wiberly.indd The Social Sciences: Who Won the ‘90s in Scholarly Book Publishing 1 Stephen E. Wiberley Jr. The study of prizes awarded to books in the 1990s by leading social sciences scholarly associations helps us understand the disciplines, publishing, and libraries during that decade.Thisarticle examines data on prizewinners of the American Anthropological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the Association of American Geog- raphers, the American Political Science Association, the American Psy- chological Association, and the American Sociological Association. For the prizewinners, it reports the distribution of winners among publishers and universities; the extent of cross-disciplinary publishing; the degree of coauthorship; trends in library acquisitions of print versions; and acces- sibility of electronic versions.The University of Chicago Press ranked first among publishers, and the faculty at Harvard won more prizes than did faculty at any other institution. Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal classifications assigned to the winners show substantial cross-disciplinary interest. Sixteen percent of the books were coauthored. Library print hold- ings appeared to decline over the decade by approximately 20 percent;and in April 2004, 19 percent of prizewinners were available electronically. n a previous article on prize- winning books in the humani- ties, the author showed that study of those books provides insight into issues important to academic librarians and others in higher education.1 In the social sciences, the book does not dominate the scholarly literature as much as it does in the humanities. Nevertheless, books are a standard medium of commu- nication for social scientists and, judging from prizes awarded, play a major role in anthropology, political science, and sociology. An investigation of prize-win- ning books in the social sciences offers data on the accomplishments of different publishers and universities, trends in library acquisitions, the extent of cross- disciplinary interest, the development of e-books, and pa erns of coauthorship. These data, in turn, speak to the health of scholarly publishing, the state of the Stephen E. Wiberley Jr. is Bibliographer for the Social Sciences and Professor in the University Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago; e-mail: wiberley@uic.edu. He thanks especially Anne M. Fleming for gathering much of the data analyzed in this article and also thanks those who supplied the names of prizewinners: Michael Murphy of the ASA, Kenneth D. Madsen, and members of the social science associa- tions who had served on prize-selection commi ees. In addition, he appreciates the comments of Deborah D. Blecic, Joan B. Fiscella, and Jay Lambrecht concerning dra s of this article. 505 mailto:wiberley@uic.edu 506 College & Research Libraries disciplines, characteristics of American academe, and the condition of academic libraries. One cannot say whether prize-winning books are typical of all social sciences books. There is no regular compilation of data on the number, much less the char- acteristics, of academic books published in the various disciplines. Until some researcher undertakes the massive effort to sample and analyze books listed in a database such as WorldCat, analysis of more readily identifiable and understand- able populations such as prizewinners will have to substitute for studies of the universe of academic books.2 This article reports on prize-winning books, authors, and publishers in the social sciences from 1990 through 1999 and compares the results with the ear- lier study of humanities prizewinners. It covers awards given to books in six disciplines—anthropology, education, geography, political science, psychology, and sociology—by the largest American associations in each discipline. This is a reasonable approach for, as Neil J. Smelser has pointed out, career recogni- tion and rewards in the disciplines are organized through national institutions and organizations.3 One could argue that the social sciences encompass more disciplines (for example, criminal justice or library science), but the six disciplines mentioned here were chosen because they and economics are those given primary coverage in Sources of Information in the Social Sciences: A Guide to the Literature by William H. Webb et al.4 Though now dated in many of its particulars, Sources of Information in the Social Sciences is a landmark work for academic librarians. Economics was not included in this article because the American Economic Association does not award any prizes for books. Instead, the author studied book prizewinners from the American November 2004 Anthropological Association (AAA), the American Educational Research Associa- tion (AERA), the Association of Ameri- can Geographers (AAG), the American Political Science Association (APSA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the American Sociological Association (ASA). Prizes studied include those awarded at the association level and those given by divisions or sections of the associations. They include both outright winners of prizes and books that received honorable mention or some similar, lesser recogni- tion. The analysis that follows generally does not differentiate books by prize level or degree of recognition. Although this may make the analysis less nuanced than some would like, it is based on a clearly defined stratum of the population of academic books. This article focuses on which publish- ers and authors (and the institutions with which the authors are affiliated) won the most prizes during the 1990s. A compila- tion of leading books in six of the most im- portant disciplines in the social sciences provides an opportunity to address four additional issues of interest to librarians. First, the numbers of WorldCat holdings offers an index of the level of library ac- quisitions over time. Second, an analysis of netLibrary’s listings of books on World- Cat provides a measure of the availability of electronic versions of leading social sciences scholarship in the early twenty- first century. The analysis of netLibrary’s WorldCat listings also indicates which publishers had books available elec- tronically and what disciplines were best represented with e-books. Third, there is evidence that the extent of coauthorship is generally increasing in the scholarly world.5 The data set gathered for the pres- ent study provides one recent measure of coauthorship in the social sciences. Finally, by looking at the classification The Social Sciences 507 numbers assigned to prizewinners, one can assess cross-disciplinary interest in different fields. The Prizes At one time or another during the 1990s, the sections and interest groups of the AAA awarded eight differently named prizes to books seventy-two times and to authors eighty-three times (counts of books and authors include those that won more than one prize for the same book); the AERA and its divisions awarded three prizes to books sixteen times and to authors twenty-two times; the AAG and its specialty groups awarded three prizes to books fourteen times and to authors sixteen times; the APSA and its sections awarded twenty-four prizes to books 154 times and to authors 189 times; the APA and its divisions awarded four prizes to books fi een times and to authors sev- enteen times; and, finally, the ASA and its sections awarded twenty-four prizes to books 141 times and to authors 167 times.6 In all, 412 prizes were awarded, including fi y-eight that went to books awarded more than one prize. (Twenty- six books won two prizes; two books won three.) The median number of times each prize was awarded to books is five; the mean is 6.2. Nine prizes were awarded only once, all of which were established in 1997 or later, including six in 1999. The Society for Humanistic Anthropology, a section of the AAA, awarded its Turner prize to thirty-five books, including honorable mentions. Probably the most important observation to be made about the distribution of awards among the six disciplines is that nearly 90 percent went to anthropology, political science, and sociology. This raises the possibility that books are more important for these fields than for education, geography, and psychology. The number of refereed journals in the different disciplines also points to preferences for format of pub- lication. According to Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, in the United States in 2003 (search made Dec. 13, 2003), there were 111 refereed journals in anthropology, 612 in education, 49 in geography, 224 in po- litical science, 502 in psychology, and 198 in sociology. Distributions of prizes and refereed journals suggest that books are more important to anthropology, political science, and sociology than to education and psychology and that journals are more important to the la er pair than the former three. Prize and refereed-journal data also point to geography’s relative standing among the disciplines. The num- ber of doctoral programs in the different fields also indicates geography’s place. In 1995, the National Research Council (NRC) ranked 36 programs in geography, 69 in anthropology, 95 in sociology, 98 in political science, and 185 in psychology.7 A total of 444 different authors wrote the 382 books that won one or more prizes, a mean of 1.2 authors per book. Sixty books (or 16% of the 382 books that won one or more prizes) had coauthors, a total of 134 persons or 2.2 authors per co- authored book. Because two coauthored books won prizes from two associations, an exact comparison cannot be made between coauthorship in individual disciplines and coauthorship among all prizewinners. Nevertheless, except for education (25%) and geography (7%), the proportions of coauthored prizewinners in the fields studied were close to the overall 16 percent (15% for anthropology; 17% for political science; 13% for psychol- ogy; and 12% for sociology). Coauthor- ship among the humanities prizewinners was 7 percent, less than half of that for the social sciences (Humanities, 358). Most social science awardees won only one prize. However, forty-one au- thors won two prizes, three won three prizes, and one won four. These forty-five 508 College & Research Libraries authors represent 10 percent of the 444 different persons who won prizes. This contrasts with seven authors (2%) out of 365 who won more than one humanities prize (Humanities, 359). Besides the fact that a larger percentage of social sciences books won multiple prizes than did hu- manities books, five social sciences books won prizes from more than one disciplin- ary association and no humanities book did. Two books won prizes from APSA and ASA, two from AAA and ASA, and one from AERA and APSA. Twelve au- thors won prizes for two different books in the social sciences, whereas only two humanities authors won prizes for two different books (Humanities, 359). Both of the authors of two different prize-winning humanities books worked with a coauthor on one of their two books. And the four books all received the Mildenberger Prize for a work in the field of teaching foreign languages and literatures, a subject close to the social sciences. Of the twelve social sciences authors who won prizes for two different books, three coauthored both their books, three wrote one alone and co- authored the other, and five wrote both of their books alone. These data suggest the possibility that coauthorship and work in the social sciences lead to greater output. Studies across careers of social scientists and humanities scholars would allow assessment of the effect of coauthorship on productivity and whether differences in output relate to area of study. Institutional Affiliations of Prizewinners The fact that 444 different authors won prizes points to the challenge librarians face in learning about individual schol- ars. Institutional affiliations show some predominant universities, although there is considerable sca er. In all, the investi- gator found 188 institutions with at least one prize. Eight prizes went to scholars November 2004 identified as independent, and one prize was awarded posthumously (four of the eight prizes went to two independent authors). Fi y-eight percent of all prizes went to persons affiliated with the top 20 percent of institutions that won the most prizes. (See table 1.) This distribution is notably short of the classic distribution where 80 percent of the instances of a phenomenon come from 20 percent of the supplying sources. But 58 percent is in line with the 52 percent of affiliated humanities winners who came from the top 20 percent of institutions (Humanities, 359). Harvard was the most-laureled insti- tution with fi een prizes. The University of California-Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale tied for runner-up with fourteen prizes each. Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale also were among the top four institutions among humanities prizewinners; Harvard won the sixth greatest number of humanities prizes in the 1990s. Three of the University of California’s campuses were among the top humanities institutions (Santa Bar- bara along with Berkeley and Los Ange- les), and the University of California does even be er in the social sciences, with six among the top twenty-two: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Davis, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. The upper Midwest was rather weakly represented among humanities prizewinners; except for the University of Chicago in the top ten, only Iowa, Ohio State, and Wisconsin-Madison were among the top nineteen (Humani- ties, 360). But among the social sciences, Michigan is sixth, Wisconsin is eighth, Chicago and Northwestern are among four tied for fourteenth, and Indiana and Minnesota are among five tied for eighteenth. The East and West Coasts continue to be strong as Duke, Rutgers plus five Ivy League universities, and Stanford plus six University of California campuses each took seven top spots. Ex- cluding Duke, the only southern school The Social Sciences 509 TABLE 1 Social Sciences Prizes Awarded to Institutions Institution Total AAA (Anthropology) AERA (Education) AAG (Geography) APSA (Political Science) APA (Psychology) ASA (Sociology) Harvard 15 11 2 2 UC-Berkeley 14 4 1 1 2 6 UCLA 14 1 7 6 Yale 14 1 11 2 UC-San Diego 13 1 8 4 Michigan 12 3 1 1 7 Stanford 11 1 8 1 1 Wisconsin 10 1 1 5 3 Duke 9 2 5 2 Princeton 9 5 1 3 Columbia 8 1 4 1 2 Pennsylvania 8 3 1 4 Rutgers 8 1 4 3 Chicago 7 2 5 Northwestern 7 1 2 4 UC-Davis 7 1 3 3 UC-Santa Barbara 7 2 5 Colorado 6 1 5 Indiana 6 1 3 2 Minnesota 6 1 1 2 2 Texas 6 3 1 1 1 UC-Santa Cruz 6 2 1 3 6 with 5 30 3 with 4 12 14 with 3 42 29 with 2 58 115 with 1 115 Total 460 In counting winners by institution, the investigator applied the following rules. If two or more coauthors from the same institution won a prize, one prize was counted for that institution. Twenty-five such cases occurred. Otherwise, the investigator counted the institution of each coauthor. Nine prizewinners either identified as independent or the investigator could not find their institutional affiliation. Source: See endnote 6. among top prizewinners is the University of Texas at Austin. Duke, Texas-Austin, and Virginia were the only top southern prizewinners in the humanities study. Public universities have a slightly greater presence among top prizewinners in the social sciences than in the humanities. More than half of the top humanities in- stitutions (ten of nineteen) were private, compared to about 40 percent of the top social sciences institutions (nine of twenty-two). The addition of Princeton and Northwestern among the top social sciences prizewinners does not offset the loss of New York University, Brandeis, and Cornell (Humanities, 360). 510 College & Research Libraries Given that the AERA, the AAG, and the APA awarded fewer than twenty prizes each, it would have been stun- ning if any institution had won at least one prize from all six associations. No institution did win one from all six, but the University of California-Berkeley won in all fields except psychology; and six universities—Michigan, Stanford, Wisconsin, Columbia, Minnesota, and Texas—won prizes from four different associations. Harvard and Yale won eleven APSA prizes, the most for a single institution from a single association. The University of California-San Diego and Stanford had eight, the third most from one association, again in political science. The highest number of prizes given to one institution by ASA was seven to Michigan; the high number given to November 2004 one institution by AAA was four to the University of California-Berkeley. Although no one would measure the strength of an institution’s social sciences programs by number of prizes won, it is interesting to compare the present study’s findings with an institutional ranking de- rived from the National Research Council’s Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States. Given that about 90 percent of the prizes come from AAA, APSA, and ASA, it is reasonable to derive an institutional ranking appropriate to the data on prizes by combining the NRC rankings of the an- thropology, political science, and sociology programs. Table 2 gives those rankings for all institutions that had their anthropology, political science, and sociology programs in the top thirty for each discipline. There is almost complete coincidence among the TABLE 2 Research–Doctorate Program Rankings Rank of Program Institution Anthropology Political Science Sociology Composite Score Composite Rank Prizes Won Prize Rank (top 19 only) California-Berkeley 3 2 3 8 1 14 2 (Tie) Chicago 1.5 6 1 8.5 2 7 14 (Tie) Michigan 1.5 3.5 4 9 3 12 6 Harvard 4 1 7 12 4 15 1 Stanford 7 5 8 20 5 11 7 UCLA 9 8 5 22 6 14 2 (Tie) Wisconsin 18.5 10 2 30.5 7 10 8 Yale 9 3.5 19 31.5 8 14 2 (Tie) California-San Diego 9 9 22 40 9 13 5 Columbia 16 16 15 47 10 (Tie) 8 11 (Tie) Princeton 27 7 13 47 10 (Tie) 9 9 (Tie) Texas 12 19 16 47 10 (Tie) 6 18 (Tie) Duke 18.5 14 20 52.5 13 9 9 (Tie) North Carolina 29 18 6 53 14 5 23 (Tie) Johns Hopkins 21.5 21 17 59.5 15 4 29 (Tie) Indiana 29 20 12 61 16 6 18 (Tie) Washington 29 23 10 62 17 2 46 (Tie) University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign 14 30 29 73 18 3 32 (Tie) Source: Research–Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change, ed. Marvin L. Goldberger, Brendan A. Maher, and Pamela Ebert Flattau (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Pr., 1995). The Social Sciences 511 top ten in each list. Only the University of Chicago, second in the composite NRC ranking, misses the top ten in prizes. Otherwise, fourteen of the eighteen that make the NRC ranking are among the top twenty-two in prizes won. Of those top prize-winning institutions that are not in the NRC rankings, Pennsylvania and Santa Barbara lacked a top thirty NRC ranking in political science, Rutgers was not in the top thirty in sociology, Northwestern and Minnesota in anthropology, University of California-Davis in political science and sociology, and Colorado and University of California-Santa Cruz in all three. As was true of a comparison of humanities prizewinners with the NRC rankings of humanities programs, a similar compari- son for the social sciences reinforces some- thing that is very well known: most of the best research comes from large research universities. And it also is true for both the humanities and social sciences that there is remarkable coincidence between the com- posite ranking and the institutional prize totals. Nevertheless, the dominance of pri- vate universities among the very top of the NRC rankings in the humanities—eight to two—does not hold up in the social sci- ences, where five of the ten, including three University of California campuses, are public universities. Furthermore, Michigan and Wisconsin, along with the University of Chicago, give the Midwest a presence in the top ten NRC rankings it lacked in the humanities where only Chicago was represented (Humanities, 361). Prize-winning Publishers The distribution of prizes in the social sciences among publishers is more con- centrated than for institutions. (See table 3.) Fourteen presses (20% of all prize-win- ning publishers) published 67 percent of the prizewinners, whereas 20 percent of the institutions supplied 58 percent of the authors. Among 1990s humanities prize- winners, 21 percent of the publishers gar- nered 72 percent of the awards, whereas 20 percent of institutions supplied 52 percent of the authors (Humanities, 359, 362-63). In other words, the concentration of publishers was slightly greater in the humanities. The University of Chicago Press leads the way in the social sciences with forty prize-winning books. Publishers that pro- duced ten or more prizewinners in both the social sciences and the humanities in- clude California with 63 (36 social science, 27 humanities), Princeton with 61 (38, 23), Chicago with 60 (40, 20), Cambridge with 55 (29, 26), Harvard with 40 (28, 12), Cornell with 38 (17, 21), and Oxford with 35 (18, 17). Unlike the humanities, where only one trade publisher, Norton, was in the top eighteen, three trade publishers are in the top twenty in the social sciences: Routledge (tenth), and Basic Books and Westview Press (both tied for sixteenth). A foundation press, Russell Sage, also ties for sixteenth. In the humanities, only five books won more than one prize, two of which were published by trade publish- ers (Humanities, 359, 363). In the social sciences, twenty-eight books won more than one prize, only three of which were published by trade presses (Routledge with two books and Crown with one). Ex- cept for one published by the Brookings Institution, all the rest were published by university presses. Harvard University Press led the way with five, followed by Chicago with four and California, Princ- eton, and Yale with three. Other research reported in the library literature offers indicators of the quality of university press publications and those of trade publishers. Edward A. Goedeken found that between 1983 and 1992, the percentage of academic presses whose books received an Outstanding Academic Book award from Choice rose from 33 to 48 percent of all those so honored.8 In 512 College & Research Libraries November 2004 TABLE 3 Social Sciences Prizes Won by Publishers Publisher Anthropology Education Geography Political Science Psychology Sociology Chicago 40 6 0 1 12 0 21 Princeton 38 5 0 0 26 0 7 California 36 9 0 2 2 0 23 Cambridge 29 4 0 1 12 1 11 Harvard 28 1 0 0 13 2 12 Yale 25 3 3 1 15 0 3 Oxford 18 0 3 0 7 1 7 Cornell 17 4 0 0 10 0 3 Temple 10 0 0 0 4 1 5 Routledge 8 3 0 0 2 0 3 Illinois 7 2 0 0 1 0 4 Johns Hopkins 7 0 0 2 4 0 1 Kansas 7 0 1 0 5 0 1 Michigan 7 0 1 0 5 1 0 Minnesota 7 1 1 0 1 0 4 Basic Books 6 1 0 0 2 2 1 Columbia 6 5 0 0 0 1 0 Russell Sage 6 0 1 0 1 0 4 SUNY 6 1 0 0 2 0 3 Westview 6 1 0 0 1 1 3 Texas 5 2 0 2 1 0 0 5 with 4 20 9 with 3 27 11 with 2 22 26 with 1 26 TOTAL 414 Two books were copublished by two publishers. Source: WorldCat, spring 2003. this study of social science prizewinners, university presses are 50 percent (36 of 72) of all publishers whose books won prizes. This is quite close to university presses constituting 48 percent of all presses that published Choice prizewinners. In terms of percentage of books, there is a similar- ity between the dominance of university presses in the social sciences and in the humanities. In the humanities, 84 percent of books that won prizes were from uni- versity presses, whereas 81 percent (336 of 414) of the prizes to books in the social sciences were awarded to university presses (Humanities, 364). The vital role of university presses in humanities and social sciences scholarship is clear. In late 1994 and early 1995, Paul Metz and John Stemmer asked collection de- velopment librarians to rate the quality The Social Sciences 513 of sixty-four publishers, including six university presses.9 Among them, the presses include some that try to cover, to some extent, all academic areas; some that specialize in the humanities; and some that specialize in the sciences or social sciences. Twenty presses studied by Metz and Stemmer won prizes in the 1990s in the social sciences. The presses that ranked in the top four in quality in the Metz–Stemmer study were Har- vard, Cambridge, Oxford, and Stanford. The first three of these publishers won eighteen prizes or more. (See table 3.) In contrast, Stanford had only four awards. Three trade publishers ranked lower in quality than Stanford in the Metz–Stem- mer study, yet won more prizes. Rout- ledge gained eight awards, Basic Books six, and Westview six. Metz–Stemmer respondents also rated the quality of Smithsonian Institution Press (one prize) and Brookings Institution Press (four prizes) higher than Routledge, Basic, and Westview. SUNY Press, a six prizewin- ner, rated below the quality of Stanford, Smithsonian, and Brookings. Because trade publishers did not have comparable success in winning multiple humanities prizes and SUNY Press won only one humanities prize, there is greater coinci- dence between the Metz–Stemmer quality rankings and the hierarchy of humanities prize-winning publishers than between the Metz–Stemmer quality rankings and the hierarchy of social science prize-win- ning publishers. Disciplinary and Cross-disciplinary Trends Cross-disciplinary interest and bor- rowing among the social sciences is a well-documented phenomenon.10 Given the interdisciplinarity of the social sci- ences, one would expect to find the six disciplinary associations studied here awarding substantial numbers of prizes outside their home disciplines. Assign- TABLE 4 Subject Distribution of Social Sciences Prize-winners by LCC and DDC Awarding Association Anthropology GN–GT 300–309, 390–399 Education L–LT 370–379 Geography G–GF 910–919 Political Science HX–KKZ 320–329, 340–349, 350–359 Psychology BF 150–159 Sociology HM–HV 300–309, 360–369 Economics HB–HJ 330–339, 380–389 History C–F 900–999, except 910–919 Other AAA 15 60 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 22 54 4 1 40 12 19 22 AERA 0 19 75 69 0 0 0 0 6 6 6 19 0 0 13 0 0 6 AAG 0 14 0 0 7 14 0 0 0 0 7 14 14 7 43 29 29 36 APSA 0 22 1 1 0 0 50 54 0 0 18 29 11 7 13 5 6 4 APA 0 13 13 13 0 0 0 0 40 33 7 20 0 0 0 0 40 33 ASA 1 47 3 3 0 0 8 10 0 0 32 53 18 17 20 8 17 10 Figures are percentages; not all LCC percentages add up to 100 percent because of rounding; DDC percentages include overlap of 300–309 in Sociology and Anthropology Source: LCC WorldCat, spring 2003; DDC WorldCat, April 2004. http:phenomenon.10 514 College & Research Libraries November 2004 TABLE 5 Subject Distribution of Humanities Prizewinners by LCC and DDC Awarding Association Art (N–NX) 700–779 History (C–F) 900–909; 921–999 Literature (P–PZ) 400–499; 800–899 Musicology (M–MT) 780–789 Social Science (G–LT) 300–399; 910–919 Other College Art Association 91% 95% 0 0 5% 0 0 0 0 0 5% 5% American Historical Association 1% 2% 48% 40% 1 % 1% 1% 1% 41% 46% 9% 10% Modern Language Association 1% 3% 11% 9% 73% 68% 1% 1% 5% 7% 8% 13% American Musicological Society 0 0 0 0 0 0 100% 92% 0 0 0 8% Not all row totals equal 100 percent because of rounding. Source: LCC WorldCat, fall 2001; DDC WorldCat, April 2004 ments of Library of Congress Classifica- tion (LCC) to the prizewinners generally support that expectation. Except for edu- cation, where three-fourths of the books awarded prizes by the AERA class in the LCC category for education (L-LT), no discipline overwhelmingly captures the books awarded by its association. (See table 4.) Political science is the only other discipline where at least half (in this case, 50 percent) of the books receiv- ing prizes are in the classification for the discipline (LCC HX-KKZ). Although not a majority, books that class in LCC BF for psychology are the largest group (40%) receiving prizes from the APA and books that class in LCC HM-HV for sociology are the largest group (32%) receiving prizes from the ASA. In geography and anthropology, books that class in history (LCC C-F) are the largest single group with 43 and 40 percent, respectively. Social scientists have wri en about the influence of economics on other disci- plines in the social sciences, particu- larly its impact through rational choice theory.11 Although books that address or utilize rational choice theory can fall in a variety of places in LCC (for example, BJ, HB, HC, HM, HV, and JC), LCC HB- HJ is the principal place for books on economic topics. Sociology appears to have the greatest interest in economics, with nearly one-fi h of its prizes going to books that classify in LCC HB-HJ. Political science may have noteworthy conflicts about rational choice theory, but it does not extend substantially to topical interest in economics because only about 10 percent of political science prizewinners classify in economics (LCC HB-HJ).12 Some might argue that LCC has scattered books in the social sciences outside social science call number areas, especially into C-F for history. Indeed, if one looks at the distribution of Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) numbers assigned to social sciences prizewinners by WorldCat, one gets a very differ- ent picture of the influence of history (900–909 and 920–999 in DDC) (table 4). http:HB-HJ).12 http:theory.11 The Social Sciences 515 Only geography has more than 20 percent anthropology and sociology in 300–309, of its prizewinners classed in DDC his- DDC prevents distinguishing between tory. On the other hand, by combining these disciplines. TABLE 6 Publishers of Books with Greatest WorldCat Holdings WorldCat Holdings Publisher Author Title Association Awarding Prize LC Class Date 3827 Crown Jonathan Kozol Savage Inequalities AERA, APSA LC 1991 2531 William Morrow Steven Pinker The Language Instinct APA P 1994 2406 Norton Steven Pinker How the Mind Works APA QP 1997 2060 Yale Joan DelFattore What Johnny Shouldn’t Read AERA LB 1992 1705 Basic Books Daniel Schacter Searching for Memory APA BF 1996 1633 Addison- Wesley David Berliner Manufactured Crisis AERA LA 1995 1573 Russell Sage Kathryn Edin Making Ends Meet ASA HQ 1997 1525 Unwin Hyman Patricia Collins Black Feminist Thought ASA HQ 1990 1412 Harvard Douglas Massey, Nancy Denton American Apartheid ASA E 1993 1394 California Fay Ginsburg Contested Lives ASA HQ 1989 1339 Oxford Doug McAdam Freedom Summer ASA E 1988 1329 Chicago Mitchell Duneier Slim’s Table ASA F 1992 1315 Chicago Elijah Anderson Streetwise ASA HN 1990 1307 Yale Robert Dahl Democracy and Its Critics APSA JC 1989 1289 Rutgers Camilo Vergara New American Ghetto ASA HN 1995 1218 Cambridge Phillippe Bourgois In Search of Respect AAA HV 1995 1173 Jossey-Bass Linda Darling- Hammond Right to Learn AERA LB 1997 1170 Norton Barbara Rothman Recreating Motherhood ASA HQ 1989 1169 Cambridge Harry Collins Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science ASA Q 1993 1145 Twayne, Prentice-Hall Betty Dobratz, Stephanie Shanks-Meile White Power, White Pride ASA E 1997 Source: WorldCat, April 2004. 516 College & Research Libraries The wide disciplinary distribution of the social sciences prizewinners contrasts with the greater disciplinary focus of the humanities prizewinners. Whether we analyze humanities prizewinners by LC or DDC, all prizewinners, except in his- tory, tend to fall into the classification of their discipline. (See table 5.) Ninety per- cent or more of art and music prizewin- ners are classed in their fields, compared to approximately 70 percent of literature prizewinners. History prizewinners are nearly equally represented in history and social sciences classification areas. Perhaps the fact that the objects of artis- tic, musical, and literary scholarship are normally artifacts that have distinctive characteristics (an observer can differenti- ate a painting from a score or a novel at a glance) makes it easier to classify a book about, in effect, one of those types of ar- tifacts. In contrast, the objects of study in anthropology, geography (at least human geography), political science, psychology, sociology, and history are people whose behaviors, both individual and collective, have many aspects—anthropological, economic, geographical, political, social, and historical, none of which can be clearly differentiated from the other. (Ed- ucation may differ because most of what modern societies identify as education is conducted in distinctive institutional se ings.) Regardless of the reasons why humanities prizewinners class in a nar- rower range of fields than social sciences prizewinners, the greater intermingling among the social sciences makes it much easier for libraries to divide up collection development responsibilities among dif- ferent librarians for the humanities than for the social sciences. WorldCat Holdings of Prizewinners The author’s study of humanities prize- winners showed that those from trade publishers disproportionately dominated November 2004 the group of awardees that were most held by libraries. Although trade books were less than 20 percent of humanities prizewinners, nine of the twenty win- ners that had the most holding libraries on OCLC’s WolrdCat were from trade publishers (Humanities, 366-7). The disproportion is the same in the social sciences, where trade publishers also had less than 20 percent of all winners and produced nine of the twenty most held. (See table 6.) In addition, one of the most widely held social sciences awardees was from a foundation, Russell Sage. Overall, the twenty most-held social sciences prizewinners were more widely held than the twenty most-held humani- ties prizewinners. In April 2004, the mean number of holdings for the social sciences top twenty was 1,626 and the median was 1,367. For the twenty most-held humani- ties prizewinners, the mean holding was 1,398 and the median was 1,215. To place the figures on most-held social sciences prizewinners in another context, one can compare them to the top ten mid-decade (1995) hardcover nonfiction best-sellers from Publisher’s Weekly that averaged 2,539 (median 2,196) WorldCat holdings in May 2004.13 Although some social sciences prize- winners have impressive library acquisi- tions, the typical prizewinner is far from a best-seller: the mean WorldCat holdings for all awardees is 564 and the median is 454. This contrasts favorably with com- parable numbers for humanities prize- winners: a mean of 482 and a median of 378. These numbers include all WorldCat records for print editions, including those for translations, paperback editions, and the like. Because most academic libraries enter their holdings on WorldCat, the data found here reinforce the point that academic publishers can no longer count on substantial sales to academic libraries of any book they produce. The Social Sciences 517 The social sciences p r i z e w i n n e r s p u b - lished between 1987 and 1992 have mean WorldCat holdings of 617 (median 514); those p u b l i s h e d b e t we e n 1993 and 1995 have a mean of 546 (median 458); and those pub- lished between 1996 and 1998 have a mean of 536 (median 415). Humanities prizewin- ners published in 1992 or earlier average 531 holdings (median 454); those published be- tween 1993 and 1995 average 496 holdings (median 387); and those published be- tween 1996 and 1998 average 447 holdings (median 351). The percentage of decline in holdings between 1987–1992 and 1996–1998 is slightly lower for the social sciences (19% of the median) than for the humanities (23%). Of some interest are the relative hold- ings in WorldCat of the prizewinners of the different associations. AERA and APA winners have the largest mean and median holdings, 1,001/811 and 985/769, respectively (table 7), but comparison to other disciplines must take into account the fact that AERA and APA associa- tion-wide awards dominate (20 of 31, or 65 percent). Nevertheless, the very high mean holdings for education and psychol- ogy suggest that these disciplines touch on topics of interest not only to scholars, but also to the general public. More nar- rowly cast divisional prizes predominate for AAA, APSA, and ASA, such that only 57 of 342 prize-winning books (17%) are at the association level. In fact, AAA has no association-wide book prizes. For APSA and ASA, the mean/median WorldCat TABLE 7 WorldCat Holdings of Social Sciences Prizewinners by Awarding Association Awarding Association Number of Winning Books Mean Holdings Median Holdings Range of Holdings AAA 68 471 363 182–1,218 AERA 16 1,001 811 179–3,827 AAG 14 449 417 92–948 APSA 142 552 472 181–3,827* APA 15 985 769 194–2,531 ASA 132 558 454 121–1,573** Five books received prizes from two associations. *Mean and median holdings of APSA association-wide prizewinners are 683 and 652. ** Mean and median holdings of ASA association-wide prizewinners are 786 and 609. Source: WorldCat, April 2004. holdings of association-wide winners are 683/652 and 786/651, respectively (table 7). Electronic Versions of Prizewinners WorldCat offers data on the availability of books through netLibrary. When launched in 1999, netLibrary described itself as the “leading provider of eBooks.” It aimed to provide “a comprehensive collection of reference, scholarly, and professional electronic books.”14 A er financial diffi- culty, netLibrary was acquired by OCLC in 2002. Although e-books are available online from sources other than netLibrary, at the time of this writing (April 2004), none of those sources began to match netLibrary’s coverage of the prizewinners that are the subject of this article. Ebrary, an aggregator comparable to netLibrary, offered online nine prizewinners from four different publishers.15 Publishers themselves—California (19), Princeton (8), and Oxford (1)—provided twenty- eight. In April 2004, Ebrary and publish- ers provided access to only one prizewin- ner not supplied by netLibrary. Online http:publishers.15 518 College & Research Libraries November 2004 availability of prizewinners is growing, but, at the time of this writing, the best single way to analyze online availability of 1990s social sciences prizewinners is to study books supplied by netLibrary. Overall, 19 percent (71 of 382 unique books) of the prize-winning books in the present study were listed as available from netLibrary in April 2004. (Between spring 2003 and April 2004, netLibrary added one social sciences prizewinner from the 1990s.) The mean and median holdings for a netLi- brary social sciences awardee are 245 and 214, respectively. For eigh- teen books, WorldCat listed more holdings in netLibrary than in paper copies. Just as the University of California Press made the most human- ities prizewinners accessible through netLibrary, so, too, it had the most social sciences prizewinners available from netLibrary—twenty-five of thirty-three different books (Humanities, 370). (See table 8.) The next greatest was eight of the Yale University Press’s twenty-two different prizewinners and seven of Princeton University Press’s thirty-five different prize- winning books. netLibrary also mounted five of the SUNY Press’s six winning books. Otherwise, most presses were represented, if at all by spring 2004, by no more than three books. Notably missing from the netLibrary collection were some publishers that had five or more prizewinners, led by the University of Chicago Press (forty prizes) (tables 3 and 8). Also notable among the missing were trade publishers. Among the more than sixty unique books from trade publishers that won prizes, only five had WorldCat holdings for netLibrary. In terms of subject area of all netLi- brary books as reflected in LCC and DDC assigned to them, coverage ranged from one percent that class in LCC for psychology and geography to 27 percent in history and in DDC zero percent for geography to 34 percent for anthropol- ogy and sociology. (See table 9.) These percentages among the netLibrary books TABLE 8 Publishers Providing Award-winning Social Sciences Books for netLibrary Publisher Number of netLibrary Titles Number of Prizes Won/Number of Books Winning Prizes* California 25 36/33 Yale 8 25/22 Princeton 7 38/35 SUNY 5 6/6 Cambridge 3 29/27 Oxford 3 18/17 Beacon 2 4/4 Brookings 2 4/3 Nebraska 2 3/3 New Mexico 2 2/2 Pennsylvania 2 3/3 Basic 1 6/6 Columbia 1 6/6 Erlbaum 1 2/2 Iowa 1 1/1 MIT 1 2/2 North Carolina 1 3/3 NYU 1 2/2 Oklahoma 1 1/1 Rutgers 1 3/3 Unwin Hyman 1 1/1 * Some books won more than one prize. Source: WorldCat, April 2004. The Social Sciences 519 TABLE 9 Social Sciences Prize-winning Books Available through netLibrary by LCC, DDC, and Awarding Association LC/DDC Classification Range Percentage of LCC/DDC or Association among all Prizewinners Percentage of LCC/DDC or Association among all netLibrary Available Prizewinners AAA (anthropology) 18 25 GN–GT/300–309, 390–399 (anthropology) 3/36 4/34 AERA (education) 4 6 L–LT/370–379 (education) 5/5 7/7 AAG (geography) 4 6 G–GF/910–919 (geography) 0*/1 1/0 APSA (political sci.) 37 26 HX–KKZ/320–329, 340–349, 350–359 (political science) 21/24 20/20 APA (psychology) 4 0 BF/150–159 (psychology) 2/2 1/1 ASA (sociology) 34 38 HM–HV/300–309, 360–369 (sociology) 22/40 17/34 HB-HJ/330–339, 380–389 (economics) 12/9 8/6 C–F/900–909, 920–999 (history) 21/8 27/11 Other 14/12 15/18 *One prize-winning book classed in geography in LCC, too few to constitute one percent of all prize-winning books. Percentages for awarding associations are in italic. Source: WorldCat, LCC, spring 2003, DDC April 2004. are quite close to the subject distribution by LCC and DDC among all prizewin- ners. In terms of awarding association, no APA winner was accessible through netLibrary, compared to 38 percent of ASA awardees. AAA, and especially APSA, stand out, when comparing the percentage of each association’s winners among all winners and the percentage of each association’s winners among netLibrary-supplied books. AAA’s share of netLibrary-supplied prizewinners is greater than its portion of all prizewin- ners; APSA’s share of netLibrary titles is notably smaller. In both cases, the Uni- versity of California Press may make the difference. It received more prizes (nine) from the AAA than any other publisher, eight of which are accessible through netLibrary. In contrast, California pub- lished only two APSA awardees, both available from netLibrary. Conclusion As was true of the author ’s study of humanities prizewinners, the study of 520 College & Research Libraries prize-winning books from six major scholarly associations in the social sci- ences reinforces some things that are well known, points to recently identi- fied developments, and offers insight November 2004 into new phenomena. There are many similarities and a few differences between prize-winning books in the humanities and those in the social sciences. Table 10 summarizes key comparisons. First, TABLE 10 Comparison of 1990s Prize-winning Books in the Humanities and Social Sciences Humanities Prizewinners Social Sciences Prizewinners % Difference Number of prizes awarded 328 412 26 Number of books receiving prizes 323* 382** 18 % of books coauthored 7 16 129 Mean number of authors per book 1.1 1.2 8 Number of authors winning >1 prize 7 (2%) 45 (10%) 400 % of books written by authors from 20% of institutions 52 58 12 % of books published by 20% of publishers 72 67 -7 % of books from university presses 84 81 -4 % of books supplied by netLibrary 20 19 -5 Mean/median number of WorldCat holdings all books 482/378 566/450 17/19 Mean/median number of WorldCat holdings, 1987–1992 imprints 531/454 617/514 16/13 Mean/median number of WorldCat holdings, 1993–1995 imprints 496/387 546/458 10/18 Mean/median number of WorldCat holdings, 1996–1998 imprints 447/351 536/415 20/18 Humanities prizewinners awarded by College Art Assoc.(22), American Historical Assoc. (145), American Musicological Soc. (13), Modern Language Assoc. (148). Social sciences prizewinners awarded by American Anthropological Assoc.(72), Ameri- can Educational Research Assoc. (16), Assoc. of American Geographers (14), American Political Science Assoc. (154), American Psychological Assoc. (15), American Sociologi- cal Assoc. (141). WorldCat holdings are for April 2004. Calculations of means and medians in Humanities, 368 were based on all prizes won, so holdings for some books were counted twice. This article calculates means and medians for unique books, so books that won more than one prize are considered only once. This method of calculation lowers means and medians because multiple prizewinners tend to have higher WorldCat holdings. *Five books won two prizes; no book won prizes from two associations. ** Twenty-six books won two prizes; two books won three prizes. Five books won prizes from two associations. The Social Sciences 521 the data show more than twice as much coauthorship in the social sciences as in the humanities (16% versus 7%). Still, the mean number of authors is similar for both the social sciences (1.2) and the humanities (1.1), indicating that single authorship remains the norm for social sciences books. Further, coauthorship of books in the social sciences is far behind coauthorship of articles. Over 40 percent of the articles published in 1990, 1993, and 1996 in the flagship journals (American Anthropologist, American Political Science Review, and American Sociological Review) of the three associations (AAA, APSA, and ASA) that supplied nearly 90 percent of the prizewinners are coauthored. In short, coauthorship is more prevalent in the social sciences than in the humanities, but much less prevalent among social sci- ences books than among social sciences journal articles. Second, library holdings of prizewin- ners declined during the 1990s in both the humanities and the social sciences. The humanities saw a slightly greater decline than the social sciences did. The mean holdings of humanities prize-win- ning books published between 1996 and 1998 was 16 percent lower than the mean holdings for those published between 1987 and 1992; the comparable percent- age for social sciences prizewinners is 13 percent. The median holdings of humani- ties prize-winning books declined about 23 percent, compared to 19 percent for the social sciences prizewinners. In terms of the health of the academy (its scholars, libraries, and publishers), this decline is the single most important finding of this study. Third, most prize-winning scholar- ship in both the humanities and the social sciences comes from major univer- sity presses and the largest, traditionally dominant research universities. The social sciences have slightly more concentra- tion in institutions than the humanities: 52 percent of humanities prizewinners come from the top 20 percent of institu- tions, whereas 58 percent of the social sciences prizewinners come from the top 20 percent of institutions. There is greater concentration among publishers than institutions, and the social sciences have slightly less concentration in publishers than the humanities. Sixty-seven percent of the social sciences prizewinners came from the top 20 percent of publishers, whereas 72 percent of humanities prize- winners came from the top 21 percent of publishers. In the humanities, 84 percent of prizewinners were published by uni- versity presses, whereas 81 percent of so- cial sciences prizewinners were published by university presses. Through all the rankings, the Univer- sity of California, especially its Berkeley campus, and the university’s press stand out. When humanities and social sci- ences prizes to publishers are combined, the University of California Press ranks first with sixty-three. Only Princeton University Press, with sixty-one, and the University of Chicago Press, with sixty, are close. When considering prizes in relation to institutions, the University of California has an even greater presence in the social sciences than in the humani- ties. Its Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara campuses that were among the top ten prize-winning institutions in the humanities are among the top twenty-two prize-winning institutions in the social sciences, along with the campuses at San Diego, Davis, and Santa Cruz. Overall, public institutions have a greater presence among the top twenty or so prizewinners in the social sciences (59%) than in the humanities (47%). Geographically, with six University of California campuses and Stanford and with five Ivy League institutions, Duke, and Rutgers, coastal states have a substan- 522 College & Research Libraries November 2004 tial presence among the top twenty-two social sciences prize-winning institutions. But the East and West Coasts were even more dominant in the humanities, taking fourteen of the nineteen top positions. Wisconsin, Chicago, and Texas carry over from the top humanities prizewinners to the top social sciences prizewinners; and Michigan, Northwestern, Colorado, In- diana, and Minnesota, from the center of the country, join them. Looked at another way, all institutions from the West Coast among the top humanities prizewinners were also top social sciences prizewin- ners. Five top humanities prizewinners from the East Coast did not rank among the top social sciences prizewinners, and only two East Coast institutions replaced them. In moving from the humanities to the social sciences, there is a geographical shi toward the West. As was true among humanities prize- winners, although university press books overwhelm trade books in the total popu- lation of social sciences prizewinners, trade publishers are disproportionately represented among social sciences award- ees with the greatest number of WorldCat holdings. Although trade books are less than 20 percent of all prize-winning books, they constitute 45 percent of the twenty books with greatest WorldCat holdings. Interestingly, trade books are underrepresented among those that have been made accessible by netLibrary. Only five of seventy-one netLibrary books (7%) are from trade publishers. The seventy-one books that netLibrary supplied in 2003 are 19 percent of all so- cial sciences prizewinners. In 2004, netLi- brary supplied 20 percent of humanities prizewinners, roughly two-thirds of which were in LCC areas for history and social sciences. The high proportion of history- and social sciences-related books among humanities prizewinners suggests that a group of social sciences prizewinners should have had a higher percentage of its number in netLibrary than a group of humanities prizewinners. Compared to social sciences journals, the social sciences prizewinners also seem behind. In late 2003, data from Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory reported that 56 per- cent of refereed journals in anthropology, education, geography, political science, psychology, and sociology were available in electronic format, about three times the percentage of prize-winning books available from netLibrary. Although the percentage of prizewin- ners covered by netLibrary is arguably small, it may tell us li le about the future electronic availability of scholarly books. Both aggregators other than netLibrary and publishers themselves now offer electronic versions of books. Ebrary, for example, in April 2004, reported part- nerships with eleven of the twenty-one publishers that won the most social sci- ences prizes in the 1990s.16 An examina- tion of the Web sites of the publishers of prize-winning books in April 2004 reveals that at least eleven offer e-books themselves. In short, electronic access to books is increasing and the paths to ac- cess are varied. Electronic access should bring prize-winning books greater a en- tion, but whether scholars themselves will read e-books is an open question. Research by Janet P. Palmer and Mark Sandler suggests that social scientists are far less enthusiastic about e-books than e-journals.17 Whatever happens to e-books, social scientists—especially anthropologists, political scientists, and sociologists—need to monitor trends in book publishing closely, because the health of their disciplines, their libraries and their publishers, and the careers of scholars, especially junior scholars, hang in the balance. http:e-journals.17 http:1990s.16 The Social Sciences 523 Notes 1. Stephen E. Wiberley Jr., “The Humanities: Who Won the ‘90s in Scholarly Book Publish- ing,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 2 (July 2002): 357–74. (Herea er cited within the text as Humanities, page number.) 2. On the problem of using bibliographic databases such as WorldCat for analysis of aca- demic publications, see Calvin C. Jones, “Evaluation of Existing Datasets for Policy Research on Humanities Fields,” in Robert M. Solow et al., Making the Humanities Count: The Importance of Data (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002), 42–46. 3. Neil J. Smelser, Sociology (Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell and UNSECO, 1994), 11. 4. William H. Webb et al., Sources of Information in the Social Sciences: A Guide to the Literature 3rd ed. (Chicago: ALA, 1986). This volume includes a chapter by Wiley J. Williams titled “Eco- nomics and Business Administration,” in which business administration is not treated as an equal of economics. Instead, the chapter treats different aspects of business administration (e.g., management) as subdivisions of economics. Webb also has a chapter on history, a discipline that the author’s article on humanities prizewinners covers. 5. Roger G. Baldwin and Ann E. Austin, “Toward Greater Understanding of Faculty Research Collaboration,” Review of Higher Education 19 (fall 1995): 45–70. 6. The Web sites of the associations list many of the AAA, AERA, AAG, and APA winners. Members of the associations who had served on prize-selection commi ees supplied names of other winners. Kenneth D. Madsen sent a complete list of awardees of the AAG J. B. Jackson prize. See Madsen’s “Writing for Non-Geographers: Lessons from the J. B. Jackson Prize,” Geographical Review 92 (Jan. 2002): 63–72. Winners of prizes from the APSA are listed in the December issues of PS. Michael Murphy of the ASA sent complete listings of all his association’s prizewinners. The author is very grateful to association members, Kenneth Madsen, and Michael Murphy for their generosity. 7. Research–Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change, ed. Marvin L. Gold- berger, Brendan A. Maher, and Pamela Ebert Fla au (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Pr., 1995), 475–77, 542–43, 602–5, 607–13, 616–19. 8. Edward A. Goedeken, “An Index to Publisher Quality Revisited: A Partial Replication,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory 17 (1993): 263–68. 9. Paul Metz and John Stemmer, “A Reputational Study of Academic Publishers,” College & Research Libraries 57 (May 1996): 234–47. 10. Political Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner (New York, London, and Washington, D.C.: W. W. Norton & Co. and American Political Science As- sociation, 2002), for example, 37–38, 79, 89, 109, 127–28, 470–72, 475, 479, 482; Smelser, Sociology 3–4, 13–14, 76, 110,131–34, 223, 262, 306, 320–28, 331. 11. Smelser, “The Rational and the Ambivalent in the Social Sciences,” American Sociological Review 63 (Feb. 1998): 1–16; Michael Hechter and Satoshi Kanazawa, “Sociological Rational Choice Theory,” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997): 191–214. 12. D. W. Miller, “Storming the Palace in Political Science,” Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept. 21, 2001). Available online at h p://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i04/04a01601.htm. 13. Daisy Maryles, “The Name Is the Game,” Publishers Weekly 243 (Mar. 4, 1996): S5. 14. “netLibrary Launches the World’s Most Comprehensive Library on the Internet,” press release, Mar. 29, 1999. 15. h p://www.ebrary.com/publishers/list.jsp. 16. Ibid. 17. Janet P. Palmer and Mark Sandler, “What Do Faculty Want?” Library Journal 128 (winter 2003): 26–28 (Net Connect issue).