Profiles of monograph authors in the social sciences and humanities: an analysis of productivity, career stage, co-authorship, disciplinary affiliation and gender, based on a regional bibliographic database

Abstract

Scholarly monograph authors are compared to other authors, based on bibliographic data registered in the VABB-SHW database from Flanders (Belgium). Monograph authors are found to be most often established male researchers with high productivity, who are relatively less involved in research collaboration (co-authored publications) than are other authors. There exists a clear divergence between most of the individual social science disciplines, where monograph authors make up a marginal share of all authors, and several humanities disciplines where shares are up to one fifth. Relatively more female and non-established authors publish monographs in the humanities compared to the social sciences. A statistical comparison of productivity points to diverging publication patterns in Flemish SSH research: the group of most productive authors counts both monograph authors who also rely on other book publication types, and other authors who publish mostly journal articles.

Researchers publishing monographs are more productive and more local-oriented

“…Our findings show that researchers who publish monographs are more productive, regardless of the field or the publication counting method. Comparing our findings with the results from the study on Flemish SSH researchers (Verleysen and Ossenblok 2017) shows that in both countries, monograph authors are more productive than other authors.…”

“…We also analyze the productivity of more than 60 thousand researchers from a mid-size European country across all fields of science. In this way, our paper extends beyond a previous study on investigating the productivity of the Flemish SSH researchers who (did not) publish monographs (Verleysen and Ossenblok 2017).…”

Science and its significant other: Representing the humanities in bibliometric scholarship

“…Some study the science system itself and the performative effects that performance-based funding mechanisms might have on publication practices (for example, Hammarfelt & De Rijcke, 2015;Ossenblok, Engels, & Sivertsen, 2012). Other studies analyze the role of edited books, the characteristics of book editors and monograph writers (Ossenblok & Engels, 2015;Ossenblok, Verleysen, & Engels, 2014;Verleysen & Ossenblok, 2017), internationalization of publication practices by looking at locations of book publication (Verleysen & Engels, 2014a, 2014b, and publication styles (Verleysen & Weeren, 2016). In the latter, Verleysen and Weeren (2016) show that two distinct publication styles (based on variation in language and publication outlet) exist in both the humanities and the social sciences, but that these also cut across all disciplines.…”

The Flemish Performance-based Research Funding System: A Unique Variant of the Norwegian Model

“…Follow-up studies have focused on the role of editors of edited books in collaboration and the prevalence of alphabetical publishing (Guns, 2016;Ossenblok & Engels, 2015). The VABB-SHW has also allowed for several studies of the characteristics of author types that have hitherto remained largely unstudied, such as monograph authors or book editors (Ossenblok, Guns, & Thelwall, 2015;Verleysen & Ossenblok, 2017). In two studies, Verleysen and Weeren (2016a, b) clustered senior authors in the VABB-SHW by their publication patterns.…”