USE OF INFORMATION SOURCES AMONGST POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING A CITATION ANALYSIS YIP SUMIN

Transcription

1 USE OF INFORMATION SOURCES AMONGST POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING A CITATION ANALYSIS YIP SUMIN A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master in Library and Information Science at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology University of Malaya Jan 2009

2 ABSTRACT USE OF INFORMATION SOURCES AMONGST POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING A CITATION ANALYSIS by YIP SUMIN This study aimed to identify characteristic of materials used by postgraduates in computer science and software engineering programmes in University of Malaya to aid librarians in collection development to support research in these fields. Forty six dissertations submitted for the degree of Master in Computer Science and Master of Software Engineering between 1999 to 2006, representing 20% of the total dissertation populations for the period were analyzed to determined use of information sources amongst postgraduate students in the disciplines. A total of 2,746 citations were extracted from sample dissertations and tabulated according to authorship pattern, type of materials (books, e-book, journals, magazines, conference proceedings, book chapters, technical reports, thesis, government documents, web resources, computer programme, standards and others), language, age and domain name for web materials. Comparisons were made between the results and findings from previous citation analysis in computer science, science and engineering studies. Overall monographs were most used by postgraduates in computer science and software engineering at 32.14%, followed by conference proceedings (17.1%) journals articles (17.02%) and web resources (16.9%) and magazines (8.02%). Multi-authored authored

3 documents accounted for 51.35%. The age dispersion of citations used in computer science and software engineering spread over 63 years and the useful life of monograph, serials and web resources cited is about 6.69, 5.78 and 2 years respectively. The useful life is determined by counting the half-life of the documents. The preferred language of materials used was English. Findings from characteristics of sources used by postgraduate researchers in computer science and software engineering can help librarians to make an informed decision in collection management in order to meet the information need of researchers in computer related fields.

4 TABLE OF CONTENT Page ABSTRACT... ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... iv TABLE OF CONTENT... LIST OF TABLES... vii LIST OF FIGURES... ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Background Collection Management Purpose of the Study Sample and Methodology... 8 CHAPTER 2:REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Introduction Part One: Library Use Studies Citation Analysis Citation Analysis in Computer Sciences Part Two: Computer Scientists and the Library Research and Information Seeking Behaviour of Computer Scientists Part Three: Characteristics of Information Used by Computer Scientists "") Formats? Age Language Country of Publication Conclusion CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY Introduction Sample and Methodology Design of Databases Unit of Analysis Source Document Database Citations Databases CHAPTER 4: RESULT Introduction Part One: Characteristics of Computer Science and Software Engineering Dissertations Introduction Result Quantity and Type of Dissertations Language Distribution of Dissertations Quantity of Dissertations by Subjects Summary... 50

5 4.3 Part Two: Characteristics of Citations Used By Computer Science and Software Engineering Researchers Introduction Results Total Number of Citations Used by Computer Science and Software Engineering Researchers The Type of Documents Cited Authorship Pattern of Citations Used Core Authors of Citation Used Scattering of Serial Titles Used Frequently Cited Monographs Age Distribution of Citations Used Language Distribution of Citations Used Geographical Distribution of Citations Used Most Cited Publishers of Monographs Used Most Cited Publishers of Journals Used Summary CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION Introduction Discussion of Results Trends of Postgraduate Research in Computer Science and Software Engineering Quantity and Type of Dissertation Language Distribution of Dissertations Subject Dispersion of the Dissertations Characteristics of the Citations Used by Computer Science and Software Engineering Researchers Total number of Citations Type of Materials Used Authorship Pattern of Citations Used Core Authors of Citation Used Scattering of the Monograph Titles Used Scattering of the Serial Titles Used Age Distribution of Citation Used Language Distribution of Citation Used Geographical Distribution of Citation Used Most Cited Publishers Conclusion Appendix I: References Appendix II: List of Subjects Covered in Computer Science and Software Engineering Appendix III: List of Frequently Cited Monograph titles in Software Engineering and Computer Science Appendix III(a): List of Frequently Cited Titles in Computer Science Appendix III(b): List of Frequently Cited Titles in Software Engineering vi

6 Table LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1.1: Output of Computer Science Graduate at Degree Level from Public Institute of Higher Learning... 2 Table 2.1: Search results from LISAnet using various terms as descriptor (DE) Table 2:2 Collection Analysis Methods Table 3.1 Total Number of Dissertations Retrieved Table 4.1: Master's Dissertations Retrieved ( ) Table 4.2: Language Distribution By Programme Table 4.3: Top 10 Subjects by Programmes Table 4.4: Dissertation and Citations by Discipline Table 4.5: Types of Document Cited (overall) Table 4.6: Types of Materials Used by Disciplines Table 4.7: Authorship Pattern of Literature Used by Computer Science and Software Engineering scholars Table 4.8: Frequency of Authors Cited by Computer Science and Software Engineering Researches Table 4.9: Authors Ranked by Cohort Grouping and Frequency of Citations in Computer Science and Software Engineering Table 4.10: Authors Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Citations in Computer Science Table 4.11: Authors Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Citations in Software Engineering Table 4.12: Serials Titles in Decreasing Order of Citations in Computer Science and Software Engineering Table 4.13 Serials Titles Ranked by Cohort Grouping and Frequency in Both Computer Science and Software Engineering Table 4.14 Serial titles in Decreasing Order of Citation by Computer Science Table 4.16: Serial Titles in Decreasing Order of Citation by Software Engineering Table 4.15: Serial Titles Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Citations in Computer Science Table 4.17: Serial Titles Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Citations in Software Engineering Table 4.18: Monographs Titles in Decreasing Order of Citation Table 4.19: Monographs Titles in Decreasing Order of Citation Used by Computer Science vii

7 Table 4.20: Monographs Titles in Decreasing Order of Citation Used by Software Engineering Table 4.21: Domain Names in Decreasing Order of Citation Table 4.22: Domain Names Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Citations Table 4.23: Domain type in decreasing order of citation Table 4.24: Age Distribution of Total Citation Used Table 4.25: Age Distribution of Citation Used by Computer Science Table 4.26: Age Distribution of Citation Used by Software Engineering Table 4.27: Age Distribution of Total Monographic Citations Used Table 4.28: Age Distribution of Total Serial (Journal & Magazine) Citations Used Table 4.29: Age Distribution of Web Resources Citations Used Table 4.30 Language Distribution of Citation Used in Computer Science (CS) and Software Engineering (SE) Table 4.31: Geographical Distribution of Monographic Citations Table 4.32: Geographical Distribution of Journal Citations by Broad Disciplines Table 4.33: Distribution of Publishers by Frequency of Monographic Citations Table 4.34: Publishers Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Monographic Citations Table 4.35: Distribution of Publishers by Frequency of Journal Citations Table 4.36: Publishers Ranked by Cohort Groupings and Frequency of Journal Citations 90 viii

8 Figure LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 4.1: Master's Dissertations by Programme ( ) Figure 4.2: Total Language Distribution Figure 4.3: Bibliograph of Cumulative Frequency of Author Cited by Computer Science and Software Engineering Researchers Figure 4.4: Bibliograph for Serials by Frequency of Citations in Computer Science and Software Engineering Figure 4.5: Age Distribution of Citation ix

9 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background According to the Facts On File dictionary of computer science, computer science is the study of the theories and practices underlying the development of computer software, computing systems and their hardware implementation. It comprises sub-disciplines such as algorithms and data structures; programming languages; computer architecture; numerical and symbolic computation; operating systems; software engineering; databases and information retrieval; artificial intelligence; robotics and human-computer communication. Early efforts in computer science education took place at University of Malaya when its Computer Center took on the role of teaching and research in 1969 (FCSIT, University Malaya, 2005). Today 15 public institutions of higher learning (IPTAs) in Malaysia have established department, faculty or school of computing (Malaysia, Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi. 2007). Between year 2002 and 2007, IPTAs produced an average of 4,435 graduates per year (Table 1.1). Of the total number of students graduated with a science degree, an average of 31% is in computer science disciplines. This reflects the pervasiveness and growing importance of computer science studies in the country

10 Table 1.1: Output of First Degree Computer Science Graduate from Public Institute of Higher Learning, Year Computer Science Graduate Science Graduate Proportion of computer science to science graduate % ,427 10, , ,328 16, , ,797 16, ,379 16, ,464 14, (Source: Malaysia, Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi. 2007a) Science and technology play an increasingly important role in sustaining and improving the competitiveness of Malaysia. According to Malaysian Science and Technology Indicators 2004 Report (Malaysia Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, 2004) out of 11,522 students who graduated in first degree courses for science subject in 2002, 39.9% were from engineering, 23.2% were from natural science and 18.8% were from computer science. Graduation in agriculture science registered the highest growth (206.9%), followed by information technology and computer science (34.6%) when compared against year At the masters level courses in public institutions, the enrolment had grown rapidly over the last 10 years, registering an average increase of 23.4% per annum since The largest increase was over the last 2 years, where total enrolment increased from 15,497 in 2000 to 24,844 in 2002, representing an increase of 60.6%. Enrolment in arts subjects recorded the highest increase in the last two years (140.7%) whereas enrolment in science and technical subjects increased by 12.4%.

11 The Ninth Malaysia Plan covering (Malaysia, 2006) continues with previous development policy aiming to strengthen Malaysia's R&D activities and science and technology capacity to support the country's productivity driven growth and improve competitiveness. The plan identified Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as an enabler to enhance productivity and competitiveness as well as a driver to harness new sources of growth. ICT research has been feature prominently since the Sixth Malaysia Plan (Malaysia, 1991) and continued to receive special emphasis in the Seventh and Eighth Malaysia Plan as part of overall national development plan to encourage R& D activities and hence to improve Malaysia's competitive edge. During the Ninth Malaysia Plan, federal government development allocation for research and development is RM 1,581.6 million compares to RM 1,622.8 million in Eighth Malaysia Plan ( ) and RM 935 million in the Seventh Plan. Libraries in institutions of higher learning playing supporting role of providing resources and materials for research and development information needs is thus become increasing important. In attempt to fulfill the information need of researches, libraries need to have high-quality collections, especially journal collections which form the main channel the researches use to disseminate and assimilate research findings. As subscription prices of journal have increased by multiple folds over the years (Sen and Mashkuri 1997); librarians need to make informed and wise decisions to achieve a balance between acquisition budget and collection development requirement. The most salient characteristic of the computing field is that it is ever-present and rapidly evolving. Computers are used in almost every area and potentially touch all subjects at different level of sophistication. These characteristics further impose challenges and bring 3

12 up many questions for librarians responsible for collection development. Since computer science is a relative new area of study there are fewer resources where librarians can use in material selection process (Ensor 1985). This has resulted in new challenges for librarians responsible for collection development in this discipline. Libraries need some form of guideline for developing and maintaining computing collection which support the information needs for the academicians, researchers and students. According to Zainab and Ng (2003) University of Malaya had more titles in the field of information systems as compared to four other universities in Malaysia which offer computer science study. However, the availability of quality journals (34.22%) in University Malaya library is considered poor as it falls within the range of 30-44% of total computer science journals listed in Journal Citation Report or 103 titles in total. The authors provided a scale of measuring scores ranging from 80% and above as excellent, 60-79% as very good, 45-59% as good, 30-44% as poor, and below 30% as very poor. Thus if the library were to improve availability of quality journals, next aspect to investigate is what type of materials computer science researches in the university use most to justify further increase in journal subscription or deselect those which are least used. 1.2 Collection Management The process of collection development encompasses a variety of intellectual activities organised to obtain the bibliographic materials needed to support instructional programs and faculty or graduate research. In the process, it is essential to comprehend the details of local requirements to support various academic disciplines represented in the collections. 4

13 An effective collection development requires an informed decision making which has a direct bearing on the quality of selection. Broadus (1977) noted ideally collection development should be performed by librarians who have academic background or professional expertise in the field to have a comprehensively understanding of faculty and student research needs. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to match librarian's background to the faculty, citation analysis can provide useful guidance in the absence of such experts. Typically research needs of graduate students can be more difficult to discern as compared to faculty research needs due to lack of formal interaction with library and publications. It is rather easier to identify faculty research interests from various avenues like lists of faculty publications, faculty websites and request for material purchases (Williams & Fletcher 2006). According to Fussler (1949) due to exponential growth of knowledge and increasing complexity of knowledge, the research libraries were saddled with increasing complex and expensive process of managing their collection, particularly in large research libraries. Hamaker (1993) estimated that book prices increase an average of 65 percent in during the decade between , while journal subscriptions have also gone up at an average rate of 10 percent (Obserson, 1992) to 15 percent (Jaramillo and Lamborn, 1996) per annum. The increase in serial prices in the field of science and technology is estimated at more than 15 percent per year. Thus it is imperative that library use studies are carried out to understand actual literature requirements of library patrons which in an academic librarian setting include students, lecturers and researchers. Results of use studies can be used to determine which journal subscriptions should continue, as well as to identify candidates for cancellation should prices of serials escalated beyond library's means. 5

14 With the increasing number of new publications librarians are facing more complicated purchasing decisions each day. According to Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory the number of scientific and technical serials (including irregular serials & annuals) jumped 71.9 percent from 1981 to 1996, from 96,000 titles to 165,000 titles. Apart from traditional resources like monograph and serials, alternative publishing channels, such as open access journals and blogs increasingly becoming popular for scholarly communication. In various computer-related fields conference proceedings received more attention and are widely referred to, whereas journals and books are considered useful primarily as archival documents and less used as source in research communities (Goodrum et al., 2001). The increasingly specialized academic disciplines have also increased the difficulties of identifying the diverse interests of library users (Fussler, 1949). Since computer books get outdated more rapidly then other subject areas, it is important to constantly review collection in computing (Ensor, 1985). To help librarians make more informed selections decision, they need to have some knowledge about the nature and need of its researchers. Many approaches have been used to find out the information-gathering habits and information use of natural scientists and technical workers hut researches have overlooked the need of computer scientists. According to Johnson (2004) some of the questions which the library need to ask themselves are a) which materials should be preserved, b) which titles are category of materials should be kept on reference, and c) document for which research areas must the library concentrate on acquiring. 6

15 Mapping of information sources use among computer science scholars is one of the ways to gain better understanding of information-seeking behavior and use among this group of scholar (Hammershlag and Moshe 2004). Use" in this particular study means whenever the graduate student cited the source. 1.3 Purpose of the Study This research seeks to build on previous studies to examine dissertation trends and pattern of literature used by graduate student of in computer science and software engineering that may provide practical information for librarians to make more informed selections decision to improve collection in this field. Specific questions that the study addresses include: About the dissertation trends: a. What are total number of dissertations submitted in computer science and software engineering in Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya between 1999 and 2006? b. What is the subject coverage of the dissertations carried out in the computer science between 1999 to 2006, distinguished by broad disciplines, such as algorithms and data structures, programming languages, computer architecture, numerical and symbolic computation, operating systems, software engineering, databases and information retrieval, artificial intelligence and robotics, human-computer communication. c. What is the language distribution of dissertation submitted? About the references used: d. What is the average quantity of references used by computer science researchers? e. What types of literature are being cited? f. Who are the key scholars whose works are frequently cited'? 7

16 g. What are the more important journal used in computer science? h. What is the spread of journal titles used by the researchers? Does journal titles used follow Bradford's Law of Scattering? i. What are the origins of the literature cited, defined by broad regions. j. Which Publishers are cited most? k. How current is the literature cited? 1. What are the languages of the material cited? m. Are more of the cited materials are in electronic format? n. Are there identifiable key sites for electronic materials? o. What is the spread of open source journals, grey literature and new media used by the researchers? 1.4 Sample and Methodology The sample frame for this study is master's dissertations submitted by postgraduate students undertaking Master of Computer Science (MCS) and Master of Software Engineering (MSE) at Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FCSIT), University of Malaya from 1999 to Using systematic sampling at total of 46 dissertations, comprised 20% of the populations were identified for analysis. A span of 8 years is considered adequate to indicate research trend and strengths. This study will adopt a mixture of descriptive statistics and simple citation count. Descriptive statistics are used to indicate quantities and trend of researches in the Computer Science and Software Engineering individually and as a whole. Citation analysis will be used to show the spread and characteristic of literature cited. 8

17 1.5 Limitation This research only confine to a sample taken from dissertation of computer science and software engineering, it might not reflect the actual demand for computer science literature from the perspective of the entire University of Malaya's community. An engineer or a physicist from other faculties may at some point make use of literature on computer science and their usage will not be reflected in this study. The accuracy of the results of this study will depend on consistency of references cited in the sampled dissertations. While citation analysis can be useful to identify journals worthy of closer examination by librarian it should not be as the sole basis for making acquisition decisions. For instance, those materials used by postgraduate students for background research may be underrepresented in their dissertations, on the other hand sources cited may only have been superficially used or may not necessarily have been used at all. Summary Information technology and computer science is playing an increasing important role in sustaining and improving the competitiveness of Malaysia. The government strived to upgrade Malaysia's research and development activities and science and technology capacity through continuous investment in the country's institutions of high learning. The Libraries playing a central role in supporting research and development information needs is thus become increasing important. Libraries need to have high-quality collections, especially journal collections to disseminate and assimilate research findings. Constrained 9

18 by increased cost of journal subscription prices and cost of other research materials, librarians need to make informed and wise decisions to achieve a balance between acquisition budget and collection development requirement. Therefore it is imperative that library use studies are carried out to understand actual literature requirements of library patrons. This study aimed to employ citation analysis to examine trend of research and understand the pattern of usage of literature by postgraduate students of computer science and software engineering from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya. Results from the study could be served as a guide to improve library collection in supporting local computer science study. 10