Book Citations in PhD Science Dissertations: An Examination of Commercial Book Publishers' Influence

Abstract

This case study examines the book citations of PhD dissertations from the City University of New York (CUNY). The study spans a ten-year period from 2008-2017 and includes 9,307 book citations sourced from 916 dissertations. Book citations were chosen from seven science subjects. Publishers were identified in order to examine trends and quantify the role of commercial publishers in book selections used to support dissertation research.