Citation analysis of the PhD thesis in history at Al-zahra: University in the years 1380-1391

Recognizing the patterns of citation and material usage in thesis writing, this research intends to identify the researcher’s needs for data in History area by citation analysis. The output taken from PhD thesis on History at Al-Zahra University would highly contribute to History research and studies. Employing citation analysis method, the research studies on bibliography in 25 thesis from 1380 to 1391 (Solar Calendar) with a total citation of 5949 by applying Microsoft Excel. It seems that books, having 4736 calls (79.61%), possess the highest rank in citation while Persian resource, with 3414 calls (57.39%) is the first among other language resource such as Arabic, with 2035 calls (34.21%). The field “History of Islamic Iran” assigned the largest number of citation to itself with almost 57.25% as well as comparing to the field “History of Islam” the average half-life of books cited in the former field is 10.97 to 9.90 in the latter. Moreover, the average half-life of total journals cited in the former field is 8.62 when the average in the latter field is 7.95. The findings also show that books have been the main accesible source with the emphasis on compiled rather than translated works. Cited journals and periodicals in Persian have been more up-to-date comparing with Arabic and Latin ones.