Análisis bibliométrico de la producción científica de las relaciones públicas a través de las tesis doctorales (2006-2017) y de los programas de doctorado españoles (2017)

This article analyses the production of doctoral dissertations on public relations read at Spanish universities (2006-2017). The aim is to compare our findings to those of a similar study on the period 1965-2005 carried out by Castillo and Xifra in 2006 and also to correlate this production with doctoral programs specialized in public relations offered by Spanish universities during the same period. The methodology used is bibliometric analysis. On the one hand, it has been observed that the fields and research topics of most of the dissertations analyzed examine the professional practice of public relations and its instrumental dimension, similar to the results presented in the previous research. On the other hand, the fact that the Spanish higher education system offered only two doctoral programs with the term "public relations" in the name of the title in the 2017-2018 academic year and an additional one that included a public relations research line determines the proliferation of this discipline's scientific production.