Browsing by Author "Sivertsen, Gunnar"
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Item Are book publications disappearing from scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities?(2018) Engels, Tim C.E.; Istenič Starčič, Andreja; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Pölönen, Janne; Sivertsen, GunnarPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution in terms of shares of scholarly book publications in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in five European countries, i.e. Flanders (Belgium), Finland, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. In addition to aggregate results for the whole of the social sciences and the humanities, the authors focus on two well-established fields, namely, economics & business and history. Design/methodology/approach – Comprehensive coverage databases of SSH scholarly output have been set up in Flanders (VABB-SHW), Finland (VIRTA), Norway (NSI), Poland (PBN) and Slovenia (COBISS). These systems allow to trace the shares of monographs and book chapters among the total volume of scholarly publications in each of these countries. Findings – As expected, the shares of scholarly monographs and book chapters in the humanities and in the social sciences differ considerably between fields of science and between the five countries studied. In economics & business and in history, the results show similar field-based variations as well as country variations. Most year-to-year and overall variation is rather limited. The data presented illustrate that book publishing is not disappearing from an SSH. Research limitations/implications – The results presented in this paper illustrate that the polish scholarly evaluation system has influenced scholarly publication patterns considerably, while in the other countries the variations are manifested only slightly. The authors conclude that generalizations like “performance-based research funding systems (PRFS) are bad for book publishing” are flawed. Research evaluation systems need to take book publishing fully into account because of the crucial epistemic and social roles it serves in an SSH.Originality/value – The authors present data on monographs and book chapters from five comprehensive coverage databases in Europe and analyze the data in view of the debates regarding the perceived detrimental effects of research evaluation systems on scholarly book publishing. The authors show that there is little reason to suspect a dramatic decline of scholarly book publishing in an SSH.Item Are book publications disappearing from scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities?(2018) Engels, Tim C.E.; Istenič Starčič, Andreja; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Pölönen, Janne; Sivertsen, GunnarIn the social sciences and humanities book publishing takes a prominent role, both in terms of communicating with international peers and with a broader intelligentsia (Hicks, 2004; Verleysen & Engels, 2014). Empirical evidence regarding the evolution of the share of scholarly book publications in the total volume of scholarly publications in a given country is rare. In this study we intend to fill this gap with an analysis of the comprehensive coverage data on the share of peer reviewed book publications (book chapters, edited volumes and monographs) that are available from Flanders and Slovenia for the period 2004 to 2015. We supplement these data with data on peer reviewed book chapters and monographs from Norway for the period 2005-2015 as well as data on all types of peer reviewed book publishing for the period 2009 to 2014 for Poland and 2011 to 2015 for Finland.Item Comprehensiveness of national bibliographic databases for social sciences and humanities: Findings from a European survey(2018) Sīle, Linda; Pölönen, Janne; Sivertsen, Gunnar; Guns, Raf; Engels, Tim C.E.; Arefiev, Pavel; Dušková, Marta; Faurbæk, Lotte; Holl, András; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Macan, Bojan; Nelhans, Gustaf; Petr, Michal; Pisk, Marjeta; Soós, Sándor; Stojanovski, Jadranka; Stone, Ari; Šušol, Jaroslav; Teitelbaum, RuthThis article provides an overview of national bibliographic databases that include data on research output within social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Europe. We focus on the comprehensiveness of the database content. Compared to the data from commercial databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, data from national bibliographic databases (e.g. Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the SSH (VABB-SHW) in Belgium, Current Research Information System in Norway (CRISTIN)) are more comprehensive and may, therefore, be better fit for bibliometric analyses. Acknowledging this, several countries within Europe maintain national bibliographic databases; detailed and comparative information about their content, however, has been limited. In autumn 2016, we launched a survey to acquire an overview of national bibliographic databases for SSH in Europe and Israel. Surveying 41 countries (responses received from 39 countries), we identified 21 national bibliographic databases for SSH. Further, we acquired a more detailed description of 13 databases, with a focus on their comprehensiveness. Findings indicate that even though the content of national bibliographic databases is diverse, it is possible to delineate a subset that is similar across databases. At the same time, it is apparent that differences in national bibliographic databases are often bound to differences in country-specific arrangements. Considering this, we highlight implications to bibliometric analyses based on data from national bibliographic databases and outline several aspects that may be taken into account in the development of existing national bibliographic databases for SSH or the design of new ones.Item Multilingual Publishing in the Social Sciences and Humanities: A Seven-Country European Study(2020) Kulczycki, Emanuel; Guns, Raf; Pölönen, Janne; Engels, Tim C. E.; Rozkosz, Ewa A.; Zuccala, Alesia A.; Bruun, Kasper; Eskola, Olli; Starčič, Andreja Istenič; Petr, Michal; Sivertsen, GunnarWe investigate the state of multilingualism across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) using a comprehensive data set of research outputs from seven European countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders [Belgium], Norway, Poland, and Slovenia). Although English tends to be the dominant language of science, SSH researchers often produce culturally and societally relevant work in their local languages. We collected and analyzed a set of 164,218 peer‐reviewed journal articles (produced by 51,063 researchers from 2013 to 2015) and found that multilingualism is prevalent despite geographical location and field. Among the researchers who published at least three journal articles during this time period, over one‐third from the various countries had written their work in at least two languages. The highest share of researchers who published in only one language were from Flanders (80.9%), whereas the lowest shares were from Slovenia (57.2%) and Poland (59.3%). Our findings show that multilingual publishing is an ongoing practice in many SSH research fields regardless of geographical location, political situation, and/or historical heritage. Here we argue that research is international, but multilingual publishing keeps locally relevant research alive with the added potential for creating impact.Item Open access challenge at the national level: Comprehensive analysis of publication channels used by Finnish researchers in 2016-2017(Edizioni Efesto, 2019) Pölönen, Janne; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Laakso, Mikael; Sivertsen, GunnarThe purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive picture of open access publishing in Finland. Data consists of the complete national peer-reviewed output of 48177 articles and books from 14 Finnish universities in 2016- 2017 stored in the VIRTA Publication Information Service. Each publication record contains an indication if it is openly available as Gold or Hybrid OA and/or if it is deposited in OA repository. Using this data, we investigate the share of openly available outputs across fields, as well as journal and book publishing, and analyse the open access status of all 10342 publication channels (joumal/series and book publishers) used by Finnish researchers. We also examine the utility of international open access information sources, DOAJ and Bielefeld list for OA journals, and Sherpa/Romeo for self-archiving policies, in estimating the potential for open availability of peer- reviewed outputs, as well as the importance of the largest international commercial publishers in light of these comprehensive national data.Item Publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities: Evidence from eight European countries(2018) Kulczycki, Emanuel; Engels, Tim C.E.; Pölönen, Janne; Bruun, Kasper; Dušková, Marta; Guns, Raf; Nowotniak, Robert; Petr, Michal; Sivertsen, Gunnar; Istenič Starčič, Andreja; Zuccala, AlesiaThis study investigates patterns in the language and type of social sciences and humanities (SSH) publications in non-English speaking European countries to demonstrate that such patterns are related not only to discipline but also to each country’s cultural and historic heritage. We investigate publication patterns that occur across SSH publications of the whole of the SSH and of economics and business, law, and philosophy and theology publications in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders (Belgium), Norway, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. We use data from 74,022 peer-reviewed publications from 2014 registered in at least one of the eight countries’ national databases and for 272,376 peer-reviewed publications from the period of 2011–2014 registered in at least one of the seven countries’ national databases (for all countries except Slovakia). Our findings show that publication patterns differ both between fields (e.g. patterns in law differ from those in economics and business in the same way in Flanders and Finland) and within fields (e.g. patterns in law in the Czech Republic differ from patterns in law in Finland). We observe that the publication patterns are stable and quite similar in West European and Nordic countries, whereas in Central and Eastern European countries the publication patterns demonstrate considerable changes. Nevertheless, in all countries, the share of articles and the share of publications in English is on the rise. We conclude with recommendations for science policy and highlight that internationalization policies in non-English speaking countries should consider various starting points and cultural heritages in different countries.Item The use of Gold Open Access in four European countries: An analysis at the level of articles(Edizioni Efesto, 2019) Sivertsen, Gunnar; Guns, Raf; Kulczycki, Emanuel; Pölönen, JanneWe assess the use and potential of Gold Open Access (OA) in Finland, Flanders (Belgium), Norway, and Poland by comparing data at the level of articles from full-coverage databases in each country. The inclusion of the journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is used as a reference to determine Gold Open Access. Gold OA is on the rise in all four countries and across fields, but some countries, especially Norway, and some fields have a substantially larger proportion of OA publications than others, with the overall share of Gold OA ranging from 5.7% to 17.3%. Especially in the SSH, a mixture of local and international journals can be found, many of which are not indexed in databases like Web of Science. As such, our results indicate that an overview of the state of Gold OA is preferably obtained by comparing DOAJ to a full-coverage database.