Chemistry dissertations citation analysis

This study analyzes the references cited in 34 chemistry dissertations and compares the results with an earlier study of citations in American Chemical Society journals “Chemistry reference data 2018”, Mendeley Data, V1. data.mendeley.com/datasets/7fk4n7ych7/1). The dissertations cite more references and older references and a greater diversity of sources. They have the same tendency to heavily cite journal articles from a small core of traditional journals.

This study underscores the value of using both internal and external citation analyses, and analyzing the number of citing authors as well as the number of citations. Interlibrary loan and internal usage statistics were also used to inform collection development and library instruction. The individual citation data for each dissertation (plus some analyses) are in a separate folder with the combined dissertation data.