An analysis of the changing publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the period 2000-2009 is presented on the basis of the VABB-SHW, a full coverage database of peer reviewed publication output in SSH developed for the region of Flanders, Belgium. Data collection took place as part of the Flemish performance-based funding system for university research. The development of the database is described and an overview of its contents presented.In terms of coverage of publications by the Web of Science we observe considerable differences across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. The overall growth rate in number of publications is over 62.1%, but varies across disciplines between 7.5% and 172.9%. Publication output grew faster in the social sciences than in the humanities. A steady increase in the number and the proportion of publications in English is observed, going hand in hand with a decline in publishing in Dutch and other languages. However, no overall shift away from book publishing is observed. In the humanities, the share of book publications even seems to be increasing. The study shows that additional full coverage regional databases are needed to be able to characterise publication output in the social sciences and humanities.

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This study analyzes coauthorship patterns in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) for the period 2000 to 2010. The basis for the analysis is the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB-SHW), a comprehensive bibliographic database of peer-reviewed publications in the SSH by researchers affiliated with Flemish universities. Combining data on journal articles and book chapters, our findings indicate that collaborative publishing in the SSH is increasing, though considerable differences between disciplines remain. Conversely, we did observe a sharp decline in single-author publishing. We further demonstrate that coauthored SSH articles in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) generally have a higher (and growing) number of coauthors than do either those in non-WoS journals or book chapters. This illustrates the need to include non-WoS data and book chapters when studying coauthorship in the SSH.