Book editors in the social sciences and humanities: an analysis of publication and collaboration patterns of established researchers in Flanders

Book editors in the social sciences and humanities play an important role in their fields but little is known about their typical publication and collaboration patterns. To partially fill this gap, we compare Flemish editors and other researchers, in terms of career stage, productivity, publication types, publications with domestic and international collaboration as well as the number of (international or all) unique co‐authors, co‐editors and associated book chapter authors. The results show that editors are mostly established researchers, especially in the social sciences, produce more book chapters and monographs than do other researchers, and are more productive. Nevertheless, editors collaborate less than do other researchers, both in terms of publications and in number of co‐authors. Including book chapter authors in the editors' collaboration networks makes those networks substantially larger, demonstrating that editors do not mainly call upon authors from their existing collaboration network when choosing book chapter authors in the edited books. Finally, editors seem to co‐author with their book chapter authors slightly more often after the publication of the edited book than before.     

Who Publishes More Books in U.S. English Departments,Men or Women?

The “gender gap” in the U.S. publication of English language and literature scholarly books has not been fully investigated. In order to investigate gender disparity, we collected, aggregated, and analyzed data on 1633 faculty members who authored or edited 4835 scholarly books at the top 50 U.S. English Ph.D. departments. Despite the fact that more women than men have received Ph.D.s in English since 1987, the top 50 departments are predominantly male, and male faculty members publish more books on a per capita basis. However, who publishes more books in these departments varies: (1) with the department that the faculty member is in (with grater parity in the middle 30 departments); and (2) when the faculty member published their first book, with female faculty who published their first book after 1998 publishing as many books on a per person basis as male faculty. This paper also offers recommendations on how marketing strategies can be used to ameliorate the “gender gap” in this academic field.     

A Citation Study of American Literature:

A total of 7,149 references appearing in 253 source items (including books, book artiles, journal articles, and dissertations) in the field of American literature were analyzed. From the analysis lists of the most frequently cited periodical titles and book titles (both primary and secondary) were formulated. Since such a large number of titles is cited, the lists reveal relatively small clusters of frequently-cited materials and do not identify fringe areas. The results do point to areas for retrospective development of collections and indicate possibilities for cooperative collection and study of citation data.     

Research trends and collaborations by applied science researchers in South African universities of technology: 2007–2017

This paper analyses the publication patterns of researchers in the field of applied sciences at Universities of Technology in South Africa. Aspects investigated include publications in SCOPUS-listed journals; number of citations and countries of publication. Collaborative research patterns at national and international levels were also investigated. A bibliometric analysis approach was followed using SCOPUS as the main source of data and analysing the articles published in selected applied science disciplines. Results show that researchers in the field of applied sciences in universities of technology have increased their number of publications over the past 10?years and are also working in conjunction with other researchers both nationally and internationally. The analysis is an important addition to the field in South Africa which helps in measuring how institutions are positively responding to government incentives in research. The results are also important to information professionals who are increasingly playing an important role in research impact assessments.     

A Quantitative Analysis of Research Output of Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi,India

This study provides an overview of the research output of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, in terms of number of publications contributed by faculty members and researchers. The study analyzes bibliometric indicators of published research of Jawaharlal Nehru University as indexed in the Web of Science. There were 5,007 research publications from Jawaharlal Nehru University in the four decades from 1971–2010 (70s; 80s; 90s; and 2000s). The study noted encouraging trends in collaborative research work with multiple-authored research papers. International collaboration in research was also observed among the faculty members and researchers. English was the predominant language of communication. The social scientists and humanists of Jawaharlal Nehru University publish books which are not indexed in the Web of Science. Similarly, research work published in regional languages or published in national level journals are seldom included in the Web of Science. It suggests that research needs to be done by collecting data from the Indian Citation Index and books published by the researchers in order to get an accurate and consolidated picture of the research output of the university.     

运用加权TOPSIS法的学术图书影响力评价方法研究

[目的/意义]针对当前学术图书评价环境,探讨利用TOPSIS法建立学术图书综合评价的可行性,提供一种学术图书综合评价的新思路和方法。[方法/过程]首先,选取图书情报领域高被引学术图书为研究对象,采用高频指标筛选和变异系数相结合的方法构建综合评价指标。其次,利用CRITIC法计算指标权重值,最后运用加权TOPSIS法对样本图书进行实证分析并得到影响力综合排名。[结果/结论]通过结果分析,发现CRITIC法与加权TOPSIS相结合的综合评价方法扩展了当前学术图书评价方法的单一性,且操作性更强,结果更加合理,为学术图书评价提供了一种兼顾定性和定量的综合评价方法。     

Sexual Minority Health: A Bibliography and Preliminary Study of the Book Literature

The literature on health in people who identify as sexual minorities is scattered in many types of resources and disciplines. To help address the need for relevant, well-organized information for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and health care providers, this study first identified books published in a ten-year period and then examined the topics, the number of books published per year, most prolific authors, and primary publishers. A wide range of publishers published a relatively small number of books (521). Most were about mental health or relationships and 24% were personal accounts. There were many subject deficiencies in the published book corpus.     

Linguistic differences between well‐established and predatory journals: a keyword analysis of two journals in political science

Predatory publishing has become a much‐discussed and highly visible phenomenon over the past few years. One widespread, but hardly tested, assumption is the idea that articles published in predatory journals deviate substantially from those published in traditional journals. In this paper, we address this assumption by utilizing corpus linguistic tools. We compare the ‘academic‐like’ nature of articles from two different journals in political science, one top‐ranking and one alleged predatory. Our findings indicate that there is significant linguistic variation between the two corpora along the dimensions that we test. The articles display notable differences in the types and usage of keywords in the two journals. We conclude that articles published in so‐called predatory journals do not conform to linguistic norms used in higher‐quality journals. These findings may demonstrate a lack of quality control in predatory journals but may also indicate a lack of awareness and use of such linguistic norms by their authors. We also suggest that there is a need for the education of authors in science writing as this may enable them to publish in higher‐ranked and quality‐assured outlets.     

Fourth annual survey of colleges and universities offering course work in radio and television, 1959–1959

The possibility that one mass medium might be used to stimulate another has been only imperfectly explored. For instance, a campaign by radio personality Jean Shepherd some years ago led to the birth of the monumental spoof that was the novel I, Libertine by “Frederick R. Ewing.” The delight of Shepherd's “night people” at being able to demonstrate their numbers was matched by the consternation of booksellers all over the city who impotently thumbed through their catalogs . . . until Shepherd took pity on them and arranged for the book to be written and published. In another instance, a participant on a late‐evening network program casually commented on a book that had caught his eye—and it was a national best‐seller within 24 hours.

The research reported in the following article attempts to discover whether this “touting” function of the broadcast media can be used systematically. A number of informal observations following “book review” or “library” programs on both radio and television would tend to support this idea. However, the following study was specifically designed to generate data that would demonstrate to broadcaster and librarian alike whether radio programs could be used by librarians (and presumably booksellers as well) to promote selection by the audience of pre‐determined books.     

Colleagues helping each other to publish in medical sciences: Iranian field specialists' convenience editing strategies

This article reports a study into 60 research articles (RAs) authored by Iranian medical researchers and published in high‐quality international English journals. It investigated how academic professionals in medical sciences implement peer convenience editing (CE) to improve articles and make them suitable for publication. The research identified nine editing interventions that were categorized as micro‐ or macro‐editing strategies. The findings indicated that the most frequently used strategies are micro‐strategies of substitution, addition, and mechanical alteration. The study also found that the abstract received the majority of editorial changes (mostly micro), followed by the introduction and then the discussion sections. The findings may help authors and institutions identify which sections and which types of editorial interventions are most likely to be required to ensure that RAs are optimized for publishing in international journals.     

Assessing books’ depth and breadth via multi-level mining on tables of contents

Compared with journal articles, books can provide broader, deeper and more comprehensive information, and often have higher expertise and academic depth. However, most researches on book assessment focus on measuring academic value of books (e.g. citations analysis) or identifying attitudes of readers (e.g. book review mining), depth and breadth reflected by book contents is neglected. Therefore, in this paper, we measure books’ depth and breadth by mining books’ tables of contents, so as to enrich resources and methods for book assessment research, help users understand book contents quickly and improve efficiency of book selection. Specifically, we measured books’ depth and breadth based on books’ tables of contents via two levels: topic level and feature level. Firstly, we obtained topic-level metrics by identifying topics expressed in tables of contents and calculating topic distributions. Then, we got feature-level results via feature extraction and feature distribution calculation. Finally, we compared depth and breadth metrics and other book assessment metrics. Experimental results reveal that, books’ depth and breadth at two levels are different, and substantial differences between disciplines and book types are obvious. In addition, books’ depth and breadth can provide alternative and supplementary information for assessing multi-dimensional values of books.     

No citation advantage for monograph-based collaborations?

It is widely believed that collaboration is advantageous in science, for example, with collaboratively written articles tending to attract more citations than solo articles and strong arguments for the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. Nevertheless, it is not known whether the same is true for research that produces books. This article tests whether co-authored scholarly monographs attract more citations than solo monographs using books published before 2011 from 30 categories in the Web of Science. The results show that solo monographs numerically dominate collaborative monographs, but give no evidence of a citation advantage for collaboration on monographs. In contrast, for nearly all these subjects (28 out of 30) there was a citation advantage for collaboratively produced journal articles. As a result, research managers and funders should not incentivise collaborative research in book-based subjects or in research that aims to produce monographs, but should allow the researchers themselves to freely decide whether to collaborate or not.     

国内与国际跨学科研究人员文献需求的对比分析——以南海争端问题为例

[目的/意义]分析国内与国际跨学科研究人员文献需求的特点并比较异同,为跨学科研究的文献保障工作提供依据,以促进跨学科研究的国际合作。[方法/过程]使用引文分析法,以1998-2016年发表在CSSCI和Web of Science上南海争端相关文章的期刊与图书类引文为样本,从年代分布、被引频次、学科分布与出版机构等方面,分析国内与国际南海争端研究引文的特点与差异。[结果/结论]国内研究对较新中文期刊和经典外文图书依赖度高,中文图书缺乏国际认同。南海争端研究整体偏向人文社会科学领域,但国际研究较国内研究在引文学科的分布上更加广泛与均衡。权威、主流出版社是国内与国际研究共同的选择,少数研究机构出版社开始进入了跨学科研究者的视野。     

Library Catalog Analysis as a tool in studies of social sciences and humanities: An exploratory study of published book titles in Economics

This paper explores the use of Library Catalog Analysis (LCA), defined as the application of bibliometric or informetric techniques to a set of library online catalogs, to describe quantitatively a scientific-scholarly field on the basis of published book titles. It focuses on its value as a tool in studies of Social Sciences and Humanities, especially its cognitive structures, main book publishers and the research performance of its actors. The paper proposes an analogy model between traditional citation analysis of journal articles and Library Catalog Analysis of book titles. It presents the outcomes of an exploratory study of book titles in Economics included in 42 academic library catalogs from 7 countries. It describes the process of data collection and cleaning, and applies a series of indicators and thematic mapping techniques. It illustrates how LCA can be fruitfully used to assess book production and research performance at the level of an individual researcher, a research department, an entire country and a book publisher. It discusses a number of issues that should be addressed in follow-up studies and concludes that LCA of published book titles can be developed into a powerful and useful tool in studies of Social Sciences and Humanities.     

Journal rankings by citation analysis in health sciences librarianship

The purpose of this study was to identify objectively a hierarchical ranking of journals for health sciences librarians with faculty status. Such a guideline can indicate a journal's value for promotion and tenure consideration. Lists of recent research articles (1982-1986) in health sciences librarianship, and articles written by health sciences librarians, were compiled by searching Social SCISEARCH and MEDLINE. The journals publishing those articles are presented. Results show BMLA as the most prominent journal in the field. Therefore, citations from articles in BMLA from 1982 to 1986 were chosen as a sample for citation analysis. Citation analysis was employed to identify the most frequently cited journals. Some characteristics of the citations in BMLA are also discussed. The ranking of journals based on citation frequency, as a result, was identified.     

The role of learned societies in national scholarly publishing

This study examines the role of learned societies as publishers in Finland based on bibliographic information from two Finnish databases. We studied the share of learned societies' peer‐reviewed publication channels (serials with ISSNs and book publishers with distinct ISBN roots) and outputs (journal articles, conference articles, book articles, and monographs) in Finland. We also studied the share of learned societies' open access (OA) publications. In 2018, there were 402 peer‐reviewed publication channels in Finland. In 2011–2017, the number of peer‐reviewed publications from scholars working in Finnish universities and published in Finland was 17,724. Learned societies publish around 70% of these channels and publications, mostly in the fields of humanities and social sciences. Learned societies in Finland focus on journal publishing, whereas university presses and commercial publishers focus on book publishing. In 2016–2017, 38.4% of the learned societies' outputs were OA. This study concludes that Finnish learned societies play an integral part in national scholarly publishing. They play an especially important role in journal publishing, as commercial publishers produce only 2.6% of Finnish journals and book series, and only 1.4% of the journal articles from scholars working in Finnish universities.     

Annals of Library and Information Studies: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Journal and a Comparison with the Top Library and Information Studies Journals in Asia and Worldwide (2011–2017)

ABSTRACT

This article presents a thorough bibliometric analysis of research published in Annals of Library and Information Studies (ALIS), an India-based journal, for the period 2011–2017. Specifically, it compares this journal’s trends with those of other library and information science (LIS) journals from the same geographical area (India, and Asia as a whole) and with the 10 highest-rated LIS journals worldwide. The source of the data used was the multidisciplinary database Scopus. To perform this comparison, ALIS’ production was analyzed in order to identify authorship patterns; for example, authors’ countries of residence, co-authorship trends, and collaboration networks. Research topics were identified through keyword analysis, while performance was measured by examining the number of citations articles received. This study provides substantial information. The research lines detected through examining the keywords in ALIS articles were determined to be similar to those for the top LIS journals in both Asia and worldwide. Specifically, ALIS authors are focusing on metrics, bibliometrics, and social networking, which follows global trends. Notably, however, collaboration among Asia-based journals was found to be lower than that in the top-indexed journals in the LIS field, showing lesser internationalization. The results obtained present a roadmap for expanding the research in this field.     

Recent Trends and Developments in Publishing in Croatia

Abstract

Croatia considers the book a priority cultural product. Today various forces, both positive and negative, affect publishing in Croatia. A survey of traditional publishing in Croatia based on statistical data collected by the author in the Croatian ISBN Agency over the past 8 years introduces the main topic. The author then reports on the results of a survey of 1,000 publishers, aimed at establishing which medium publishers used for their books between 1993 and the beginning of 1998, the period when book production passed from printed to digital form. The research results show that modern electronic book forms have been gradually developing in Croatia in parallel with traditional publishing. The number of publishers producing books in electronic format is not great. However, the fact that nearly a quarter of the publishers who returned the questionnaire do produce electronic books, shows that Croatian publishers accept new technologies as they appear in countries with a developed publishing industry, onlyin amuch more modest scope. The author mentions electronic books published by as many as forty publishers, and gives a survey of online-bookstores in Croatia. Special attention is paid to book legislation in the country. As a conclusion the author proposes an incentive for electronic publishing.     

清代藏书家及其书目

清代是我国私家藏书业的鼎盛时期.其时藏书家人数众多,分布地域广;其藏书丰富,收书质量高;藏书家中多学问家,学术贡献大;他们还编刊图书、流布典籍、传播学术,并对近代新式图书馆的诞生作出了突出贡献.清代私家藏书目录数量多、品类全,其发展催生了版本目录学,并把题跋目录、专科目录推向了成熟阶段.