Citation Analysis of the References of the PhD Theses in Knowledge and Information Science at Ahwaz Shahid Chamran University

Citation analysis is one of the important ways to assess the status of utilizing references used by students in writing dissertations. The aim of this research was to study the status of references used in PhD theses of Knowledge and Information Science at Ahwaz Chamran University (2009-2015).
Material and The citation analysis method was used in this study, and the population was 3048 citations extracted from the references of 20 PhD dissertations at Ahwaz Shahid Chamran University. Data were analyzed using Excel.
Findings: Findings showed that periodicals with 1696 citations (55.64%) had the highest rate of citation and the citation mean was 152.4 for each thesis. In addition, Latin resources were more cited than Persian resources. English language with 2050 (67.26%) citations had the highest rate of citations. The Persian and Latin references had only one author. The most cited authors, resources and half –life resources were identified. Citing scientific productions of supervisors and advisors were very low so that out of 3048 citations, only 180 (5.90%) citations were referred to the scientific productions of supervisors and advisors.
In writing the dissertations, Latin resources were mostly used. The highly cited resources and authors can be employed in the selection of library resources, and regarding half-life as a criterion for evaluating the novelty of resources, it is concluded that new resources are not used in writing the theses by PhD students.