GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

The study examined scientometric study of authorship patterns and degree of collaboration of authors cited in PhD degree theses submitted to the faculty of law from 2015-2023. The study made use documentary  analysis methods. The population of the study comprised of   a total of 60 PhD Law degree theses submitted to the faculty of Law, randomly selected from 2015-2023 in 12,304 articles. Similarly, a checklist was designed for data collection hence, data was analysed using descriptive statistics. Findings indicated that single authors made the highest contribution in the field of Law as they dominated the authorship pattern in the study with 7,124 articles (57.89%). Also followed were corporate authors with 1,978 articles (16.06%), two authors with 1,888 articles (15.34%), three authors with 1,136 articles (9.23%) and the least which is four authors’ contribution with 178 articles (1.44%) respectively. The degree of collaboration (DC) was 0.421 which indicated that faculty of Law PhD Theses were in favour of single authors, hence this indicates that, researchers in the field of Law undertook lesser collaborative research. The study therefore recommended that; Mentorship in research should be champion by senior academics in all fields and research contributions should not be centered on the basis of appraisal and recognition of lead authors instead, collaborative researches should be encouraged to promote expertise and mentorship among others.

Keywords: Scientometric Studies, authorship patterns, Degree of Collaboration, PhD Degree, Theses.