Specialization and multidisciplinarity of scholarly book publishers: differences between Spanish University Presses and other scholarly publishers

Abstract

In this work, the authors propose a definition of book publishers’ specialization-multidisciplinarity and apply the operative definition to a set of 1952 Spanish publishers in 16 fields of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The definition of specialization-multidisciplinarity is made operative with an entropy-based indicator. The indicator was applied to a set of Spanish scholarly publishers. It was hypothesized that University Presses (UPs hereafter) were significantly more multidisciplinary (or less specialized) than the rest of the publishers according to the values of the indicator. Chi square tests show that the proportion of UPs among the most multidisciplinary publishers is significantly greater than randomly expected. For the settings of this study the hypothesis is confirmed with a p value < 0.01. At the level of discipline, the concentration of titles was studied using Gini Coefficient, finding differences between disciplines within the range of 0.5. The specific features of university presses are discussed as possible explanations for the observed differences in thematic specialization.