Access and Citing Theses Literature: A Study of the Role of Repositories and Academic Search Engines

Abstract

This work investigates the impact of citations to theses emanating through archives and search engines such as Shodhganga, NDLTD, and others and compares them with Google Scholar citation data. The study is quantitative and uses the Bibliometrics citation analysis technique to evaluate references in the Scopus Database. The citation pattern of theses and dissertations indexed in the database is compared with the citation frequency of the repositories.The results show little correlation between the domain of ‘theses' output and its cited records. As expected, Scopus and Google Scholar have no correlation regarding citation frequencies. The findings help the authors understand the repositories' impact and provide attention to the high-impact repository sites.