A CITATION ANALYSIS OF MLIS DISSERTATIONS

Abstract

i The main aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of the cited literature in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) dissertations submitted to University of Malaya. This includes finding out the various types of resources used in their research and identifying core journal titles. A total of 3206 citations were compiled from 40 Master in Library Information Science dissertations submitted to University of Malaya from 2000-2005. The findings reveal that journals were the most cited form of publication and they were prominently in English. A more frequent usage of current than retrospective publications was made, which were mostly primary sources of information. The results also reveal frequent use of publications in the subject area of “Information use, need, seeking”. Writers from United States of America contributed the most in this literature. The findings reveal the highest number of citations utilised are between the age of 6-10 years which corresponds to the years 1995-1999. The most cited journals of this literature were found to be College & Research Libraries, followed by Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences. The findings revealed that only two from the list of the top 17 most cited journal titles are listed in Journal Citation Report (JCR). They are Aslib Proceedings with an impact factor of 0.333 and Journal of Information Science with an impact factor of 0.747. Of the 17 core journals, only 11 are available in the University of Malaya Library. The authorship pattern shows that single authors are more frequently cited. The core authors of cited documents results showed that the majority of authors were cited only once and 43.50% of the citations were from authors that were cited more than twice. To conclude this research, the citation analysis of MLIS dissertation follows the norms of other citation analysis research that has been done in other fields. It was found that journals were the most widely used materials to be cited by dissertation authors, and single authors dominates the authorship pattern. Thus these relevant information shows the similarity of this research to other research.