A label for peer‐reviewed books

Abstract

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.

Setting the stage for the assessment of research quality in the humanities. Consolidating the results of four empirical studies

“…Some focus on the building or expansion of databases or the building of rankings and lists of journals or publishers, for example the RESH and DICE databases (Evaluation of Scientific Publications Research Group 2010, pp. 11-13; 2012), the VABB-SHW database, (Engels et al 2012), the CRISTIN database (Schneider 2009;Sivertsen 2010), the ERIH project (European Science Foundation 2009), the MESUR project (National Science Foundation 2009), the Book Citation Index (Thomson Reuters 2011), Libcitations (White et al 2009), and a label for peer-reviewed books (Verleysen and Engels 2013). Others focus on the development of evaluation procedures, for example the Research Rating of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat 2011a(Wissenschaftsrat , 2011b, the Quality Indicators for Research in the Humanities (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 2011), and the ERA initiative (Australian Research Council 2012).…”

Taking scholarly books into account: current developments in five European countries

“…For research purposes, coverage extends back to the year 2000. With regard to books, four aggregation levels are in use: 1° publisher names (as collections of ISBN-roots), 2° book series, 3° books published in Flanders and labelled as Guaranteed Peer Reviewed Content (GPRC-label (Verleysen & Engels, 2013)), and 4° individual books identified as peer reviewed by the Authoritative Panel ('Gezaghebbend Panel' or GP, a committee of full professors installed by the government and responsible for decisions regarding the content of the VABB-SHW). The information system is fed through a yearly upload (May 1 st ) of all SSH publications from the two preceding years Post-print version Publisher version: DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-1886-5 newly registered in the five universities' academic bibliographies.…”

“…The label can be used to qualify peer-reviewed publications in the MinEdu data. The introduction of the label in Finland was inspired by the example of the GPRClabel in Flanders (Verleysen & Engels, 2013).…”

From Book Publishers to Authors: Information Transparency in Web Sites

“…3 In fact, it is the basis for the quality label created in Flanders, 4 which seems logical considering that it is the most accepted system for content selection among the scholarly community. 5 Due to this level of acceptance, it should also be applied to the evaluation of publishers and the books they publish, but, contrary to journals, it is much more complicated to determine if a book or a series undergoes this type of assessment because of the lack of information that publishers themselves provide.…”