Editing Academic Books in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Maximizing Impact for Effort

This article explores the difficulties commonly experienced by academics seeking to edit multi-chapter, multi-contributor edited volumes. Edited volumes play important intellectual and community-building roles in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) sector. Yet these significant positive contributions are not always apparent to or valued by tenure and promotion committees. The article identifies several key problems editors face in the formulation and execution of their volumes. It aims to assist prospective editors in ensuring that the time spent editing or co-editing a book remains proportional to the likely return for effort. The article concludes with the argument that the recent emergence of Google Scholar Citations will enable HSS-sector academics to break free of the hegemony of the science-based model for quality assurance that privileges Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) journal articles and will reveal the considerable impact of edited volumes and therefore increase their value as markers of quality scholarship.