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The diversity of monographs: changing landscape of book evaluation in Poland

Emanuel Kulczycki (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poznan, Poland)

Aslib Journal of Information Management

ISSN: 2050-3806

Article publication date: 19 October 2018

Issue publication date: 5 November 2018

1499

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine the characteristic patterns of monographs in the humanities, social sciences and hard sciences published by Polish scholars. The study provides a comprehensive overview of the Polish book evaluation system to explain how monographs are assessed and illustrate how changes in the definitions of the types of scholarly book publications influence publication patterns.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper analyses bibliographic records of 42,307 monographs published by Polish scholars in the humanities and science fields from 2009 to 2016. Through a bibliometric analysis, the paper investigates the characteristic patterns of the monographs, including authorship, publication language and length, across three fields.

Findings

The present study demonstrates that changes in the definitions of scholarly book publications in Poland have significantly influenced the characteristic patterns of monographs. The analysis of the characteristic patterns across three fields reveals that the monographs are different in terms of all characteristics. In the entire period, 85.3 percent monographs were written in Polish, 10.1 percent in English, 1.4 percent in German, 1.1 percent in Russian and 2.1 percent in 39 other languages. The most significant changes are observed in authorship patterns.

Originality/value

This work offers empirical findings on the characteristic patterns of monographs in the humanities, social sciences and hard sciences from a non-English speaking country. It discusses a unique model of book assessment and shows certain consequences of various overly formalized procedures of evaluation. Thus, the study identifies the major challenges and implications of using highly formalized procedures for book evaluation.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the DIALOG Program (Grant name “Research into Excellence Patterns in Science and Art”). The author would like to thank Ewa A. Rozkosz for her support. The author would also like to extend the thanks and appreciation to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for its support in making the data available for the analyses.

Citation

Kulczycki, E. (2018), "The diversity of monographs: changing landscape of book evaluation in Poland", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 70 No. 6, pp. 608-622. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2018-0062

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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