Information use pattern of researchers in electrical and electronics engineering: a citation analysis of master’s thesis

Abstract

This study applied the citation analysis method to examine the use of information resources by Master students of Electrical Engineering in preparing their theses at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, with a view of ensuring effective collection development needed for university education. The study covers the period of 12 years (1995-2006). A total of 36 theses were collected and analyzed, 976 citations were retrieved from the theses. The purpose was to find out the information resources used by the master’s student, authorship patterns of the cited journals, extent of collaboration and the use of web resources by the master’s students. The study showed that textbooks and journals are still the mostly used sources of information with (41.50%), (25.75%) respectively. The study revealed that majority of the cited journal were by two and more authors, that means collaborative research is prevailing in the field of electrical engineering and the degree of collaboration, C= 0.65. That means Collaborative research is the common phenomenon in the Electrical engineering (Collaboration is very high). Hence, the findings reveal that Masters Student of Electrical Engineering demonstrated evidence of use of commercial web (.com), although the use of web resources was found to be very scanty accounting for 19 citations (1.96%). This study serves as a baseline indicator of the use of resources by Electrical engineering researchers that can be used by librarians to focus their collection development to support research needs and a continuing assessment is deemed necessary because of the increasing cost of information resources.

Keywords: Researchers, Information, Use, Pattern, Electronics, electrical, theses, Engineering, Citation