UK Research Excellence Framework Book Submissions Metadata from 2014 and 2021

38,050 books submitted as research outputs to the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 and 2021. The dataset includes ISBNs and metadata gathered from the Global Register of Publishers. It was compiled by Eleonora Dagienė of Leiden University.

Use Cases

• Analyze the geographic distribution of academic book publishing based on the country of ISBN assignment.
• Study the role of different publisher types in research assessment based on the primary_occupations_main and primary_occupations_detailed fields.
• Track publishing trends over time for UK-affiliated researchers based on the reported years (2008-2020).
• Compare the prevalence of authored books versus edited volumes submitted for assessment based on the output_types field.
• Investigate the concentration of academic publishing among major parent publishers based on the unified_title field.

Strengths

• Contains 38,050 book records submitted to a major national research assessment exercise.
• Includes detailed metadata on publisher types, geographic origin, and book types.
• Covers submissions from two assessment cycles (REF 2014 and REF 2021).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) submission webpages and the Global Register of Publishers.

Collection Method

Initial data downloaded from REF webpages and transformed, with methodology detailed in a linked preprint.

Time Range

Book publishing years reported from 2008 to 2020.

Geography

Primarily United Kingdom, with books issued in 81 countries worldwide.