Contributions of Turkish academicians supervising PhD dissertations and their universities to economics: an evaluation of the 1990–2011 period

Abstract

In this study, doctoral dissertations conducted at the Turkish Universities for the period of 1990---2011 and the scientifically indexed publications of the professors supervising these dissertations were investigated. In the evaluations, the publications scores of the Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus as well as the citations belonging to the publications in these indexes were included. During the relevant period, 617 professors supervised all the 1,906 doctoral dissertations in the field of economics. The first three universities with the highest number of doctoral dissertations were determined to be Istanbul University, Marmara University, and Dokuz Eylul University whereas the first three universities with the highest scientific indexes were Ihsan Dogramaci Bilkent University, Middle East Technical University, and Bogazici University. The academicians of the last three universities also outperformed those at the other universities regarding the scientific publications they produced and the citations they received. Overall, there is a low correlation between the dissertations conducted and scientific citations. Finally, academicians with publications and/or citations in Web of Science or Scopus were researched further via logistic regressions. The results indicate that there is positive and meaningful relation with PhD degrees earned abroad and number of publication in the Web of Science.