| Abstract: |
Recent contributions in the expanding discipline of scientometry and
bibliometrics have started to study not only the "impact" of publications in
journals, but also in books. This methodology can be applied to individual
authors or even to the "impact" of entire publishing companies. One basic idea
of this kind of analysis is simple, not to say downright vulgar. Is a book or
book series important, it must be surely not only be cited internationally,
but it also must be physically or electronically present in a library, because
after all, scientists and students will want to work with the book. Such
comparisons can use the information, provided by the open-access version of
the OCLC "Worldcat". The global union catalog OCLC was founded in America in
1967 and today integrates library collections in 113 countries around the
world. OCLC Classify can pinpoint with accuracy how many libraries in the
world - from northern Norway to Chile, and from California to Europe and
Africa to Australia, including Russia and India - have copies of the
scientific work x or y in their inventory; and the system also ranks the works
of each global author by the number of global libraries, holding the item.
Adam Smith's classic "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations" manages to be held in 41051 libraries; and William Shakespeare's "The
tragey of Romeo and Juliet" in 39911 libraries. Among the possible new
indicators to measure the impacts of books or book series we also designed a
new measure, based on the check-out rate according to the Harvard-Hollis
catalog, reflecting the use of a book/book series in the largest academic
library in the world, offering clues to the de-facto reading habits of the
university community, which accounts for more than 1 out of 6 academic
trajectories of Nobel Prize winners. Applying the logic of the Harvard
catalogue to two leading German economists, we realize for example that
Hanns-Werner Sinn from CESifo Institute in Munich and Marcel Fratzscher from
the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin both receive an
astonishingly high check-out rate of their works among the Harvard academic
community. The Hollis catalog easily provides us also with information
according to which the check-out rate of books that have been published by
Cambridge University Press is somewhat higher than that of Princeton UP or
Chicago U.P. et cetera. In our paper, we then analyze the library holding and
publishing patterns of the Nobel laureates in economics, 1994-2014. More than
50% of their best and second most widely globally held book publications were
concentrated among just 8 publishing companies, all of which are known by
their rigorous peer-review 1) Cambridge University Press 2) Princeton
University Press 3) Harvard University Press and affiliates 4) Cambridge, MA:
National Bureau of Economic Research 5) Oxford University Press 6) New York:
W. W. Norton 7) University of Chicago Press 8) University of Minnesota Press
We then briefly discuss the previous rankings of publishing companies already
published in the literature, mainly the ranking by the Dutch Science
Consortium SENSE, and the University of Granada ranking system, which relies
on the newly created Thomson-Reuters "Book Citation Index". The Granada
ranking puts Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Cambridge University
Press, Elsevier, Nova Science Publishers, Edward Elgar, Information Age
Publishing, Princeton University Press and University of California Press
among the best-placed publishers. Our own multivariate attempt is based on a
UNDP-type of Index, combining * the publication of the results of science *
citations and standing in the academic community * market penetration in two
typical industrialized Western countries * attention given to the published
books by international decision-makers * market penetration in developing
countries * attention received in the international media The 6 main
indicators for the 57 companies with complete data are each based on the
following sub-indicators: * Publication of the results of science • Number
of books and book chapters in the Thomson Reuters Book Citation Index •
Quotations from books and book chapters in the Thomson Reuters Book Citation
Index • Harvard Library: Number of available titles (books only) • Number
of quotations in the books, contained in the full-text Questia Books library *
citations and standing in the academic community • average citations - Books
and book chapters by the Thomson Reuters Book Citation Index • Standard
deviation of citations - Books and Book Chapters: Thomson Reuters Book
Citation Index • Sense quality indicator • Harvard HOLLIS ratio of books
that are checked out, per total stock of books available in the Harvard HOLLIS
catalog • average citations - Books in Thomson Reuters Book Citation Index
• Number of references about the company in professional journals - Questia
* market penetration in two typical industrialized Western countries •
Japanese NACSIS catalog – best book: maximum Library Outreach of the
publishing house in Japan • Japanese NACSIS catalogue - top 200th book:
maximum Library Outreach of the publishing house in Japan • Swedish LIBRIS -
best book: maximum Library Outreach of the publishing house in Sweden •
Swedish LIBRIS top 50th book: maximum Library Outreach of the publishing house
in Sweden * attention to the books by international decision-makers • How
many titles are available in the EU Commission Brussels ECLAS catalog? • How
many titles are available in the World Bank / IMF JOLIS library catalog in
Washington? * market penetration in developing countries • How many titles
are available in the Union Catalogue of Indian Libraries (IndCat (India)
General Catalogue)? * attention in the international media • Number of
references about the company in leading international magazines such as Time,
Newsweek, etc. - Questia • Number of references about the company in
newspapers like the New York Times, etc. - Questia Based on the results of our
study, the leading book publishers with a high relevance for the economic
discipline are: 1. Springer 2. Oxford University Press 3. World Bank 4.
Routledge 5. Cambridge University Press 6. Princeton University Press 7.
Elsevier 8. MIT Press 9. University of Chicago Press 10. University of
California Press 11. CRC Press 12. Palgrave Macmillan 13. Kluwer Academic
Publishers 14. Yale University Press 15. Brill |