study and a citing document is the document which makes references of other documents. Citation analysis is thus the analyses of citation to and from documents, that is appended with the research communication it count citation given at the end of each scientific article counting citation is often called citation analysis.
Citation analysis has been used in the assessment of scientific activity for decades. Librarians have used citation count to study the adequacy of collection of information materials. The quality of such publications can be known by analyzing citations made by the paper itself and citations got by other authors. This can be done through citation analysis.
According to RavichandraRao (1983):
The main objective of the citation analysis are to evaluate and interpret citations received by articles, authors, institutions and other aggregates of scientific activities. It is also used as a tool for measuring communication links in the sociology of the science.
Citation Analysis has emerged as a useful technique for deriving trends in a discipline. Studies based on citations are generally termed as Citation Analysis. The primary function of citation is to provide a connection between two documents, on that cites and other, which is cited. Citation Analysis has been increasingly used in the study of Science and Technology theses to provide qualitative data on their utility and relationships that could be used in several ways.
According to Garfield “the term Citation Analysis is one which deals with works cited as having actually been used in the preparation of or having otherwise contributed to the source of paper”.
Citation Analysis is a technique that shows how many citations are there for a given document, author and journal over a period of time. In the present study citations from 158 M.Ed. Dissertations has taken as sample during the year 1996-2006 and collected on the data sheet. The data includes number of reference types of documents and number of most cited Journals.
Citation Analysis is one of the popular methods employed in recent days for the investigation of core documents in various subject fields or for a particular scientific community in a geographical proximity. In fact, citation study is one of the effective and indirect methods to understand the information requirements of users. Citation method is used in the present study to understand the Information needs and Use patterns.
Citation Analysis has emerged as a useful technique for deriving trends in a discipline. Studies based on citation are generally termed as citation analysis. The primary function of citation is to provide a connection between two documents, one that cites and the other which is cited. Citation Analysis has been increasingly used in the study of scientific field to provide qualitative data. The utility and relationships of that data could be used in several ways.
TopCitation Analysis: A Theoretical Overview
The concept of citation Analysis has existed under different names. Shepard's citation is the oldest major citation index in existence. It was started in 1873 to provide the legal profession with a tool for searching legal decisions. It was done by listing the citations to precedents used in the cases decided by Federal and State Courts and various Federal Administrative Agencies. The legal ‘citator’ system provided a model of how a citation index could be organized to function as an effective search tool.