Winning awards and gaining recognition: An impact analysis of APSA section book prizes

This study has two objectives: to rank order the top ten publishers of all 609 “best book” awards by APSA sections from 1985 to 2016 and to show using multiple regression analysis which variables best explain why some award-winning volumes receive more scholarly citations than other books. Our dependent variable is average yearly citation counts from copyright date to 2017, and five independent variables were tested in the analysis: (1) prestige ranking of the publisher; (2) number of authors; (3) size of APSA section; (4) subfield specialization; and (5) gender (male or female authors). The top ten publishers account for 74% of the award-winning volumes, and the multiple regression analysis confirms that all variables were statistically significant and consistent with our hypotheses, except subfield. More citations were earned by the smallest subfields of Political Theory and Methodology rather than the largest subfield of American Politics. Three validation tests largely confirm that award-winning books garner more citations than other political science scholarly volumes: comparison with books winning Honorable Mentions; a random sample of Cambridge University Press and University of Chicago Press volumes; and a random sample of all political science volumes from nine award-winning publishers in 2009.
Source: The Social Science Journal - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research