La producción de tesis doctorales en España (1995-2014): Evolución, disciplinas, principales actores y comparación con la producción científica en WoS y Scopus

Abstract

The growing accessibility of grey literature has drawn attention to a research product which is still little known: the doctoral thesis. The present study analyses the overall Spanish production of doctoral theses during the period 1977-2014, as recorded in the TESEO database, focusing specifically on the final 20 years of this period. The evolution of the production of theses is described, as well as their distribution by subject and university. A comparison is made with scientific production data extracted from Web of Science and Scopus regarding growth, subject matter and institutional distribution. An important correlation is detected between the production of theses and scholarly output in both databases. This correlation grew stronger starting in 2007, when a growth pattern of theses emerged that paralleled the exponential growth of Spanish scientific output reflected in Web of Science and Scopus. As for the distribution by subject and institution, relevant changes occurred between 1995-99 and 2010-14. Specifically, the output in the health sciences diminished from 17,8% in 1995-99 to 12,3% in 2010-14. In the same interval, the Complutense University lost its leading advantage in the production of doctoral theses, as it was almost matched by the University of Barcelona. A more progressive distribution of theses among universities is also detected for the latter period. This distribution is also studied along with WoS data on scientific production and the percentage of high impact production per institution. The general rise in the WoS / theses production ratio observed is frequently higher in institutions with a greater percentage of high impact production.