The Uptake and Impact of a Label for Peer-Reviewed Books.

Eline Vandewalle,Raf Guns,Tim C E Engels

doi:10.3389/frma.2021.746452

Eline Vandewalle, Raf Guns + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.746452

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Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the uptake of the GPRC label (Guaranteed Peer Reviewed Content label) since its introduction in 2010 until 2019. GPRC is a label for books that have been peer reviewed introduced by the Flemish publishers association. The GPRC label allows locally published scholarly books to be included in the regional database for the Social Sciences and Humanities which is used in the Flemish performance-based research funding system. Ten years after the start of the GPRC label, this is the first systematic analysis of the uptake of the label. We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. Our two main data sources are the Flemish regional database for the Social Sciences and Humanities, which currently includes 2,580 GPRC-labeled publications, and three interviews with experts on the GPRC label. Firstly, we study the importance of the label in the Flemish performance-based research funding system. Secondly, we analyse the label in terms of its possible effect on multilingualism and the local or international orientation of publications. Thirdly, we analyse to what extent the label has been used by the different disciplines. Lastly, we discuss the potential implications of the label for the peer review process among book publishers. We find that the GPRC label is of limited importance to the Flemish performance-based research funding system. However, we also conclude that the label has a specific use for locally oriented book publications and in particular for the discipline Law. Furthermore, by requiring publishers to adhere to a formalized peer review procedure, the label affects the peer review practices of local publishers because not all book publishers were using a formal system of peer review before the introduction of the label and even at those publishers who already practiced peer review, the label may have required the publishers to make these procedures more uniform.

Highlights

Several countries have adopted performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) based on bibliometric indicators
We show that the label provides an interesting solution to the problem of which books to include in local databases used for the allocation of research funding
The GPRC label is a flexible tool for recognizing individual book publications as peer-reviewed

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Several countries have adopted performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) based on bibliometric indicators. We draw our attention toward a book label that has been designed to deal with the problem of which books to include in a national database used for the allocation of research funding: the Flemish Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content label or GPRC (Verleysen and Engels, 2013). The fourth is the intended audience, which can consist of people within the region or country This aspect is related to both language (books in Dutch) and contents (e.g., books on Belgian Law). We analyse how the label has been taken up by the different SSH disciplines in Flanders In this regard, we will focus on two disciplines that have made use of the label frequently: History and Law. We discuss the possible effects of the label on peer review practices. In the last section, we provide a more in depth discussion of the relevance of the GPRC label, with specific attention to the concepts of bibliodiversity and multilingualism

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ETHICS STATEMENT