JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (YUKSEKOGRETIM VE BILIM DERGISI), cilt.12, ss.133-147, 2022 (Hakemli Dergi)
ABSTRACT
Researchers in Turkey’s universities write postgraduate theses on animals, but there has been no comprehensive assessment of these theses so far. The Council of Higher Education’s (CoHE) National Thesis Center database was searched for postgraduate theses on mammalian animals using a variety of keywords. The theses were classified according to their year of completion, university name, institution, department, level (master’s/PhD), geographical region, province, gender, open access status, subject, animal group, keyword, advisor title, and page range. Between 1976 and 2020, 593 theses on mammalian animals in the domains of science, health, and social sciences were completed in Turkey’s 52 provinces, 88 universities, 12 institutions, and 92 departments. Postgraduate theses were written in 64% of Institutes of Science, 25% of Institutes of Medical Sciences, and 2% of Institutes of Social Sciences. 40% of theses have been completed in the biology department, and there has been a remarkable increase in mammalian research over the last decade, particularly in the Forest Engineering and Histology and Embryology departments. 42% of these mammals were written in Turkey’s three largest cities (Ankara, İstanbul, and İzmir). These were primarily written in Ankara University. According to the research topics of theses, 54% are land-based, 42% are experimental, 2% are social, and 2% are modeling studies. The gender split among researchers is 50% female, 49% male, and 1% unknown. 79% of postgraduate theses are open access, and 50% are between 51 and 100 pages in length. Mammal, Mus, wild, stress, Miocene, water, polymerase chain reaction, rat, prey, predator, evolution, Microtus, morphometry, Myotis, oxidative, antioxidant, rattus genetic, banding, mammals, diversity, camera-trap, chromosome, and fauna’ are some of the keywords that appear in thesis abstracts. Rodentia, Carnivora, Artiodactyla, and Chiroptera are the most studied orders. 53.8 percent of academics with the title of professor, 28.2 percent with the title of associate professor, and 17% with the title of doctor lecturer supervised postgraduate theses. This study aimed to examine the history and current state of postgraduate theses on mammalian species in Turkey. The findings are intended to be utilized as a reference for a variety of bibliometric evaluations and research on mammalian animals in the coming years.
Keywords: Biology, Database, Gender, Open access