Theses Submitted by Doctoral Students of Physical Research Laboratory, India

Abstract

The most reliable way to know the contribution of research to the world knowledgebase is through publication and citation data. The research papers and doctoral theses are the instruments through which results of the research are communicated to the outside world. Both these scholarly publications conclude with the list of references. The study of these references (citations) gives an idea about the development of any research topic or a researcher and also indicates the kind of literature referred by the researchers. In today's world of ever escalating cost of serials, citation analysis is also being used to determine which titles to purchase and which ones to discontinue.The present study aims to better understand and manage the library resources by examining the resources used (cited) by the doctoral students of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) during 1997–2006.It was found that electronic format was preferred to the printed format from 2001 through 2006. Journal articles are used (cited) the most, followed by books and other documents like proceedings and reports. With more and more availability of online resources, use of non-subscribed content was also on the rise from 1997 through 2006. This study also confirms the Bradford's law that a set of core journals in a subject field satisfy more than 50% of the total number of journal citations. Table 2 Use of documents: electronic vs. print during 1997–2000.Documents1997199819992000Total%Electronic160175922.16Print11481752782476415897.84