A Microscope or a Mirror?: A Question of Study Validity Regarding the Use of Dissertation Citation Analysis for Evaluating Research Collections

Beile, Penny; Boote, David N.; Killingsworth, Elizabeth K.

doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2004.06.001

Cited by 43 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Beile, Boote, and Killingsworth (2004) ask, "is it reasonable to conclude… that research collections that contain the majority of cited items are sufficient for doctoral level research?" (p. 348).…”

Section: Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Edwards¹,

Jones²

2014

EBLIP

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2014 Edwards and Jones. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -At the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), researchers compared how well the library collections supported doctoral research in the three related disciplines of education, psychology, and social welfare. The goal of this project was to gather empirical data to answer questions about materials cited in dissertations, including ownership, age of materials and disciplinary usage.Methods -Researchers analyzed the bibliographies of doctoral dissertations from three academic departments at UCB: education (2009-2010), psychology (2009-2010), and social welfare (2009)(2010)(2011). The sampling methodology used a systematic sample with a random start. To achieve a 95% (+/-4%) confidence interval, the sample included a total of 3,372 citations from 107 dissertations. Researchers consulted with a statistician to determine the statistical significance of the results. The test for the age of citation used a signed Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 2014, 9.2 5 ranks test, which is typical for ordinal data or skewed interval data. The test for ownership was a chi-square test, which is typical for nominal data or dichotomous data.Results -Researchers determined that a very high percentage of the cited journals were owned or licensed by the Library. The ownership rate for cited journals was 97% for both education and social welfare, and 99% for psychology. There was a statistically significant difference between the three disciplines, with psychology better supported than either education (p=.02) or social welfare (p=.01). However, since ownership rates for journals in all three disciplines were extremely high, this was not a meaningful difference. For books, the researchers found a significantly smaller percentage of books owned in social welfare compared to either education (p=.00) or psychology (p=.00). We found no significant difference between the percentages of books owned in psychology versus education (p=.27). Psychology students cited the highest percentage of journals while education students cited the highest percentage of books. Psychology students cited almost no free web resources, but education and social welfare students did cite free web resources (primarily government documents, working papers, or nongovernmental organization reports). All three disciplines cited older material than anticipated.Conclusions -The citation analysis, while time-consuming, provided new and important information about the use of the Library's collections and the level of support the collections afford doctoral stude...

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Section: Aimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Edwards¹,

Jones²

2014

EBLIP

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“…Tests, especially combinations of pretest and posttest, are the preferred method (Brown and Krumholz, 2002;Dunn, 2002;Fister, 2003;Mark, 2004). In the last years, citation analysis has also been used for assessing changes in users' information literacy competences (Beile et al, 2004;Middleton, 2005;Tuñon and Brydges, 2005). Whatever method was used, it seemed in most cases possible to show direct impact of library training and services on information literacy.…”

Section: The Topics Of Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact measures for libraries and information services

Poll

Payne

2006

Library Hi Tech

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Purpose: To demonstrate the importance of impact / outcome research in libraries Design/methodology/approach: The paper gives an overview of purposes and methods used in impact research and illustrates this through project experiences. Findings: Various projects worldwide are trying to prove that use of library services can positively influence skills and competences, attitudes and behaviour of users. The benefits that users experience by using library services can be assessed in terms of knowledge gained, higher information literacy, higher academic or professional success, social inclusion, and increase in individual well-being. Research limitations/implications:The main problem of impact research is, that influences on an individual are manifold and that therefore it is difficult to trace changes and improvements back to the library. The paper shows methods that are tested and used at the present. More investigation is needed to identify methods that could be used to show a library's overall impact or to develop measures that would permit benchmarking between institutions. Practical implications: The paper shows practical examples of impact assessment, covering "soft" methods like surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation and quantitative methods like tests, analysis of publications, or usage data. Originality/value: The paper acquaints libraries with a topic that is not yet well known and, by showing practical examples, demonstrates how libraries can attempt to assess their impact.

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“…Citation analysis, considered a branch of bibliometrics (Hoffmann & Doucette, 2012), has been used in a variety of settings and across disparate populations in an attempt to describe how users interact with resources, making key assumptions in terms of validity that citations represent accurate snapshots of resource use in time and are of high quality (Beile, Boote, & Killingsworth, 2004). As Kelly notes in her literature review, many prior citation analysis studies have attempted to apply research findings to inform collection development, but they have used citation sets (i.e., datasets) that are 1) too narrow for use across institutions or disciplines, or 2) too general to be applicable to individual institutional settings.…”

Section: Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

External and Internal Citation Analyses Can Provide Insight into Serial/Monograph Ratios when Refining Collection Development Strategies in Selected STEM Disciplines

Krueger

2016

EBLIP

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the terms of the Creative CommonsAttribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one. AbstractObjective -To determine internal and external citation analysis methods and their potential applicability to the refinement of collection development strategies at both the institutional and cross-institutional levels for selected science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subfields.

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A Microscope or a Mirror?: A Question of Study Validity Regarding the Use of Dissertation Citation Analysis for Evaluating Research Collections

Cited by 43 publications

References 9 publications

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Assessing the Fitness of an Academic Library for Doctoral Research

Impact measures for libraries and information services

External and Internal Citation Analyses Can Provide Insight into Serial/Monograph Ratios when Refining Collection Development Strategies in Selected STEM Disciplines

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