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Scholarly publishing in social sciences and humanities, associated probabilities of belonging and its spectrum: a quantitative approach for the Spanish case

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Abstract

In this study, differences between Spanish social sciences and humanities journals are examined using a quantitative approach. Firstly, using a set of 144 psychology journals and 69 philosophy journals, statistically significant differences have been identified in 11 characteristics/indicators. Secondly, a logistic regression was carried out on the dichotomous response variable “belonging to the social sciences” or “belonging to the humanities”, on 777 Spanish social sciences journals, 563 humanities journals that have been previously classified and 17 existing predictor variables. The regression model reached an overall correct classification of 78.8 %. The explanatory variables considered in the model are analyzed and interpreted taking into account the change in the odds ratio and the indication of their contribution to the correct classification rate in the two response values. Finally the average associated probability of belonging to the social sciences group is calculated for each discipline and reflected in a spectrum of the probability of belonging to the social sciences or the humanities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spanish National Research Council, Centre for Human and Social Sciences, Albasanz 26-28, 28037, Madrid, Spain

    Jorge Mañana-Rodríguez & Elea Giménez-Toledo

Authors
  1. Jorge Mañana-Rodríguez
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  2. Elea Giménez-Toledo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jorge Mañana-Rodríguez.

Appendix: EPUC databases and indicator definitions

Appendix: EPUC databases and indicator definitions

EPUC: :

Is a research group within the Centre for Human and Social Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council, dedicated to the study of social sciences and humanities journals and monographs and the development of tools covering most of the journals published in Spain for their assessment at the national level.

RESH: :

Is a freely available product developed by the aforementioned EPUC, in which publishing quality criteria, dissemination among databases, experts’ opinion and impact indicators are shown for Spanish social sciences and humanities journals.

DICE: :

Is a freely available product developed by the aforementioned EPUC Research Group in which the user can find, for Spanish social sciences and humanities journals, information regarding the subject category, an indicator related to the presence of the journals in databases, international authorship, authorship openness, the presence of external reviewers, the number and name of databases in which the journal is indexed and the values given for the journal by other categorization systems. It also provides information regarding the bibliographic information of the journal (place of publication, frequency, year commenced and format).

Period of time: :

All the information has been collected from the three last issues of each journal (except for the analysis of the members of the advisory and scientific boards, where only the last issue was considered), so that, the number of authors would be the total number of authors in all the research papers published in the last three issues of the journal.

External members: :

Variables such as the number of external authors or number of external members of the advisory board refer to persons whose institutional affiliation is not that of the journal.

External Authorship: :

Number of authors not affiliated to the publishing institution.

Internal Authorship: :

Number of authors affiliated to the publishing institution.

Percentage of original research: :

Is the percentage of the total units published in the three last issues of each journal which are research papers and scientific communications.

Dissemination value: :

This indicator is related to the presence of the journals in databases. Each journal it is assigned a score according to its presence in databases, taking into account how selective the database is and its thematic specialization. The more specialized and selective a database is, the higher the value of dissemination. According to how selective databases are, they can be classified as A (score = 6), B (score = 3), C (score = 1.5), D (score = 0.75) or n.d.a. (which stands for “no data available”, score = 0.35) and according to the specialization, a database can be specialized in the discipline of the journal, specialized in a different discipline or multidisciplinary. The values of the indicator for a journal will depend upon the cross referencing of the two characteristics for all databases in which the journal is present.

Percentage of authorship openness (percentage of external authors): :

From all the authors of research papers published in the three last issues of the journal, it is the percentage of authors whose institutional affiliation is not the same as that of the journal. Most Spanish journals in the social sciences and the humanities are published by institutions.

Impact Indicator: :

The formula used for the calculation is the classic impact factor, but calculated within the context of Spanish journals using a 3 year citation window-. The specifications regarding the selection of source journals, the values of the impact indicator for the sets of social sciences and humanities journals as well as other indicators for the sets studied can be found at http://ec3.ugr.es/in-recs/ as well as http://ec3.ugr.es/in-recs/english.htm.

Anonymity of the peer review system: :

This categorical variable can have three values: not blind, blind or double blind.

Number of authors: :

Is the sum of authors of original research papers in the three last issues of the journal.

Percentage of international contributions: :

Is the percentage of papers which include at least one non Spanish author.

Number of research papers: :

Is the sum of the number of original research papers published in the last three issues of the journal.

Number of members of the advisory board: :

Is the total number of members of the advisory board in the last issue of the journal.

Number of external members of the advisory board: :

Is the total number of members with a different institutional affiliation than that of the journal in the last issue of the journal.

Percentage of external members of the advisory board: :

This is the same as the previous definition, expressed as a percentage of the total number of members.

Number of non Spanish members of the scientific committee: :

Is the number of members of the scientific committee whose institutional affiliation is not located in Spain.

Number of non Spanish authors: :

Is the total number of authors (single authors or contributors) identified in the total number of original research papers published in the three last issues of the journal.

Countries of non Spanish members of the advisory board: :

Total number of countries to which the members of advisory boards of institutions belong.

Year commenced: :

Year of the first issue of the journal.

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Mañana-Rodríguez, J., Giménez-Toledo, E. Scholarly publishing in social sciences and humanities, associated probabilities of belonging and its spectrum: a quantitative approach for the Spanish case. Scientometrics 94, 893–910 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0838-y

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