ISBNs as identifiers for books in research evaluation

Abstract

Books and evaluations thereof are essential components of the research system. Despite existing efforts to use citation-based metrics to evaluate books, we argue that a more effective book evaluation system should focus on the entire lifecycle of book publication, not just the final products. Building on this idea, we here present the preliminary results of an ongoing project aimed at establishing such a system. As the first step of this project, we analysed ISBNs used for book outputs submitted to two national research evaluation systems, the UK Research Excellence Framework 2014 and the formal Lithuanian research assessment for 2004–2016. By conducting this analysis, we investigate whether and how ISBNs might be used as a reliable identifier in collecting bibliographic data, which will then serve as the foundation of the new book evaluation system. We describe our approach to ISBN collection, processing and analysis, and discuss the suitability of ISBNs for our purposes. Notably, we found ISBNs a handy indicator, given their relevant ubiquity in the book-centric bibliographic universe. However, processing ISBNs from existing systems is very time-consuming and requires extensive manual effort, which calls for a better book bibliographic data infrastructure.