Journal article publishing in the social sciences and humanities: a comparison of Web of Science coverage for five European countries

TL;DR

This study analyzes publication patterns in social sciences and humanities across five European countries, revealing increasing integration of Central and Eastern European countries into Western publication practices, with notable discipline-specific differences.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of publication dynamics in five European countries, highlighting trends towards convergence in publication practices in social sciences and humanities.

Findings

Central and Eastern European countries are publishing more in Web of Science-indexed journals.

Publication patterns are becoming more similar across the studied countries.

Discipline-specific differences remain significant in research evaluation.

Abstract

This study compares publication pattern dynamics in the social sciences and humanities in five European countries. Three are Central and Eastern European countries that share a similar cultural and political heritage (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland). The other two are Flanders (Belgium) and Norway, representing Western Europe and the Nordics, respectively. We analysed 449,409 publications from 2013-2016 and found that, despite persisting differences between the two groups of countries across all disciplines, publication patterns in the Central and Eastern European countries are becoming more similar to those in their Western and Nordic counterparts. Articles from the Central and Eastern European countries are increasingly published in journals indexed in Web of Science and also in journals with the highest citation impacts. There are, however, clear differences between social science and humanities disciplines, which need to be considered in research evaluation and science policy.