Coauthorship of journal articles and book chapters in the social sciences and humanities (2000-2010)

This study analyzes coauthorship patterns in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) for the period 2000 to 2010. The basis for the analysis is the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB‐SHW), a comprehensive bibliographic database of peer‐reviewed publications in the SSH by researchers affiliated with Flemish universities. Combining data on journal articles and book chapters, our findings indicate that collaborative publishing in the SSH is increasing, though considerable differences between disciplines remain. Conversely, we did observe a sharp decline in single‐author publishing. We further demonstrate that coauthored SSH articles in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) generally have a higher (and growing) number of coauthors than do either those in non‐WoS journals or book chapters. This illustrates the need to include non‐WoS data and book chapters when studying coauthorship in the SSH.