Who is Citing Undergraduate Theses in Institutional Digital Repositories?: Implications for Scholarship and Information Literacy

Abstract

Undergraduate theses are available through open access institutional repositories. Is undergraduate work being integrated into the larger body of academic research, and, if so, how? Institutional repositories containing undergraduate theses were selected and titles were searched using the forward citation feature in Google Scholar to determine if and where undergraduate scholarship is being cited. Results show that 24% of citations to senior theses were in peer-reviewed or refereed journals, and 33% in dissertations and theses. This paper addresses citation source and the potential value of undergraduate scholarship as well as the implications for information literacy instruction to senior thesis students.