Bibliometric Analysis of Doctoral Theses

The use of bibliometrics as an essential tool for collection development is well acknowledged by many researchers. This is because it employs quantitative methods that seek to measure the output of scientific publications. The quantitative evaluation of publication and citation therein can be beneficial for effective collection development. The purpose of the study was to provide an indepth study analysis of the citation patterns of PhD dissertations submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cape Coast between 2005 to 2016 using bibliometrics. A total of 35 PhD thesis submitted within the stated period were obtained from the Africana Section of the Sam Jonah Library. The reference section of each of the thesis were photocopied and manually examined. The citations extracted were inputted into the MS-Excel software programme for analyzes. In all, 6,458 citations were analyzed. Journal articles were the most cited publications, followed by books, reports and web resources. The findings also showed that 79.9% of the publications cited in PhD thesis were 16 years old and above with some publications published as far back as the 1970s.