Publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities: evidence from eight European countries

Scientometrics, Mar 2018

This 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.

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Publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities: evidence from eight European countries

Publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities: evidence from eight European countries Emanuel Kulczycki 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tim C. E. Engels 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Janne Po¨ lo¨ nen 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kasper Bruun 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Marta Dusˇkov a´ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Raf Guns 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Robert Nowotniak 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Michal Petr 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Gunnar Sivertsen 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Andreja Istenicˇ Starcˇicˇ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Alesia Zuccala 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Emanuel Kulczycki 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tim C. E. Engels 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Janne Po¨lo¨nen 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Robert Nowotniak 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information , Lamacˇska ́ cesta 8/A, 811 04 Bratislava , Slovak Republic 1 Division of Analysis, Statistics and Coordinated Admission, Agency for Science and Higher Education, Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science , Bredgade 40, 1260 Copenhagen , Denmark 2 Centre for R&D Monitoring, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp , Middelheimlaan 1, 2020 Antwerp , Belgium 3 Department of Information Studies, University of Copenhagen , Njalsgade 76, 2300 Copenhagen , Denmark 4 Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana , Jamova 2, 1000 Ljubljana , Slovenia 5 Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education , P.O. Box 2815, 0608 Toyen, Oslo , Norway 6 Research Office, Masaryk University , Zerotinovo namesti 9, 601 77 Brno , Czech Republic 7 Faculty of Electrical , Electronic Computer , and Control Engineering, Institute of Applied Computer Science, Lodz University of Technology , Lodz , Poland This 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 peerreviewed 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. Social sciences Humanities Language Publication Mathematics Subject Classification 00-02 JEL Classification I23 Introduction This study aims to advance the knowledge regarding social sciences and humanities (SSH) publication patterns in Europe. National studies on SSH research outputs in Finland (Puuska 2014) , Flanders (Engels et al. 2012; Verleysen et al. 2014) , and Norway (Sivertsen 2016a) have reported 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Scholarly Communication Research Group, Faculty of Social Sciences, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan´, Szamarzewskiego 69, 60-568 Poznan´, Poland 10 Faculty of Education, University of Primorska, Cankarjeva 5, 6000 Koper, Slovenia 11 stable patterns in terms of publication type; however, in terms of publication language, academic work is gradually leaning toward greater use of English. Van Leeuwen (2006 ) reported similar patterns of referencing non-Institute for Scientific Information-covered sources among social scientists from six different countries. Furthermore, Sivertsen (2016a) suggests that, although publication patterns differ between SSH disciplines, these patterns are rather similar within SSH disciplines across different countries. However, very few cross-country comparative studies of SSH publication patterns have been conducted. Moreover, these studies have focused on West European and Nordic countries (e.g. Nordforsk 2018; Ossenblok et al. 2012; Po¨lo¨nen et al. 2017a) . In this study, we add Central and Eastern European countries, which have undergone various academic transformations over the past three decades, following the breakdown of Communist regimes (Kozak et al. 2014; Kwiek 2014) . All the analysed count (...truncated)


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Emanuel Kulczycki, Tim C. E. Engels, Janne Pölönen, Kasper Bruun, Marta Dušková, Raf Guns, Robert Nowotniak, Michal Petr, Gunnar Sivertsen, Andreja Istenič Starčič, Alesia Zuccala. Publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities: evidence from eight European countries, Scientometrics, 2018, pp. 1-24, DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2711-0