Scholarly publishers indicators: Prestige, specialization and review systems of scholarly book publishers

Abstract

This work presents the updated version of the public information system SPI (Scholarly Publishers´ Indicators), developed by íLIA (research group on scholarly books), which belongs to the Spanish National Research Council. SPI contains three types of indicators about book publishers: prestige according to expert opinions; thematic specialization according to Dilve (information on Spanish books for sale) classification; and manuscript selection procedures according to each publisher´s answers to a survey. SPI Expanded is also described as an information system which provides information about each scholarly publisher´s indexation in four international information systems. The methodological specifications for the design of SPI Expanded in each of the dimensions are presented. Finally, the functionalities and current use as a reference in the assessment process of scholarly publishers´ output are detailed.