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The power of book reviews: a simple and transparent enhancement approach for book citation indexes

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Listed:
  • Juan Gorraiz

    (University of Vienna)

  • Christian Gumpenberger

    (University of Vienna)

  • Philip J. Purnell

    (Thomson Reuters)

Abstract

Both citations to an academic work and post-publication reviews of it are indicators that the work has had some impact on the research community. The Thomson Reuters evaluation and selection process for web of knowledge journals includes citation analysis but this is not systematically practised for evaluation of books for the book citation index (BKCI) due to the inconsistent methods of citing books, the volume of books and the variants of the titles, especially in non-English language. Despite the fact that correlations between citations to a book and the number of corresponding book reviews differ from research area to research area and are overall weak or non-existent, this study confirms that books with book reviews do not remain uncited and accrue a remarkable mean number of citations. Therefore, book reviews can be considered a suitable selection criterion for BKCIs. The approach suggested in this study is feasible and allows easy detection of corresponding books via its book reviews, which is particularly true for research areas where books play a more important role such as the social sciences, the arts and humanities.

Suggested Citation

  • Juan Gorraiz & Christian Gumpenberger & Philip J. Purnell, 2014. "The power of book reviews: a simple and transparent enhancement approach for book citation indexes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 98(2), pages 841-852, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:98:y:2014:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-013-1176-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-013-1176-4
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Juan Gorraiz & Philip J. Purnell & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2013. "Opportunities for and limitations of the Book Citation Index," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(7), pages 1388-1398, July.
    2. Alesia Zuccala & Thed van Leeuwen, 2011. "Book reviews in humanities research evaluations," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1979-1991, October.
    3. Alesia Zuccala & Thed van Leeuwen, 2011. "Book reviews in humanities research evaluations," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(10), pages 1979-1991, October.
    4. James Hartley, 2006. "Reading and writing book reviews across the disciplines," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 57(9), pages 1194-1207, July.
    5. Jeppe Nicolaisen, 2002. "The scholarliness of published peer reviews: a bibliometric study of book reviews in selected social science fields," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 129-140, December.
    6. Juan Gorraiz & Philip J. Purnell & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2013. "Opportunities for and limitations of the Book Citation Index," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(7), pages 1388-1398, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Cristina López-Duarte & Marta M. Vidal-Suárez & Belén González-Díaz, 2019. "Cross-national distance and international business: an analysis of the most influential recent models," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 173-208, October.
    2. Weishu Liu & Yishan Ding & Mengdi Gu, 2017. "Book reviews in academic journals: patterns and dynamics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(1), pages 355-364, January.
    3. Daniel Torres-Salinas & Nicolás Robinson-Garcia & Juan Gorraiz, 2017. "Filling the citation gap: measuring the multidimensional impact of the academic book at institutional level with PlumX," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1371-1384, December.
    4. Qingqing Zhou & Chengzhi Zhang & Star X. Zhao & Bikun Chen, 2016. "Measuring book impact based on the multi-granularity online review mining," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1435-1455, June.
    5. Mohammadamin Erfanmanesh & A. Noorhidawati & A. Abrizah, 2019. "What can Bookmetrix tell us about the impact of Springer Nature’s books," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 521-536, October.
    6. Yaoyu Wei & Weiwei Fan, 2018. "A study of book reviews in SCI-Expanded, SSCI, and A&HCI journals by researchers from five countries: 2006–2015," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(2), pages 637-654, May.
    7. Zhang, Chengzhi & Zhou, Qingqing, 2020. "Assessing books’ depth and breadth via multi-level mining on tables of contents," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).
    8. Zhou, Qingqing & Zhang, Chengzhi, 2021. "Impacts towards a comprehensive assessment of the book impact by integrating multiple evaluation sources," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    9. Gorraiz, Juan & Melero-Fuentes, David & Gumpenberger, Christian & Valderrama-Zurián, Juan-Carlos, 2016. "Availability of digital object identifiers (DOIs) in Web of Science and Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 98-109.

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