Die Buchpublikationen der Nobelpreis-Ökonomen und die führenden Buchverlage der Disziplin. Eine bibliometrische Analyse

Tausch, Arno (2015): Die Buchpublikationen der Nobelpreis-Ökonomen und die führenden Buchverlage der Disziplin. Eine bibliometrische Analyse.

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

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• English Title: The book publications of the Nobel-Prize economists and the leading book publishers of the discipline. A bibliometric analysis
• Language: German
• Keywords: F5 - International Relations and International Political Economy; F50 – General; M3 - Marketing and Advertising; M30 - General
• Subjects: F - International Economics > F5 - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy; F - International Economics > F5 - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy > F50 - General; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M3 - Marketing and Advertising; M - Business Administration and Business Economics ; Marketing ; Accounting ; Personnel Economics > M3 - Marketing and Advertising > M30 - General

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