This article originated from a master's dissertation, submitted to the Graduate Program in Sciences of Information at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas. Such dissertation conducted an analysis of citations of bibliographical references/bibliography found in theses and dissertations submitted during the years 1999 to 2002, in the following areas of Letters: Linguistics, Literary Theory, and Comparative Literature. Those theses had been conducted in departments of three state universities in São Paulo state: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras at Universidade de São Paulo, in the state capital; Faculdade de Ciências e Letras at Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, in the city of Assis; and Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, in the county of Campinas. The occurrences of document citations were verified in electronic support, by means of the scientometric method. Aspects related to the characteristics of the documents were registered, such as: books, articles in periodicals, scientific events, theses and dissertations. Citations of documents retrieved by means of electronic media, and citations of printed documents were compared quantitatively. A sample of 229 theses and dissertations was selected, out of a total of 539 works concluded in the above mentioned universities. By means of semi-structured interviews, quality indicators were obtained regarding the dissemination policies for printed and electronic documents in the Humanities, particularly in the area of Letters. The period covered by the research had its starting year defined by the implementation of Program of Electronic Library, by the São Paulo State Foundation for Research Support, which provided the state's public universities with the access to electronic journals.
scientometrics; database; scientific production; electronic documents; research in languages