A study of book reviews in SCI-Expanded, SSCI, and A&HCI journals by researchers from five countries: 2006–2015

This article reports a study on the publications of book reviews by researchers from USA, Germany, Japan, China, and India. The Web of Science database was used to obtain the data concerning the publications of book reviews in SCI-Expanded, SSCI and A&HCI indexed journals from 2006 to 2015. Several results of interest were found. First, the results showed that the annual outputs of book reviews by researchers from Germany, Japan, China, and India increased significantly. Second, the number of book reviews contributed by researchers from Japan, China, and India is much lower than researchers from traditional scientific powers such as USA and Germany. Third, book reviews are published more in areas of social science and arts and humanities than in those of science and technology. Fourth, book reviews are much less cited than publications of other types are.

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