Citation Patterns of Advanced Undergraduate Students in Biology, 2000-2002 Joseph R. Kraus SUMMARY. Thirty-three undergraduate student papers in biology that were presented at an annual symposium of undergraduate research at the University of Denver from 2000 through 2002 were evaluated. There were a total of 770 citations with an average of 23.3 citations per paper. It was determined that 76.2% of the citations came from journal articles, 16.4% came from books or book chapters, 6.4% were to other miscellaneous sources, and only 1.0% were to Web sites. Other findings include the top cited journals, the oldest cited journal articles, the average age and range of books and journals, the types of miscellaneous sources cited, and the stabil- ity of the cited Web sites. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworth press.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.] KEYWORDS. Biology literature, life science literature, information- seeking patterns, bibliometric analysis, undergraduate students Joseph R. Kraus, MLS, is Science Librarian, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208 (E-mail: [email protected]). The author would like to thank Jil Dawicki and the rest of the ILL staff for getting some of the obscure references in preparation for this research. [Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Citation Patterns of Advanced Undergraduate Students in Biology, 2000-2002.” Kraus, Joseph R. Co-published simultaneously in Science & Technology Libraries (The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 22, No. 3/4, 2002, pp. 161-179; and: Scholarly Communication in Science and Engineering Research in Higher Education (ed: Wei Wei) The Haworth Information Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2002, pp. 161-179. Single or multiple cop- ies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: [email protected]]. http://www.haworthpress.com/store/product.asp?sku=J122 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 10.1300/J122v22n03_13 161 162 Scholarly Communication in Science and Engineering Research in Higher Education INTRODUCTION There is plenty of recent research that shows how undergraduates use the library and its print and electronic resources. However, there is little recent research that shows how undergraduate students are citing jour- nals, books, and other materials in the sciences. However, there is a good amount of research that documents how graduate students and faculty in the sciences use and cite the literature. This paper will provide statistics and data to document how advanced undergraduate biology students are citing the scientific literature, and that data is compared with the citation patterns of faculty and graduate students. Several years ago, the author of this article talked to the University of Denver Penrose Library Associate Director for Collection Develop- ment, Patricia Fisher, about his interest in citation patterns of students and faculty in the sciences. She suggested a collaborative project to evaluate some of the “honors papers” presented by University of Den- ver undergraduate students. Since 1996, the University of Denver has sponsored an annual Conference of Undergraduate Research. The au- thor already knew about information usage patterns of undergraduates in the fields of physics and chemistry, but was not as familiar with the information usage patterns of life science students. After the research project was completed, the findings were presented as a poster paper at the 2000 ALA Conference in Chicago (Kraus and Fisher 2000). The fol- lowing are some of the basic figures derived from that research. Over a three year span from 1997-1999, biology students wrote 51 honors pa- pers, cited a total of 878 sources for an average of 17.2 citations per pa- per. Of those citations, 67% were to journals, 25% to books, 7% to miscellaneous sources, and 1% to Web sites. The average ages of book and journal citations were also found. This paper was written to continue the data gathered from the 1997-1999 honors papers research. Because of the importance of the journal literature to biology students and faculty, it was determined that more data should be gathered concerning the top cited journal titles. In order to compare the three-year spans, the honors papers written from 2000 through 2002 were evaluated for the same basic data points in ad- dition to determining the top cited journals. The students who wrote honors papers received support and guid- ance from faculty research partners and advisors. However, the level and amount of support and guidance the students received is unknown. In order to determine that level of support, a survey of the faculty advi- sors may be the focus of a future research project. Based on the titles of Bibliometric Analysis of Citation Data 163 the honors papers, and the quality of the journals that they had cited, it appears that the faculty advisors are preparing these students for gradu- ate or medical school work. For example, here is the title to one of the student papers: “Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I (IGF-I) Offers Neuro- protection Through Suppression of Key Elements in the Intrinsic Death Signaling Pathway in Cerebellar Granule Neurons.” One may ask: “Why evaluate the citation patterns of undergraduate students? Aren’t the citations going to be of low quality? Why not re- search the higher quality citation patterns of faculty or graduate stu- dents?” To answer, there is little research on the citation patterns of undergraduates in the sciences, and this research could fill a niche. The citation patterns of faculty can be easily gleaned by gathering the refer- ences from their published papers. One can also gather the references of Master’s and Ph.D. students once the theses and dissertations are com- pleted. Since the honors papers and references receive faculty approval before presentation at the Annual Symposium, it was deemed worth- while to evaluate the higher quality citation patterns of those students. This paper will establish a baseline from which further research can be performed; it describes the types of material students are citing, but it does not explain how they obtain those citations. LITERATURE REVIEW Overview There are many articles in the literature that demonstrate how librari- ans find and report citation research. Citations can be thought of as a form of library use, but scientists and students can get information from other sources besides libraries (Kelland and Young 1994). In other words, do not assume that a citation is a count of library use. Librarians should also be careful when using citation figures and Institute for Sci- entific Information (ISI) impact factors when making decisions about journals (Stankus and Rice 1982). Since undergraduate students usually do not have personal subscriptions to scholarly journals, and they have not yet formed a professional network, it is more likely that a citation is a count of library use. Undergraduate Citation and Use Studies In the course of gathering background literature for this paper, only a small number of prior articles that covered undergraduate citation pat- 164 Scholarly Communication in Science and Engineering Research in Higher Education terns, particularly in biology, could be found (Magrill and St. Clair 1990; St. Clair and Magrill 1992). They showed that senior undergradu- ates in biology cited an average number of 19.2 citations per term paper. Of those citations, 75% were to journals, 14% to books, and 10% to other sources of information. They also found that biology students used older journal articles, as compared to many other disciplines. Since this research is over 10 years old, they did not evaluate how biol- ogy students cited Web resources. More recently, researchers at Cornell University provided a thorough examination of undergraduate citation behavior in the social sciences (Davis 2002; Davis 2003; Davis and Cohen 2001). They examined the journal, book and Web citations of microeconomic term papers written by undergraduate students. In 2002, for an update article, Philip M. Davis showed that there is growth in the number of Web and newspaper cita- tions in the students’ papers. His 2003 paper documented a recent in- crease in the use of scholarly material because the professor provided additional guidelines on the use of scholarly and electronic resources. His research also reported a lack of persistency for cited URLs (Davis 2003). In 2001, the microeconomic students cited books 16%, scholarly journals 30%, magazines 23%, Newspapers 12%, and Web resources 13%. Several articles document the problems of Web page change and persis- tence, also called “linkrot” (Koehler 1999; Koehler 2002; Lawrence, Pennock et al. 2001; Taylor and Hudson 2000). Many articles and reports also show how undergraduate students prefer to use the Internet for library resources (Friedlander 2002; Lombardo and Condic 2001; Lombardo and Miree 2003; OCLC 2002) and Internet search engines as the first place to look for research (Leibovich 2000). Research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project documents how the Internet has become central to the culture of undergraduate students (Jones 2002). Many librarians are worried that undergraduate students who first turn to the Web for research are “using unevaluated or inappropriate Web resources to support their writing assignments” (Grimes and Boening 2001). Citation Patterns of Graduate Students in Biology A citation analysis of biology faculty publications and graduate stu- dent papers at Temple University was performed (McCain and Bobick 1981). The researchers found that 91% of the citations were to journals. Using data from the McCain and Bobick study, Louise S. Zipp concluded that journal citations in theses and dissertations are better indicators of faculty use than had been previously assumed (Zipp 1996).