Use of scholarly book reviews: Implications for electronic publishing and scholarly communication

Book reviewing in the BJET: a survey of BJET's referees’ and writers’ views

“…Thus, the modal results on the usefulness of reviews for research and teaching are similar to those reported by Spink et al (1998) with a much larger sample. (Unfortunately, Spink et al did not report separate data for the sexes, and they pooled data from academics in the arts and the social sciences.)…”

“…Most previous research on book reviews concentrates on the nature and the contents of book reviews, and some of it addresses their academic importance (eg, see LindholmRomantschuk, 1998;Miranda, 1996;Nicolaisen, 2002b;Spink, Robins and Schamber 1998). Few studies, however, examine how people actually write reviews (but see Hyland, 2000).…”

Views on Book Reviews

“…While the purpose and value of book reviews vary between disciplines and change over time (e.g., BIL-HARTZ, 1984;SPINK et al, 1998;HARTLEY, 2005), we believe that its future lies in the third, reflective, task. Gradually, this path could also lead to a higher appreciation of book reviews in academia.…”

A machine‐learning approach to coding book reviews as quality indicators: Toward a theory of megacitation

“…Librarians were among the first to recognize book reviews as aids for developing library collections (Blake, 1989;Dilevko, McMillan, Allison-Cassin, Aspinall, & Mauro, 2006;Natowitz & Wheeler Carlo, 1997;Parker, 1989;Serebnick, 1992), giving consideration also to the relationship between the review and the reputation of a book's publisher (Jordy, McGrath, & Rutledge, 1999). It is only recently that we have become interested in the book review's academic value and scholarly impact (Hartley, 2006;Nicolaisen, 2002b;Spink, Robbins, & Schamber, 1998). Today we expect reviews published in journals to be scholarly; hence, the features that academics look for in a good book review include a well-known person as the review author, the presentation of a straightforward overview of the book, a strong critique of the book's main argument, and a strong evaluation of the book's academic credibility (Hartley, 2006;Miranda, 1996).…”

“…A scholarly book review is a rich, though sometimes subtle, source of information about the perceived value of a newly published book or monograph. In the past, book reviews have been examined on the basis of their structure and rhetorical content (Hartley, 2010;Motta-Roth, 1998;Nicolaisen, 2002c), their usefulness to librarians for developing book collections (Blake, 1989;Serebnick, 1992), their importance to academic research and teaching (Hartley, 2006;Spink et al, 1998), and their citedness in the journal literature (Diodato, 1984;Zuccala & van Leeuwen, 2011). Here we consider a new role for the book review as a "megacitation," or quantitative quality-based measure for use in research evaluation procedures in fields across the humanities.…”