2020/08/13 by Eleonora Dagienė, Dagiene, Eleonora
Decision Sciences · #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2008.06008
openalex publication_date 2020/08/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Numerous national research assessment policies set the goal of promoting\n"excellence" and incentivise scholars to publish their research in the most\nprestigious journals or with the most prestigious book publishers. We\ninvestigate the practicalities of the assessment of book outputs based on the\nprestige of book publishers (Denmark, Finland, Flanders, Lithuania, Norway).\nAdditionally, we test whether such judgments are transparent and yield\nconsistent results. We show inconsistencies in the levelling of publishers,\nsuch as the same publisher being ranked as prestigious and not-so-prestigious\nin different states or in consequent years within the same country. Likewise,\nwe find that verification of compliance with the mandatory prerequisites is not\nalways possible because of the lack of transparency. Our findings support\ndoubts about whether the assessment of books based on a judgement about their\npublisher yields acceptable outcomes. Currently used rankings of publishers\nfocus on evaluating the gatekeeping role of publishers but do not assess other\nessential stages in scholarly book publishing. Our suggestion for future\nresearch is to develop approaches to evaluate books by accounting for the value\nadded to every book at every publishing stage, which is vital for the quality\nof book outputs from research assessment and scholarly communication\nperspectives.\n