PROCESO DE PUBLICACIÓN, CALIDAD Y PRESTIGIO DE LAS EDITORIALES CIENTÍFICAS EN EDUCACIÓN (PROCESS OF PUBLICATION, QUALITY AND PRESTIGE OF SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION PUBLISHERS)

• Published in: Educación XX1 2015-01, Vol.18 (1), p.17-44
• Main Authors: Giménez-Toledo, Elea, Tejada-Artigas, Carlos-Miguel
• Format: Article
• Language: eng ; spa
• Subjects: Education; Feedback (Response); Opinions; Publishing industry; Response Rates (Questionnaires); Social Sciences
• ISSN: 1139-613X; 2174-5374
• DOI: 10.5944/educXX1.18.1.12310

From the data obtained from a survey carried out by our research group, various aspects related to the publication of Education scientific books were addressed. This study emerges from the necessity to create instruments and indicators that evaluate the quality of monographs, filling a gap in the processes of scientific evaluation. One of the ways of carrying out this analysis is to seek out the opinion of researchers on the subject of Education. This was done through the distribution of a questionnaire sent to 11,647 lecturers on Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Spanish universities with at least one «sexenio» (six year period of research activity assessed), which obtained a response rate of 27% (3,045 responses). Of the questionnaires distributed, 794 were sent to lecturers on Education, obtaining a response rate of 31.1% (247 responses). Questions were included to accomplish three objectives: to know the experience of authors related to the publication of their monographs; to validate a set of indicators to determine publishers' quality; and to identify the most relevant publishers in the area of Education. The analysis of the responses obtained indicates that there are no differences between the behavior of lecturers in SSH and Education. All of them demand publishers to have transparent processes of publication which guarantee the quality of monographs, such as peer review, as occurs in scientific journals in general. The thematic specialization of the publishing house and its dissemination and distribution system are also quality indicators for experts. In addition, from the survey a list of the publishers in Education who were considered by lecturers to have the highest quality was obtained. This list shows great dispersion, as a total of 104 Spanish publishers and 119 from other countries were mentioned. The use of this list for ranking must be very cautious as only one indicator has been taken into account for its creation, that of expert opinions.