A Shared European Research Space for the Social Sciences and Humanities? English Language Publishing and the Use of European Journals
A Shared European Research Space for the Social Sciences and Humanities? English Language Publishing and the Use of European Journals

Summary/Abstract: This study explores whether there exists a European space of social sciences and humanities (SSH) scholarship in terms of journal use by focusing on journals that explicitly position themselves as Europe-oriented or internationally oriented. We gauge the prevalence of publications in Europe-oriented journals and to what extent the same scholarly journals are used in the SSH across different European countries. We analyze bibliographic metadata of 8,101 SSH journal articles collected from five research-intensive universities in Finland, Flanders (Belgium), Norway, and Spain for the period 2014–2015. We compare the results overall as well as at the level of SSH disciplines to find out to what extent a shared European journal space is emerging between the national and the international level. Differences between broad fields and individual disciplines as well as the institutions are discussed. With regard to journal sharing, the results are partially negative in the sense that we did not find extensive shared journal spaces. In this limited shared journal space however, Europe-oriented journals are of considerable importance. We include reflections on what the value of comprehensive bibliographic data would be for research into the European SSH.S

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