Evolution of the visibility of scholarly monographs in the academic field

Abstract

Scholarly monographs provide a good example to show the evolution of the impact that digital publishing has had over the last few decades in the transmission and communication of scientific information. On the one hand, in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities relevance in quantitative terms has been undermined, giving prominence to other document types such as research papers published in academic journals. Moreover, their visibility and accessibility have been conditioned by a number of factors that form an intrinsic part of the digital medium itself. Based on these two fundamental premises, this paper aims to analyze only the situation of scholarly monographs in institutional systems for research assessment and tenure, from the perspective of the various proposed requirements regarding accreditation for the different figures of university teaching staff and the request for Spanish recognition of six-year research periods.