Arno Tausch – Visiting Professor of Political Studies and Governance, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Series: Global Political Studies
BISAC: POL033000
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52305/XICA3755
“Professor Arno Tausch is known for his knowledge and work on many topics and world regions. This new book about world library and classroom presence of books generates thrilling insights and shows the strength of his truly global approach. Tausch convincingly shows the power effects of Anglo-Saxon dominance within political science and how this can be countered – looking more at global reach instead of (English) citations.” Ulrich Brand, Professor of International Politics at the University of Vienna, co-author of the book, The Imperial Mode of Living. Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism
“In a world obsessed with rankings, Professor Arno Tasuch’s latest book questions traditional notions of what constitutes proper scientific rankings and citations and their relevance to scholarship globally, but political science, in particular. Meticulously researched, scientifically approached, Tausch’s book is a tour de force, examining such diverse issues as book publication in Denmark and the Netherlands to the implications of the incorporation of publications from churches and the Vatican as well as the Arab World. He examines what is the ideal platform for assessing the significance of scholarly work from Research gate and SCOPUS to OCLC World Cat data. His conclusion is sobering and profound and would be of relevance to every scholar and university administrator.” – Dr. Hussein Solomon, Senior Professor: Centre for Gender and Africa Studies; Faculty: The Humanities, Republic of South Africa
This book, written by a political scientist born in the global North but now based in one of the departments of his discipline in the Republic of South Africa, is an attempt to focus on the global geography of political science and its global reach. All too often, the world view of scholars is shaped by the ‘lens’ of the global North, and there is little awareness of how the products of our scholarship are distributed in the world’s libraries and classrooms, and of the structures of centre and periphery that characterise the field.
At the heart of our bibliometric considerations, beyond the usual citation indicators based on Scopus, arguably the most complete database of its kind in the world, is the idea of measuring the presence of scientific authors and/or book publishers in the world’s library systems as well as in the world’s lecture halls. These indicators – called Libcitation and Classroom Citation – are discussed and developed in the various sections of our book.
As we show, the claim of “global political science” must now be challenged by the harsh reality of the regional concentration of our discipline in the Western countries of the world, as evidenced by the fact that the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States alone account for two-fifths of all political science titles recorded worldwide in Scopus-indexed journals from 1996 to 2021, and, also for more than 50% of the world’s academic libraries recorded in OCLC WorldCat. Worse still, no less than two-thirds of the “global” political science journals indexed in Scopus are published in these three countries!
With all the weaknesses of our new evaluation systems, which were first presented in German in a series of articles in the Gruyter journal Bibliotheksdienst, and which are now being presented step by step in an expanded English version, substantially supplemented by new contributions and perspectives, claim to be an innovation in a global academic world in which the “ranking” of scholarly communities and academic book publishers is unfortunately becoming more and more important. Our ranking systems focus on the real presence of scholarship around the globe.
**Order the printed version and SAVE 50% on the e-book with Print+eBook. Price indicated includes shipping**
