Research potential of doctoral studies on environmental sciences and engineering

The paper evaluates the scientific merit of doctoral studies on environmental sciences and technology, involving completed doctoral studies in Turkey between 2000–2007, as a case study. The investigation revealed 446 scientific papers derived from 170 completed doctoral studies. This level represented 22% of the total number of publications at departments with graduate programs in this field. 42 of the completed studies (25%) did not produce published papers other than the compulsory doctoral thesis. These publications received 2766 citations, corresponding to 6.2 citations per publication; 65 of 170 doctoral studies completed (38%) had no record of any citation, indicating that aside from 42 doctoral theses which did not produce any publications, results of 22 doctoral studies were published but received no citations. Impact factors of selected journals for publication varied within a wide range of 0.429 to 3.894 with an average value of 1.65, based on 2007 impact factor records.