A citation analysis of specialty dissertations in Hormozgan University of medical sciences

Introduction: Citation analysis is a branch of bibliometrics in which information needs of users of a particular library can be assessed and therefore it can be used as a tool in a library collection building. This study was conducted on cited references of specialty dissertations in order to determine the reference type, their half life and language. Methods: Citation analysis on all the 55 specialty dissertations submitted to Hormozgan university of medical sciences (HUMS) during 1997-2003 was conducted. Information on each cited reference, including reference type, date of publication, and language were recorded. The results were compared to the central library collection. Results: As expected, English journals were the most heavily cited format: 57% of all citations were English journal articles followed closely by English textbooks with 25.08%. According to Bradford law core journals in this study were 4 titles out of 236 journals which accounted for more than 16% of cited references. Most cited references were in English (95.18%), and 4.19% of them were in Persian. Overall, the half life of the cited references was 8 years. Conclusion: Lack of enough cited references in Persian may be due to the absence of Persian abstraction and indexing systems. By preparing a few numbers of journals, residents would have access to a large number of the articles that they need.