Abstract We explore the potential of libcitations from local research‐oriented and public library catalogues for a study of the societal and cultural impact of books authored by academics from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). The study relies on data from the bibliographic database VABB‐SHW, the Flemish public library catalogue Cultuurconnect, and the Belgian research library catalogue UniCat. We find that whereas a majority of academically authored SSH books appear in research‐oriented libraries, the holdings in public libraries are limited. However, libcitations in public libraries are indicative of societal and cultural impact, particularly for books written in the domestic language (in this case Dutch) and books that are not primarily aimed at academic peers (and are not peer‐reviewed). Additionally, we find that the books held in local libraries include different genres and dissemination types, as SSH scholars contribute to the creation of societal and cultural impact in a variety of ways. An overview of the types of books attaining high scores in public and research‐oriented libraries showcases avenues for the creation of societal impact through popularized literature.

Abstract Social sciences are increasingly recognized as significant for building a sustainable world since the social perspective can assist researchers in other fields in navigating public controversy and designing more responsible interaction mechanisms between the natural and social systems. However, the question arises: to what extent do natural sciences rely on social science research in their studies? Examining life science publications from seven PLoS journals, this paper attempts to characterize the volume and trajectory of citations from life sciences to social sciences. We explore three core questions: To what extent do life sciences cite social sciences? What actors in the life sciences are citing social sciences? Which actors in the social sciences are being cited? Our analysis estimates social sciences influence 15%–19% of life science publications, contributing to 1.1%–1.5% of references in 2018. Social science citers are found across peripheral and central topics of life science disciplines. Cited social science publications exhibit various levels of interdisciplinarity and achieve the greatest citation impact among peers. Citations to social sciences are prevalent in both theoretically and methodologically oriented sections. We show empirically the increasing impact of social sciences on the development of the life sciences.

Abstract This study contributes to the recent discussions on indicating interdisciplinarity, that is, going beyond catch‐all metrics of interdisciplinarity. We propose a contextual framework to improve the granularity and usability of the existing methodology for interdisciplinary knowledge flow (IKF) in which scientific disciplines import and export knowledge from/to other disciplines. To characterize the knowledge exchange between disciplines, we recognize three aspects of IKF under this framework, namely broadness, intensity, and homogeneity. We show how to utilize them to uncover different forms of interdisciplinarity, especially between disciplines with the largest volume of IKF. We apply this framework in two use cases, one at the level of disciplines and one at the level of journals, to show how it can offer a more holistic and detailed viewpoint on the interdisciplinarity of scientific entities than aggregated and context‐unaware indicators. We further compare our proposed framework, an indicating process, with established indicators and discuss how such information tools on interdisciplinarity can assist science policy practices such as performance‐based research funding systems and panel‐based peer review processes.

Abstract This paper investigates different uses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in national journal rankings and discusses the merits of supplementing metrics with expert assessment. Our focus is national journal rankings used as evidence to support decisions about the distribution of institutional funding or career advancement. The seven countries under comparison are China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Poland, and Turkey—and the region of Flanders in Belgium. With the exception of Italy, top‐tier journals used in national rankings include those classified at the highest level, or according to tier, or points implemented. A total of 3,565 (75.8%) out of 4,701 unique top‐tier journals were identified as having a JIF, with 55.7% belonging to the first Journal Impact Factor quartile. Journal rankings in China, Flanders, Poland, and Turkey classify journals with a JIF as being top‐tier, but only when they are in the first quartile of the Average Journal Impact Factor Percentile. Journal rankings that result from expert assessment in Denmark, Finland, and Norway regularly classify journals as top‐tier outside the first quartile, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. We conclude that experts, when tasked with metric‐informed journal rankings, take into account quality dimensions that are not covered by JIFs.

Abstract Interdisciplinary research is widely recognized as necessary to tackle some of the grand challenges facing humanity. It is generally believed that interdisciplinarity is becoming increasingly prevalent among Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. However, little is known about the evolution of interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences. Also, how interdisciplinarity and its various aspects evolve over time has seldom been closely quantified and delineated. This paper answers these questions by capturing the disciplinary diversity of the knowledge base of scientific publications in nine broad Social Sciences fields over 55 years. The analysis considers diversity as a whole and its three distinct aspects, namely variety, balance, and disparity. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are also conducted to investigate whether such change, if any, can be found among research with similar characteristics. We find that learning widely and digging deeply have become one of the norms among researchers in Social Sciences. Fields acting as knowledge exporters or independent domains maintain a relatively stable homogeneity in their knowledge base while the knowledge base of importer disciplines evolves towards greater heterogeneity. However, the increase of interdisciplinarity is substantially smaller when controlling for several author and publication related variables.

We investigate the state of multilingualism across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) using a comprehensive data set of research outputs from seven European countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders [Belgium], Norway, Poland, and Slovenia). Although English tends to be the dominant language of science, SSH researchers often produce culturally and societally relevant work in their local languages. We collected and analyzed a set of 164,218 peer-reviewed journal articles (produced by 51,063 researchers from 2013 to 2015) and found that multilingualism is prevalent despite geographical location and field. Among the researchers who published at least three journal articles during this time period, over one-third from the various countries had written their work in at least two languages. The highest share of researchers who published in only one language were from Flanders (80.9%), whereas the lowest shares were from Slovenia (57.2%) and Poland (59.3%). Our findings show that multilingual publishing is an ongoing practice in many SSH research fields regardless of geographical location, political situation, and/or historical heritage. Here we argue that research is international, but multilingual publishing keeps locally relevant research alive with the added potential for creating impact.

This study analyzes coauthorship patterns in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) for the period 2000 to 2010. The basis for the analysis is the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB‐SHW), a comprehensive bibliographic database of peer‐reviewed publications in the SSH by researchers affiliated with Flemish universities. Combining data on journal articles and book chapters, our findings indicate that collaborative publishing in the SSH is increasing, though considerable differences between disciplines remain. Conversely, we did observe a sharp decline in single‐author publishing. We further demonstrate that coauthored SSH articles in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) generally have a higher (and growing) number of coauthors than do either those in non‐WoS journals or book chapters. This illustrates the need to include non‐WoS data and book chapters when studying coauthorship in the SSH.

The Publishers Association of Flanders, Belgium, has created a label for peer‐reviewed books: the Guaranteed Peer Reviewed Content (GPRC) label ( www.gprc.be/en ). We introduce the label and the logic behind it. A label for peer‐reviewed books encourages transparency in academic book publishing. It is especially relevant for the social sciences and humanities and in the context of performance‐based funding of university research.