Many universities around the world strongly recommend their academic staff to publish in international journals with high impact factor rather than writing books! As an old generation academic, I believe that book publications can elaborate more scholarly thoughts and provide more examples. However, due to the limited space for international journal articles (word count: about 4000-6000 English words) and efficient circulation of international journal papers, the details are omitted. For what cogent reasons should we follow or should we reject this recommendation? Is the quality of journal-focused supervision deteriorating? If so, why so? If not so, why not so?
Papers in journals and books on a specific subject ("monographs") have different purposes. The recommendation you referred to is probably based on the citation "fetish". Citations of papers are counted (e.g. in Scopus), citations of books are often not counted. However, science organizers like to make decisions based on a single number (e.g. the h-index). Books do not fit into their system. See also this discussion: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Petition_Stop_Tracking_Science
Hello Percy Lai Yin Kwok
I agree with Wolfgang R. Dick that this is the trend of many academic institutions because it makes them "look better" at a pragmatic level. Distilling all of your effort and measuring it with just one number is dangerous.
The ability of monographs to alter the scientific landscape cannot be understated. One easy example it the "Origins of Species" by Charles Darwin.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Books