Price revisited: on the growth of dissertations in eight research fields

Abstract

This paper studies the production of dissertations in eight research fields in the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. In using doctoral dissertations it builds on De Solla Prices seminal study which used PhD dissertations as one of several indicators of scientific growth (Price, Little science, big science, 1963). Data from the ProQuest: Dissertations and Theses database covering the years 1950-2007 are used to depict historical trends, and the Gompertz function was used for analysing the data. A decline in the growth of dissertations can be seen in all fields in the mid-eighties and several fields show only a modest growth during the entire period. The growth profiles of specific disciplines could not be explained by traditional dichotomies such as pure/applied or soft/hard, but rather it seems that the age of the discipline appears to be an important factor. Thus, it is obvious that the growth of dissertations must be explained using several factors emerging both inside and outside academia. Consequently, we propose that the output of dissertations can be used as an indicator of growth, especially in fields like the humanities, where journal or article counts are less applicable.

The intellectual core and impact of the knowledge management academic discipline

“…Tables III and IV show categories of citing and cited works, respectively. First, theses, dissertations, and graduate or undergraduate projects, which represent indicators of scientific growth (Andersen and Hammarfelt, 2011), constitute 17 percent of all citing sources. Therefore, the KM discipline is in the phase of academic expansion.…”

Un estudio cienciometrico sobre las tesis doctorales españolas en acción tutorial (1980-2016)

“…Este último demuestra que, en solo tres años, se logra casi la mitad alcanzada en 21 años del anterior período. De acuerdo a lo anterior, podría existir una relación entre la lectura de tesis doctorales y las circunstancias sociales (Andersen;Hammarfelt, 2011), a lo que Fernández-Cano, Torralbo y Vallejo (2012) denominan armonía político-social o bienestar general del país. El crecimiento exponencial de tesis doctorales, desde el 2014 al 2016 (tercer ciclo), podría mantener alguna relación con el nuevo Real Decreto 99/2011, el cual regula las enseñanzas oficiales de doctorado y entrega un plazo de cinco año, desde su publicación, para la lectura de la tesis doctoral.…”

Research Career Persistence for Solar and Space Physics PhD

“…Because the field of Solar and Space Physics is so broad and housed in a variety of academic departments and colleges, searching dissertations for keywords and topics enabled the identification of most solar and space physics‐related PhDs regardless of discipline [ Moldwin et al ., ]. Though it is recognized that the Proquest database is not necessarily complete, it has been used extensively to identify trends in the size of research fields [e.g., Andersen and Hammarfelt , ]. This database includes American and international students.…”