Dear Reiner,

I have been asked often as well!

 We can not define a precise number as the lower limit on the number of references. I ask my students to perform a very complete literature review to find the most relevant articles related to their subject. They have had between 60 to 120 cited references.

>50

Dear Reiner

The number of cited article is not important but using of valuable and reasonable articles which related to the topic of your thesis completely is more important.

Dear Reiner,

I have been asked often as well!

 We can not define a precise number as the lower limit on the number of references. I ask my students to perform a very complete literature review to find the most relevant articles related to their subject. They have had between 60 to 120 cited references.

Numbers of article cited does not matter, what matter is the quality of your thesis and that quality can only be make sure if you cite the quality papers, and you provide your insights in your thesis.

Value creation, new knowledge generation, and valuable addition in the existing body of knowledge does matter in the field of research

Is the number important? For an absolutely original work, there may actually be nothing to cite. What would you do then? On the other hand, one should cite only those articles or books, which the author of the thesis has actually studied.

Dear Reiner; I agree with those who mentioned the numbers of cited articled is not important, but the number of references, in the institution I graduated, should not be less than 45. I think that is reasonable.

References quantity is not so much important, as umber of references also depends upon material saturation of thesis. But quality of references is important, quality in sense that references should be the most recent!!

Dear Reiner

Its difficult to define a lower limit number of references.

The value of a master thesis is not directly related with a number of references

The references serve to provide theoretical basis for scientific work. When writing a scientific article only with our ideas, what we think, work does not deserve credit. Every academic or scientific work must cite other authors who talk about the topic. Citations should conform to what you're writing. Our ideas and authors cited in our work should be consistent. The references serve to lend credibility to scientific work.

I agree with Aamir and Nelson.

The number of references is not the most important issue. The quality of them, I mean, they have to be the most recent and adequate to the subject. That is the very important issue.

Quality has more importance than quantity. i agree with most of these researches in this page. The number is not important but how much it can help a researcher has a lot of significance.

A very good question. Yes, Quality has more importance than quantity. But who decides which material is of good quality, usually the MSc supervisor, Is it fair enough?

Why not get the students to survey the masters theses available, and summarize their findings: Minimum, maximum, average, median?

Dear Professor Reiner Creutzburg,

In completing Master thesis a medium level of literature survey and the current trend in the field are the essential processes. Its true the reference number limit cannot be assigned or fixed. It is a fair task of the student, supervisor and the thesis committee but the main responsibility of the task is with the student.

The reference list should reflect the appropriate literature that is cited in the actual thesis. Nothing should be cited that is contrive or just because it is cited frequently by others either. You account for what is cited in the thesis in the reference, thus, there is no set number of references.

A long list of references does not makes a thesis good. But some people are sold to the idea that lots of references makes a good impression on the examiner, etc. This could be true before WWII. Now, the fewer the better but relevant ones even if they are old.

The number of references may not ultimately determine the quality of a research. However, citing plenty references can be a way to indicate that the author took time to understand the previous achievements already made in the subject matter before trying to add something new. My take is that when there is availability of extant literature in a field. Researhers of such field should endeavour to use as much literature as would convince them of their grasp of the research area.

"It depends" is the short answer. However this might be an interesting guideline.

https://drsaraheaton.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/how-many-sources-do-you-need-in-a-literature-review/

As Ian pointed out, finding and following the descriptive statistics of the number of references of some Master's Theses is a good idea. Unlike Master's theses, journal research articles that report new exciting discovery often has a very short number of references. However, this might not be the case for Master's Theses because we often want Master's students to go through the thesis writing practices regardless of the original contribution of knowledge. Thus following the norm of your academic community in regards to the number of references seems to be a prudent idea.

I've recently started writing my ma dissertation for MA arts. I have roughly done my introduction and I am halfway through the first half of my first chapter and I have 32 references so far.

The quantity of the number does not matter, it's the quality of the writing. However, I'd say somewhere between 45 and 100 would be a reasonable amount.

According to me, it should be in the range of 100-150. However, that depends on the selected topic.

Hi,

The reference should be useful to the literature of a thesis. Moreover, there is no constrain about the citations of references. The useless references should be omitted.

The most important is to cite the related research to the topic of your master thesis. However, discipline may make a difference. Some disciplines have more research production in the area, hence you might reach more than 100 citations, some disciplines have lower number of research therefore less citations, hence, you may cite 30 papers. Being concise and focused on citing papers relevant to your topic covering recent and old researches what matters. Good luck.

Quality does matter, content can be short but must be relevant to get attention of reader.

The number of references in article indicates that the researcher took time reading the papers so as to understand in deep the concept and what have been already done in the subject topic though this doesn't guarantee the quality of the material being written.

I am completing a dissertation and have around 73 references. Will this be enough for an MBA dissertation?

I think like what other people are saying, quality is important, not quantity.But I also think your institutions might be having a certain minimum number.