What is more prestigious and better for the career, to publish academic books with an established university press such as Cambridge and Princeton or with other big commercial publishers such as Sage and Routledge? What are advantages and disadvantages?
Hans - I suppose that the 'simple' answer would be that the larger the company, the more likely it is to be more widely marketed, circulated and read - and potentially more cited. Unlike journals, texts are not ranked and so the answer does have some subjectivity associated with it. That said, some of the university press publishers i.e. Cambridge Univerity Press and Oxford University Press are well established and can be considered equally prestigious and 'mainstream' than some of the other publishing houses you mention. That said, there are a few that that are probably 'ranked' higher than most - such as Elsevier.
Hans - I suppose that the 'simple' answer would be that the larger the company, the more likely it is to be more widely marketed, circulated and read - and potentially more cited. Unlike journals, texts are not ranked and so the answer does have some subjectivity associated with it. That said, some of the university press publishers i.e. Cambridge Univerity Press and Oxford University Press are well established and can be considered equally prestigious and 'mainstream' than some of the other publishing houses you mention. That said, there are a few that that are probably 'ranked' higher than most - such as Elsevier.
Books and publishers are not ranked the same as with articles and journals. From an academic perspective one issue is what is the career advantage of publishing books? The disadvantage would be the amount of time and energy that it takes to publish a book Vs articles.
Dean Whitehead Thanks, very good point. I wonder whether apart from the question of distribution and readership the reputation of the publisher also plays a role. I think that established university presses might be more selective than other commercial publishers so getting there approval might point to the quality of your work. But I might be wrong here.
Thanks, Glenn Laverack, you are right, of course, that books do not count as much as articles in most disciplines. But I wonder whether on the way to professorship it is still important to publish books. What do you think?
Hans, absolutely. Books matter on your journey to a professorship. Publisher does not expect self publishing.
Hans - no problem. Yes - I do believe that the reputation of the journal does have a 'general' impact. However, to a large extent the earlier points that i made go hand-in-hand with the reputation. Some HDR students, for instance, will not purchase a text if they do not recognise the 'brand'. Many lecturers also chose 'core' texts on the same basis.
Dear Hans
I agree with Prof. Dean,I think article is more influential. Because it usually published in less time and is accessible in more international indexes.Journals, in their singular way, compete for impact factors and other measure of comparative citation rates, and even social media impact. They have scores which can be compared, and which academic departments examine as a major standard of academic achievement.
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