Book reviews in academic journals: patterns and dynamics

TL;DR

This study analyzes the patterns and dynamics of book reviews in scholarly journals across arts, social sciences, and natural sciences over a decade, revealing stability in numbers but shifts in share and geographic contributions.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of book review trends and geographic distribution in major academic indexes from 2006 to 2015.

Findings

Book review numbers remained stable, but their share decreased.

Book reviews are prevalent in arts and humanities, less in natural sciences.

Authors from developed countries dominate book review contributions.

Abstract

Book reviews play important roles in scholarly communication especially in arts and humanities disciplines. By using Web of Science's Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index, this study probed the patterns and dynamics of book reviews within these three indexes empirically during the past decade (2006-2015). We found that the absolute numbers of book reviews among all the three indexes were relatively stable but the relative shares were decreasing. Book reviews were very common in arts and humanities, common in social sciences, but rare in natural sciences. Book reviews are mainly contributed by authors from developed economies such as the USA and the UK. Oppositely, scholars from China and Japan are unlikely to contribute to book reviews.