Abstract:
Data must be given context to become
information. Information must be given meaning
to become knowledge. Knowledge, in turn, can
only become wisdom if applied correctly. Data
from postgraduate dissertations, including an
analysis of the types of citations used, can give
rise to information that can subsequently
contribute to knowledge and wisdom. This type
of analysis is warranted, as it has been reported
that poor references are a common fault in
dissertations. The purpose of this article is to
analyse 157 Master dissertations from 19
different disciplines that were completed over a
10-year period at one university in order to
identify the types and the trends of the citations
used in order to highlight any major concerns
with regard to credibility. An ex-post facto study
is used where citation analysis is used to obtain
quantitative data. Results reveal that 17063
citations were used in total, where the disciplines
of Electrical Engineering and Information
Technology had the highest number of internetbased
sources, as compared to journal articles
and books. Engineering postgraduate students
also used a fewer number of citations (average
of 60 per dissertation) as compared to students
in Humanities (103 citations per dissertation),
Environmental Sciences (138 citations per
dissertation) and Management (121 citations per
dissertation). The use of Wikipedia was limited
to 79 citations, of which almost 50% was found
in Electrical Engineering. An important
implication of this research is that it may help
postgraduate students to select more credible sources for their citations, formatting them more
correctly so as to easily identify their types. This
in turn may have a bearing on improving the
quality of their dissertations that may ease the
examination process.
