Assessment of journal & book publishers in the humanities and social sciences in Spain

Abstract

This chapter reflects on how journals and book publishers in the fields of humanities and social sciences are studied and evaluated in Spain, particularly with regard to assessments of books and book publishers. The lack of coverage of Spanish output in international databases is underlined as one of the reasons for the development of nationwide assessment tools, both for scholarly journals and books. These tools, such as RESH and DICE (developed by ILIA research team), are based on a methodology which does not rely exclusively on a citation basis, thus providing a much richer set of information. They were used by the main Spanish assessment agencies, whose key criteria are discussed in this chapter. This chapter also presents the recently developed expert survey-based methodology for the assessment of book publishers included in the system Scholarly Publishers Indicators.