Indexed University presses: overlap and geographical distribution in five book assessment databases

[EN] Scholarly books have been a periphery among the objects of study of bibliometrics until recent developments provided tools for assessment purposes. Among scholarly book publishers, University Presses (UPs hereinafter), subject to specific ends and constrains in their publishing activity, might also remain on a second-level periphery despite their relevance as scholarly book publishers. In this study the authors analyze the absolute and relative presence, overlap and uniquely-indexed cases of 503 UPs by country, among five assessment-oriented databases containing data on scholarly book publishers: Book Citation Index, Scopus, Scholarly Publishers Indicators (Spain), the lists of publishers from the Norwegian System (CRISTIN) and the lists of publishers from the Finnish System (JUFO). The comparison between commercial databases and public, national databases points towards a differential pattern: prestigious UPs in the English Speaking world represent larger shares and there is a higher overall percentage of UPs in the commercial databases, while the richness and diversity is higher in the case of national databases. Explicit or de facto biases towards production in English by commercial databases, as well as diverse indexation criteria might explain the differences observed. The analysis of the presence of UPs in different numbers of databases by country also provides a general picture of the average degree of diffusion of UPs among information systems. The analysis of ‘endemic’ UPs, those indexed only in one of the five databases points out to strongly different compositions of UPs in commercial and non-commercial databases. A combination of commercial and non commercial databases seems to be the optimal option for assessment purposes while the validity and desirability of the ongoing debate on the role of UPs can be also concluded.This research has been carried out in the framework of the Project CSO2015-63693, ‘Las prensas universitarias iberoamericanas y el libro científico en español: calidad, modelos de negocio y política institucional’ funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and CompetitivenessPeer reviewe