Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to analyse the Master of Philosophy and the Doctor of Philosophy theses publications by postgraduate students at SNAS, University of Ghana from (2008 - 2016) using the INIS database as the source of data. The studies main objectives were to identify the number of theses by academic year, the academic qualifications awarded, the gender distribution of graduate students, the distribution of graduate student theses by academic department, the subject coverage of graduate student theses, the page ranges, figures and tables and citations found in theses by graduate students and the most frequently used keywords assigned by the indexer (subject specialist).
The study employed the bibliometric method. The purposive sampling technique was used to retrieve four hundred and fourteen (414) theses records from a population of five hundred and thirty eight (538) theses records published in Ghana. The International Nuclear Information System (INIS) database and the search query language (country:Ghana AND recordtype:Thesis/Dissertation) were the main instruments used for retrieving the data before extracting them onto Microsoft excel spreadsheet for analysis.
The major findings of the study revealed that the yearly publication trend of graduate student theses at SNAS showed a constant rise and fall in the number of theses published over the period. There was also a big gender gap with male students dominating their female counterparts with (300 or 79.71%) counts. The most frequently used keyword assigned by the indexer (subject specialist) was radiation protection with (189) counts.
It is recommended that the School of Nuclear and Allied Science (SNAS) should gain autonomy from the University of Ghana, the parent University as autonomy will make it run its academic programs by itself, take decisions that will benefit its smooth running and
management in the long run and also help SNAS to accelerate the plans already in place for a nuclear power plant to be added to the energy mix for Ghana.
