The Global Book Publishing Market as an Interdisciplinary Research Field

Abstract

Purpose/Thesis: The article characterizes the research on the global book publishing market to determine the extent of its interdisciplinarity. Approach/Methods: This article uses quantitative and qualitative analysis of selected academic pa­pers, discipline profiles of their authors and of the journals to investigate which subject area dominate in scientific output of researchers and to establish the relationship between publishing studies and other disciplines on the field of the global book market. In order to prove the relatedness of journals bibliometric methods (co-citation, bibliographic coupling analysis of sources) and knowledge visu­alization technologies will be used. Results and conclusions: The selected papers focused on book history and book culture, economics and technological aspects of book publishing, and users’ attitudes and preferences. The authors published in journals associated with disciplines such as media & communication studies and edu­cation (Publishing Research Quarterly, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Learned Publishing), book studies (Logos) and information studies (Electronic Library, Journal of Documentation). In Corpus 1 (C1) there were co-cited trade magazines and academic journals on library and information science, in Corpus 2 (C2) – academic journals mostly focused on marketing and economics. Co-authored publications constituted 42% of C1 and 63% of C2. The study showed that the research of the global book publishing market is led by interdisciplinary researchers, but rarely by international teams. Research limitations: The initial corpus of academic papers was narrowed down to 230 articles published in English between 2001 and 2018. The study did not include articles focusing on book markets in the countries that make only slight contributions to the global book publishing industry. The discipline classification adopted in the study follow that of the Scopus database. Originality/Value: This study provides insight into the research on the global publishing market and proves that it is interdisciplinary.