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.