Book review  by Jeppe Nicolaisen 

The practice of book reviewing in academia is as old as the scientific community itself. The earliest journals, commenced in the major European countries in the latter part of the 17^th century, consisted for the most part of book notices and Journal des Scavans, the first periodical to provide regular information on scientific matters, was in fact composed entirely of summaries of scholarly or scientific works. Today, countless academic journals in all fields either contain a section devoted exclusively to book reviews or else publish reviews of interest to those in the field from time to time. Some journals even operate exclusively as book reviewing journals.

Book reviews serve a number of vital functions and are sometimes referred to as published peer reviews (e.g. Hyland, 2000; Schubert et al., 1984). They are widely used to help estimate the quality and importance of books published by academics, and are thus instrumental in decisions about hiring, promotions, and salary increases (Glenn, 1978). Librarians and information specialists rely to a great extent on book reviews for developing and maintaining library and information center collections. Various commentators (e.g. Chen, 1976; Ingram & Mills, 1989; Miranda, 1996; Snizek & Fuhrman, 1979) have furthermore called attention to the fact that book reviews are valuable academic tools by making it feasible for members of scientific communities to keep up with the latest professional progress despite the eternal growth and dissemination of recorded knowledge.

The scientific worth of the genre is nonetheless frequently questioned. It has even been branded a second-class citizen of scientific literature (Riley & Spreitzer, 1970). Book reviews are, moreover, regularly charged with merely reflecting individual opinions, which, according to their critics, disqualifies them entirely as scholarly contributions (Sabosik, 1988). However, the survey on scholars’ conceptions of the utility and importance of book reviews done by Spink, Robin & Schamber (1998) opposes these objections. Their findings indicate on the contrary that reviewers synthesize and critically evaluate the work of peers into book reviews, which contribute to the development of new ideas, theories, and research hypotheses. As a result, Spink and colleagues conclude their examination by proposing an extension to Garvey & Griffith’s (1971) long-established model of scholarly communication to include book reviews.

But clearly not all book reviews are alike. Like instances of other genres they differ in regard to their prototypicality (Swales, 1990). Some are short, while others are longer. Some are more focused on providing a general view of how the book is organized rather than an actual evaluation. A number of reviewers situate the book in the field while others concentrate on making topic generalizations or informing about the author or potential readership. Furthermore, like exemplars of other academic genres, some are more scholarly than others.

Academic writers act as members of groups with special professional practices and requirements. Different groups or discourse communities therefore develop special kinds of documents as adaptations to their specific needs (for examples, see Hjørland, 2002). While several distinct disciplines share a number of genres (articles, letters, monographs etc.), the rhetorical organization and content of these are still tailored to, and consequently modified by the unique professional practices and requirements of each field. Hyland (2000), for instance, provides a detailed investigation of how writers in different fields work to create a context for their research. By distinguishing how authors cite syntactically and by examining how they incorporate references into research articles he is able to document significant disciplinary differences in both the extent to which writers rely on the work of others in presenting arguments and in how they choose to represent such work.

Academic book reviews are similarly products of their time and specific environments. Though they are usually restricted to serving two major functions; descriptive and evaluative, variations have been demonstrated to exist between book reviews of different ages (Roper, 1978) and disciplines (Hyland, 2000). Book reviews of modern academia nevertheless share a number of characteristics, which make generalizations feasible to some extent. Motta-Roth’s (1998) genre analytical study of book reviews from the fields of Chemistry, Economics, and Linguistics revealed certain general invariable features of rhetorical organization in content and form. By close analytical reading she was able to formulate a schematic description of the typical structural organization of academic book reviews corresponding to four rhetorical moves, comprised of one or a number of sub-functions. Nicolaisen (2002a) extended her schematic representation further (see figure 1.) when he discovered two additional sub-functions (12 and 13) whilst studying a sample of L&IS book reviews. The opening paragraph of most book reviews usually encompasses the first move, which may provide five pieces of information about the book: central topic and format, readership, author, topic generalizations, and inserting the book in the broader field of study to which it relates. The second move is usually the longest one. It typically includes a detailed description of how the book is organized, which topics are treated in each chapter, with what approach, and what kind of additional information is included in the book (graphs, pictures, tables etc.). During the third move the reviewer concentrates on specific aspects of the book, giving a positive or negative comment from very mild criticism to praise. Move four rounds up the text, breaking up with the detailed perspective adopted in move three. It provides a final evaluation of the whole book and additionally serves the purpose of closing the text of the review.

Figure 1. Typical rhetorical moves in book reviews.

According to Nicolaisen (2002b), a scholarly book review is required to be publicly accessible and trustworthy. Published and accessible book reviews should therefore be perceived as potentially scholarly until their trustworthiness is established. Only then can the additionally dependable exemplars of the genre be recognized accordingly as indisputable scholarly works.

A book review is by definition produced by a reviewer. Trustworthy book reviews consequently require reliable reviewers. As it is commonly understood, reviewing is the process whereby authorities in a given field determine the validity and assess the relative significance of a particular contribution of a scholar or scientists within that field (Osburn, 1989). To be able to perform their tasks, reviewers should therefore be experts in their specific research areas and have mastery of the literature of their fields. The book review editor of Studies in Philosophy and Education (Miranda, 1996) commented on the ethics of book reviewing and concluded, “in our quest for knowledge, in researching and publishing, we are members of a scholarly community, the standards of which we are expected to uphold. To these standards we are accountable and must answer if we claim that we are doing our work in the name of scholarship. Authors and reviewers, alike, are both accountable to their scholarly community. For a reviewer, surely, this means that he or she [who] reviews a book, is competent in doing so because he or she is an active participant in and contributor to the book’s particular area of research”.

George Sarton (1960), a historian of science, summarized the qualities of a good book review. He especially emphasized that a review should describe and characterize not only the book in question, but also the subject with which it is dealing. It should furthermore answer the question “is the book a real addition to our knowledge, and if so, what exactly has been added?”. The reviewer should therefore effectively position the book in relation to the literature devoted to the same subject and evaluate the new contribution accordingly. Miranda (1996) concurs with Sarton in stating that a good review “does not solely inform readers of a particular book, dealing with it as though it were the only book in an area of study. But rather, it enables the readers to know a book and the judgment of the reviewer of it in relation to other books in the same area and to similar topics treated in them”.

A reliable reviewer is thus one who is capable of evaluating the quality and integrity of a contribution, while simultaneously setting the piece of work in a larger, broader context in relation to previously published works in related areas. Book reviews by such reliable assessors reflect trustworthy capabilities by containing appropriate discussions of related literature.

Literature:

Chen, C. C. (1976), Biomedical, Scientific and Technical Book Reviewing, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ.

Garvey, W. D. & Griffith, B. C. (1971), “Scientific communication: its role in the conduct of research and the creation of knowledge”, American Psychologist, Vol. 26, pp. 349-362.

Glenn, N. (1978), “On the misuse of book reviews”, Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp.254-255.

Hjørland, B. (2002). Domain analysis in information science. Eleven approaches - traditional as well as innovative. Journal of Documentation, 58(4), 422-462. http://web.archive.org/web/20040721022850/http://www.db.dk/bh/publikationer/Filer/JDOC_2002_Eleven_approaches.pdf

Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. Longman: Harlow.

Ingram, H. & Mills, P. B. (1989), “Reviewing the book reviews”, PS: Political science and Politics, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 627-634.

Katz, Bill (1985-1986). The sunny book review. Technical Services Quarterly, 3(1/2), 17-25

Lindholm-Romantschuk, Y. (1998). Scholarly book reviewing in the social sciences and humanities. The flow of ideas within and among disciplines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

Miranda, E. O. (1996), “On book reviewing”, Journal of Educational Thought, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 191-202.

Motta-Roth, D. (1998), “Discourse analysis and academic book reviews: a study of text and disciplinary cultures”, in Fortanet, I. (Ed), Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes, Universitat Jaume, Castelló de la Plana, pp. 29-58.

Nicolaisen, J. (2002a), “Structure-based interpretation of scholarly book reviews: a new research technique”, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, pp. 123-135. Available: http://www.db.dk/jni/Articles/Abstract_Colis4.htm

Nicolaisen, J. (2002b). The scholarliness of published peer reviews: A bibliometric study of book reviews in selected social science fields. Research Evaluation, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 129-140. Available: http://www.db.dk/jni/Articles/Nicolaisen(2002c).htm

Osburn, C. B. (1989), “The structuring of the scholarly communication system”, College & Research Libraries, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 277-286.

Riley, L. E. & Spreitzer, E. A. (1970), “Book reviewing in the social sciences“, The American Sociologist, Vol. 5 (November), pp. 358-363.

Roper, D. (1978), Reviewing Before the Edinburgh: 1788-1802, Methuen, London.

Sabosik, P. E. (1988), ”Scholarly reviewing and the role of Choice in the postpublication review process”, Book Research Quarterly, Summer, pp.10-18.

Sarton, G. (1960), “Notes on the reviewing of learned books”, Science, Vol. 131 (April 22.), pp. 1182-1187.

Schubert, A. et al. (1984), ”Quantitative analysis of a visible tip of the peer review iceberg: book reviews in chemistry”, Scientometrics, Vol. 6 No. 6, pp.433-443.

Snizek, W. E. & Fuhrman, E. R. (1979), ”Some factors affecting the evaluative content of book reviews in sociology“, The American Sociologist, Vol. 14 (May), pp. 108-114.

Spink, A., Robins, D. & Schamber, L. (1998), “Use of scholarly book reviews: implications for electronic publishing and scholarly communication”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 49 No. 4, pp. 364-374.

Swales, J. M. (1990), Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

02-11-05

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