Internet research in Spanish communication faculties. Bibliometric analysis of doctoral dissertations (1997-2012)

This study analyses the production of doctoral dissertations on the Internet which have been defended in Communication departments in Spain over the period 1997-2012. The TESEO database has been used to search the data. The total number of dissertations produced during the studied period was 167. Bibliometric analysis techniques have been used in order to analyze the data. Production is analyzed for time period, theses language, PhD candidate genre, universities and faculties, theses advisors an examination board members. Results show some ups and downs in the production of theses, although the trend is growing steadily in recent years. Also, Spanish is by far the most popular language used by the authors, and there are slightly more men than women among them. Complutense University is the most prolific one, although the most prolific director belongs to the University of Murcia. However, most sought professors to be part of the examination boards come mainly from the Complutense University. These data are compared with those obtained in other recent bibliometric analysis and related to the field of communication, such as those on Advertising (Marcos Recio, Martinez Pestana y Blasco Lopez, 2012; Martinez Pestana, 2011a y 2011b); Television (Repiso, Torres y Delgado, 2011); Radio (Repiso, Torres y Delgado, 2012); and Cinema (Repiso, Delgado y Torres, 2012).