| Objective:
To investigate citation of electronic resources to identify the researcher's
knowledge of accurate Internet-based resources and the user’s preference
to publication type of information.
Methods: This study was done using citation analysis. The postgraduate
thesis of Tabriz medical school including medical/sub specialty, PhD and MSc
in Para-medicine between 1998-2002 were chosen and, categorized in 11
groups according to their subject, for each of which 30 theses were randomly
assigned. Citations from 330 theses were then entered in Microsoft Excel for
analysis. Also Pearson's Rank Order Correlation was issued for level of
significance in SPSS.
Result: The results show that out of 6249 citations used in the 330 theses;
64.8 percent refers to journals and only 0.83 percent directly refers to Internet
-based publications. Moreover, from the entire Internet -based citations 7.69
percent belonged to search engines and 92.31 percent referred to websites.
Of websites, about 53.84 percent referred to systematically reviewed
databases such as Medline, PubMed, APA and Cochran Library; and 7.69
percent to academic, and educational sites; 3.84 percent to personal sites,
11.53 percent to other sites. The result also indicated that, from citation style
aspect, 93.87 percent of citation style was wrong.
Conclusion: Despite the low citation of Internet, most of them (69.23%)
have got reliable Internet sources. However there was a sort of chaos in
referring to the Internet electronic references. The findings showed that it is
necessary to make and educational program for searching, evaluating, and
especially , referring the to Internet resources in university community. |