Citation Analysis of PhD Theses in Psychology of Selected Universities in Andhra Pradesh, India

Abstract

Introduction The exponential growth of scientific literature, interdisciplinary nature of research, and trend towards specialization have posed many problems both to the scientists and librarians. The extensive investigations and the abundance of literature being published and contributed to immense escalation of cost for the libraries, as the acquisition of published literature became an increasingly difficult task. To maintain a reasonable collection of periodicals, at least in broad fields, it is necessary for the librarians to know the characteristics of subject literature used by the users. Information is not only increasing exponentiality but the growth rates also differ from one discipline to another. The multiplicity of journals, the constraints of limited financial resources and the ever increasing needs of user community necessitated the librarians to develop need based information resources and services to meet the literature requirements of psychologists. Thus, a clear understanding of the characteristics of subject literature used by scientists is important for planning and designing of information system relating to a particular field. Bibliometric techniques are used for a variety of purposes like determination of various scientific indicators, evaluation of scientific output, selection of journals for libraries and even forecasting potential Nobel Laurates. Bibliometric analysis has become a well established part of information research. The most obvious use of bibliometric data is to improve bibliographic control, as it is clearly not possible to provide efficient secondary services without knowing the size and characteristics of a literature. Bibliometrics has grown out of the realization that literature is growing and changing at a rate which no librarian or information worker equipped with traditional bibliographic methods and skills could keep abreast. The popularity in the adoption of bibliometric techniques in various disciplines stimulated stupendous growth in literature on bibliometrics and its related areas. The present research is undertaken to analyse the characteristics of literature used by researchers in the field of psychology as a whole and sub-fields of psychology. The present study will help the scientists and librarians in the selection of core journals and other sources in psychology. Objectives The following are the objectivess of the study To know the various sources of information consulted by the researchers in psychology; To observe the nature of authorship pattern in the literature of psychology; To examine the core journals of psychology; To trace the core book and journal publishers of psychology; To study the distribution of citations by subject, country of origin and language; To examine the applicability of Bradford's Law of scattering to the pattern of journals used by the researchers in psychology; To find the obsolescence of literature used; and To assess the availability of the cited journal articles and journals in the library of Sri Venkateswara University, Osmania University and Andhra University.

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