Customer Reviews

The Publish or Perish Book: Your guide to effective and responsible citation analysis

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The name of Anne-Wil Harzing is well known internationally for her interest and work on issues of journal citation and analysis. Her groundbreaking software, Publish or Perish (PoP), has placed the tools for analysis in the hands of any researcher interested in the area, rather than forcing them to second guess or extrapolate from the commercial offerings. PoP allows for flexibility of domain and of analysis type making customised analysis not just possible, but practical. This book provides comprehensive coverage of PoP and documents many advanced tips and techniques. But it does more than that - the full title mentions "effective and responsible citation analysis" - and there is plenty of emphasis on "responsible." I would particularly mention the chapter "Tips for Deans and Other Academic Administrators." There are many myths and prejudices concerning bibliometrics, and these are addressed and critiqued in this chapter. Even if your institution doesn't use PoP, make sure your various administrators read this chapter. This book is a major contribution to the ongoing discussion of measuring research productivity and influence, dare I say it ... a quality contribution!

Harzing's PoP book constitutes a landmark in the art of academic publishing and citation analysis. It is both a manual to the popular PoP software as well as a guide to academics in effective reviews of literatures, the assessment of researcher profiles, the adoption of a particular publication strategy, and editorial board member and reviewer selection. The book opens one's eye to the narrow world of ISI Web of Science as a source for citation analysis. It highlights the deficiencies in the use of ISI's limited journal coverage and the two-year citation window in the social sciences. PoP advocates the use of an academic's actual citation record as a measure of quality and helps measure the impact of academics and journals using the broad coverage of data offered by Google Scholar. This is an excellent source for PhDs and junior scholars who are looking to forge links with other academics in the field to build their networks. It is also a means, for scholars, of identifying systematically what potential collaborators are working on. I would recommend this as a must read for anyone wanting to make an impact in a world that is gradually coming to terms with the importance of both quality and quantity, as well as rigour and relevance, of publications.

A must-have for academics and grad students!
I have been using PoP software for quite some time now and was very excited when the book came out as I was hoping to read more about program functions and what it can be used for. I found all that but equally or more importantly the book contained lots of other interesting stuff.
First, it provides a very educational excurse into the history and uses of citations and citation indices, citation metrics and citation controversies.
Second, it contains tons of tips on judging (and not misjudging) merit of academics (including yourself) based on their citations.
Third, the book offers guidelines for deans and academic administrators for using PoP for selection and promotion. While I am a junior faculty member and it's going to be a long time before I will be making those kinds of decision, I found tons of insights in the book on how to manage my own career and academic image.
I guess I bought the book to learn more technical idea on using PoP. I got that plus a lot of tips on career and impression management in the academic world.

The current Publish or Perish craze makes all of us scientists look like fools. But since this is our world we might as well learn to cope with it. The PoP book helped me see the humorous side, and also the method in this madness. It helped me think beyond the ISI Thompson database. This book and the software that goes with it is a bold initiative by Harzing and recommended reading for anyone who is pressed to publish.

No matter what your discipline is, if you wish to succeed in your academic career, there is no avoiding reading this book.
The title is indicative in itself, and at first the content does not appear to be an easy read. But one learns so much about the importance of citations, how to measure it and what to do about it. Whether you are using the book to understand more about your own impact or that of others, this books will provide you with all the tools you need to be successful. It is written for all readers, whether they are familiar with citation metrics or not. It is also an essential companion to the online Publish or Perish tool accessible on the author's webpage. The book is *essential* , not only because it makes one understand the importance of publishing, but also the way to enhance one's impact on others.
The book is composed of three parts. In the first part, one learns the tricks of citation metrics and how to measure one's impact. In the second part, Professor Harzing provides a wealth of suggestions on how to improve your own case for promotion, how to compare yourself with other academics, or how to evaluate someone if you are hiring. I have used this myself and found it essential to fully assess my own publishing career so far. There are also some topics on where to submit your papers, and conduct literature search. Part 3 will be particularly useful for those interested in knowing more about citation analysis, giving you a critical perspective of existing tools.
I could not recommend this book strongly enough, whether you are a junior academic or more senior. Buying it means you spend little money for a LOT in return ! This book will remain on your desk throughout your academic career!

Anne-Wil Harzing is well-known both for her work in the field of international management as well as in that of citation analysis. This book constitutes an indispensable guide for an effective use of the software Publish or Perish. This software was developed by the author and is freely available on her web site. Based on Google Scholar, it identifies the citations obtained by an academic and calculates some well-known indicators such as the famous H-index. One of the principal advantages of POP, compared to traditional tools like ISI or Scopus, is that it covers all the types of scientific literature (articles, books, working papers...) published in any languages. These advantages are particularly important for academics working in the social sciences, where a large proportion of work continues to be published in languages other than English.
However this book goes well beyond the only evaluation of scientometric indicators. It is also a guide showing how POP can constitute a particularly useful and effective tool to conduct your research and to publish (conducting a review of literature, submitting a paper...) or to make your case for recruitment, tenure or promotion. It also constitutes an invaluable tool for academic evaluators and university administrators, in particular to apprehend the differences between scientific disciplines and to become aware of the limitations of traditional tools such as ISI. All these advantages explain the success met by the software, in particular in France, where it is frequently used. This book will contribute, without any doubt, to increase this use and to make it more effective and more precise.

Like it or not, ranking of journals, academics and schools is an inescapable part of contemporary university life. Many of us have in the past relied on Thomson Reuters ISI Journal Citation Reports and related databases to measure academic performance. Many of us know well the limitations of ISI. But we did not have any real alternatives until quite recently. Elsevier brought out Scopus and Google introduced Google Scholar. Google Scholar wasn't much use, though, until Anne-Wil Harzing developed the great little software program, Publish of Perish (PoP), that can be downloaded from her web site. Now we have the book that goes with PoP. It answers all your questions about how to get the most out of PoP.

But The Publish or Perish Book is more than just a guide to the software. It is a tremendously accessible introduction to bibliometrics and citation analysis, which many academics and graduate students find a pretty arcane and impenetrable topic. The book has great advice on how to use citation analysis to prepare for tenure, promotion or a new job; to discover the most appropriate journal outlet for your research; to discover the academic standing of your peers, your potential collaborators and your Dean. It has a chapter specifically targeted at Deans and Research Administrators. The book also emphasizes responsible citation analysis practices, something that university and government bean counters have not been particularly attentive to when they have embraced the use of citation metrics.

I did not purchase via Amazon but bought a softcopy DIRECT from [...]. And for those who do not know of Anne-Wil, she is among the top 1% of cited authors in the management field, publishing in IB, International HRM, etc. The PoP Book is a really welcomed contribution to developing better, even more ethical, practices in how we measure and assess the performance of academics.

Stephen Morgan
Research Director,
School of Contemporary Chinese Studies,
University of Nottingham, UK
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