Abstract

Citations of 24 doctoral dissertations in Applied Zoology submitted to Kuvempu University since its inception were analysed to study the information use pattern of research scholars. The study also analysed the principal bibliographic forms, the journal used and their distribution according to country of origin and chronological scattering. The application of Bradford’s Law of scattering to the literature of botany reveals an exponential trend when plotted on the graph. The study shows that the distribution pattern of citations by type of documentary sources shows that periodicals are highly cited (75.52%). Books are considered as the second major source, which accounts for 17.25%. In other words, periodicals and books together constitute 92.77% while other forms of sources are negligible. Team research prevails in the field of Biotechnology. The degree of collaboration is found to be 0.66. The study shows that United States occupied top position with 1,679 citations (32.69%), followed by India (1,303; 25.37%) and then the United Kingdom (842; 16.39%). It is evident from the result of the study that the journal, Journal Mutation Research (212; 5.46%) occupies first in the rank list of journals, followed by the Journal of Bombay Natural History Society 74 (1.90%) and Aquaculture 70 (1.80%); Journal Fish Biology 67 (1.72%) scores the highest number of citations among the most cited periodicals.