Quantitative and structural analysis of dissertation research of tourism in the Russian Federation

The article gives some experience in carrying out scientometric research of quantity of dissertation research for the PhD degree devoted to the problems of tourism and recreation. The article is focused on dissertation research devoted to tourism, that have been defended in our country beginning from 1980-s. The aim of this scientific study was to define the total number of theses and to determine their division according to scientific areas in Russia. In accordance with this aim the authors focus their attention on the analysis of activity of scientists representing different fields such as economics, pedagogy, sociology and others. The article presents some methods and the results of the author's scientometric study of dissertation activity in the research dealing with tourism and recreation in Russia. The analysis has been carried out in two stages. The first stage of the research (1985-2010) is described in the journal “Regional researches” №2, 2011. The main source of information used at the second stage of this study was Electronic theses catalogue of Higher attestation commission. The theses that have the words “tourism”, “tourist”, “recreation”, excursion”, and “spa” in their titles were regarded as touristic research. As a result, the author revealed 1953 candidate and doctor theses referred to 18 scientific fields. Considering the size of Russia, the obtained results are obviously correlated with foreign experiences described in the article. The table gives absolute and relative number of theses on each field (the percentage of the total number), the data being given on the stages and on the total result. The obvious leaders in the sphere of tourism research turned is economics, pedagogy and geography, and the figure in the article shows this fact very well. The share of these scientific fields accounts for 84, 4 % of all theses, defended in Russia on problems of tourism and recreation. Finally, the author gives their own opinion on such a great popularity of geographic, economic and pedagogical studies in tourism. The obtained results may be used for future planning of new studies in tourism.