What's Special about Book Editors? A Bibliometric Comparison of Book Editors and other Flemish Researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities

This paper examines the bibliometric characteristics of book editors and non-editors, focussing on gender, career stage, number of publications and collaboration practices. The data consist of 8970 Flemish affiliated researchers with at least one publication between 2000 and 2011 in the comprehensive Flemish academic bibliometric database (VABB-SHW). The analysis shows that most book editors are established male researchers while most non-editors are non-established male researchers. Moreover, males are more likely to be editors than are females. Half of the established editors edit more than 1 book, in contrast to only a small number of non-established editors. Overall, book editors publish more than non-editors, but, when controlling for career stage, book editors publish even more book chapters and monographs than do non-editors. Although editors are highly collaborative while editing a book, no significant differences were found in the number of collaborative articles, monographs, book chapters and proceedings written by editors and non-editors. Conference Topic Country-level studies