Edited books in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Characteristics and collaboration analysis

Abstract

Monographs and edited books are important in scholarly communication, especially in the Social Sciences and Humanities (Gorraiz, Purnell, & Glänzel, 2013;Nederhof, 2006). An edited book is a collection of chapters written by different authors, gathered and harmonized by one or more editors. This article analyses the characteristics and collaboration patterns of edited books in the Social Sciences and Humanities as practiced in Flanders, the Northern Dutch speaking part of Belgium. It is based upon a comprehensive set of 753 peer reviewed edited books, of which at least one of the editors has a Flemish university affiliation, and the 12.913 chapters published therein. The article analyses various characteristics of edited books, i.e. the distribution over publishers, the places of publication, language use, the presence of introductions and conclusions, the occurrence of coeditorship and co-authorship, and the number of unique authors and book chapters per volume. Almost half of the edited books are published with about 5% of the publishers. English is the dominant publication language for all places of publication. Writing a conclusion seems rather uncommon. All in all, about 90% of all volumes are co-edited. Edited books in the Social Sciences have a more diverse authorship then edited books in the Humanities. In general, the more coauthorship for articles occurs within a discipline, the more co-authorship occurs for book chapters, whereas the number of editors is independent from this trend.

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

“…3 Overall, editorship is especially important in the humanities as more than 1 in 10 researchers have edited one or more edited books, in contrast with the social sciences where only 1 in 30 researchers are book editors. Moreover, in response to our first research question, whether editors are more likely to be established researchers than are other researchers, we found that in the humanities both established and nonestablished researchers edit books, whereas in The picture emerging of the typical book editor is that of a significantly more productive researcher as regards monographs and book chapters, and having more fractional weighted publications overall, answering our second research question, about whether editors are more productive than other researchers.…”

“…3 For the purpose of the current article, we understand the diversity of a researcher's network as the number of unique co-authors. Other interpretations of diversity exist; see Rafols and Meyer 44 for an overview.…”

“…A book editor in this study is defined as an academic who gathers and harmonizes a collection of book chapters written by different authors which are published in an edited book. 3 Typically, the names of the academic book editors appear on the cover of the edited book. These editors presumably (co-)determine the choice of the book chapter authors, guided by the needs of the book theme as an edited book can come into being at the initiative of the publisher, the editor(s), and/or as a result of a scholarly meeting or conference.…”

“…5,6 According to Thomas and Hrebenar,7 editing a book consists of 25% organizing and managing, 25% communication, and 50% academic work. Overall, few empirical studies have focused on edited books and their editors, 3 and none have analysed the relationship between the editors and their book chapter authors.…”

“…In addition, half of all edited academic books are published in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, both housing large international publishing houses. 3 The use of English and the involvement of international publishing houses contribute to worldwide accessibility of books and other scholarly publications. 38,39 Moreover, Edwards 12 argues that edited books offer the space required for authoritative comparative perspectives across dimensions, such as time and geographic location.…”