lewis.p65 An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians 313 An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians Janice S. Lewis Publisher quality is one criterion used by collection development librar­ ians in making book selection decisions. Few studies have assessed the perceptions subject specialist librarians have about the quality of academic publishers’ output in specific disciplines. The author surveyed a sample of members of the Association of College and Research Li­ braries Law & Political Science Section, asking them to assess the over­ all quality of political science books published by sixty-two academic presses and imprints. The results are reported, analyzed, and compared to a similar survey of members of the American Political Science Asso­ ciation. Many similarities are seen in the rankings, although, on the whole, librarians ranked university presses higher and commercial publishers lower than did political scientists. n 1997, more than seventy thousand books were pub­ lished for the academic library market. More than two thou­ sand political science titles, with an aver­ age cost of $51.76, were included in this total.1 Choosing wisely from among these titles is a challenge for even experienced collection development librarians; for the novice, it can seem overwhelming. Mak­ ing the task even more daunting is the fact that many college and university li­ braries have seen their budgets for books remain stagnant or even shrink, as seri­ als and electronic resources consume a growing proportion of their budgets. Generally, acquisition decisions in aca­ demic libraries are accomplished through both approval plans and individual or­ ders. Approval plans define in advance the subjects, level of coverage, audience, treatment, language, price range, and publishers of books that the library wants to have shipped automatically to it. Al­ though most approval plans provide for the return of books deemed inappropri­ ate upon physical examination by library staff, actual return rates are usually low. Shelf-ready cataloging programs may make the likelihood of return even less. As a supplement to approval plans, se­ lectors at academic libraries make pur­ chasing decisions for individual titles. Most individual purchasing decisions are based on an evaluation of a surrogate for the actual book, rather than an examina­ tion of the book itself. Sometimes the sur­ rogate is an evaluative book review, but more often it is a listing in a publisher ’s catalog or a slip from the library’s ap­ proval plan vendor that contains only minimal bibliographic and cataloging in­ formation. In this case, the selector must rely on his or her knowledge of the au- Janice S. Lewis is the Coordinator of Instructional Services and Political Science Librarian in Joyner Library East Carolina University; e-mail: lewisja@mail.ecu.edu. 313 mailto:lewisja@mail.ecu.edu 314 College & Research Libraries July 2000 thor, the publisher, any useful informa­ tion imparted by the title, the described physical characteristics of the book, the price, the fit between the subject matter and the university’s curricular and re­ search needs, and any information given about the book’s intended audience, for­ mat, and type. Nearly all of these factors are specific to the individual title and provide little true insight into the comparative quality of two titles that, on the surface, may seem similar. In some cases, selectors may have some preexisting knowledge about an author; however, they can be expected to be familiar with only a small percentage of the hundreds of names they will see over the course of a year. The universe of publishers is relatively small compared with the number of authors, so over time, selectors may develop familiarity with publishers and make judgments about the quality of their output. A helpful aid to new selectors (and a useful basis for com­ parison and perhaps reinforcement or re­ consideration for experienced selectors) would be studies that assess other selec­ tors’ perceptions of publisher quality in a particular discipline. Such studies also would be helpful when libraries set up or revise approval plan profiles and make decisions concerning which publishers to include. Review of the Literature Very few studies of publisher quality are available. In 1983, a study by John Calhoun and James K. Bracken, published in College & Research Libraries, reported the number of titles, number of outstanding book awards, and the ratio of awards to titles for the sixty publishers most often winning Choice Outstanding Academic Book awards for the years 1977-1981. In this study, Oxford and Cambridge each had an awards-to-total-titles-published ratio of 1:22 to 7. Because most selectors know and respect these two academic publishers, this ratio was assigned an in­ dexing value of 1.0 and all other publish­ ers were ranked in relationship to it. The publishers with the ten highest indexing values were Harvard, Princeton, Temple, Yale, Indiana University, Cornell, Basic Books, Free Press, University of Chicago, and Thames & Hudson. Those with the lowest values included large trade pub­ lishers such as Doubleday, Harper & Row, McGraw-Hill, Prentice-Hall, and Random House.2 In 1993, Edward A. Goedeken pub­ lished a partial replication of the Calhoun and Bracken study, based on Choice data for the years 1988-1992. University presses increased their dominance of the Outstanding Academic Book awards dur­ ing these years. These presses constituted twenty (33 1/3%) of the top sixty publish­ ers listed in 1983 and twenty-seven (45%) in 1993. They accounted for 33 percent of the awards for 1977-1981 and 48 percent for 1988-1992. The publishers with the highest indexing values included Yale, Harvard, Princeton, University of Califor­ nia, University of North Carolina, Rutgers, Duke, Free Press, Indiana Uni­ versity, Cornell, and Abrams. Again, large trade publishers had the lowest indexing values. Goedeken noted that the design of the Calhoun-Bracken study made com­ parisons between university and com­ mercial presses difficult because the com­ mercial publishers’ total output figures, which were used to calculate the award­ to-title ratio and consequently the index­ ing value, included children’s books, re­ prints, and other titles that were not aimed at the academic market.3 In 1996, Paul Metz and John Stemmer conducted a reputational survey of aca­ demic publishers. The authors acknowl­ edged that attributing quality to a specific publisher ’s books represents an inher­ ently subjective judgment. Accordingly, they attempted to assess as directly as possible the perceptions and opinions of their target group of “informed observ­ ers”: the chief collection development of­ ficers at all ARL member institutions and at the seventy-two U. S. liberal arts col­ leges that constitute the Oberlin (Obergroup) institutions. Metz and Stemmer ranked sixty-four publishers according to the respondents’ familiarity An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians 315 with the publisher, their perception of the relevance of the publisher ’s book titles to the academic community, and the overall intellectual and editorial quality of the publisher ’s monographic offerings. The top four rankings for both quality and relevance were claimed by university presses: Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and Stanford. For all publishers, percep­ tions of academic relevance were posi­ tively correlated with familiarity. Nearly all correlations between familiarity and quality were positive. The authors found a large positive cor­ relation between relevance and quality for most publishers. Nonetheless, a number of publishers showed a significant differ­ ence in perceptions of relevance and qual­ ity. One grouping consisted of publish­ ers whose rankings for relevance were at least fifteen places greater than for qual­ ity. These publishers targeted the aca­ demic library marketplace, giving their titles a relevant scope almost by defini­ tion. This group included Greenwood, M. E. Sharpe, University Press of America, and Westview. The second grouping was composed of publishers whose rankings were fifteen or more places higher for quality than for relevance. These publish­ ers, including Atlantic Monthly Press, Alfred Knopf, Norton, Penguin, and Ran­ dom House, were described as targeting the intellectual lay reader.4 In 1999, Larry P. Goodson, Bradford Dillman, and Anil Hira evaluated the quality of academic book publishers in political science. They surveyed a sample of American Political Science Association (APSA) members, asking them to assess the overall quality of political science books published by sixty-five presses and imprints. The publishers were taken from several sources, including two lists pub­ lished in PS: Political Science and Politics. Criteria for inclusion in these lists were attendance and exhibits at major aca­ demic meetings and advertising in pub­ lications such as American Political Science Review. The authors added publishers that had exhibits at APSA meetings between 1995 and 1997, as well as publishers sug­ gested by their university acquisitions li­ brarians. This resulted in a list of more than 130 publishers, primarily located in the United States and Great Britain. They then eliminated small publishers (less than ten new political science books in 1997), “niche” publishers, and publishers whose primary products were not books and monographs. The final list contained twenty-nine university presses, thirty- four commercial presses and imprints, and two others. Respondents were asked to evaluate the overall quality of each publisher ’s political science books by scoring them on a scale of zero to four (zero = poor, one = below average, two = average, three = above average, four = excellent). Respondents were instructed to evaluate only those presses/imprints with which they were familiar. The sur­ vey was conducted via e-mail and was sent to 1,313 addresses; 347 usable re­ sponses were received. Goodson, Dillman, and Hira found, as expected, that major university presses enjoyed the highest level of prestige as well as the greatest familiarity. In terms of quality, the top twelve publishers were major university presses; each also ranked within the top fiftieth percentile for famil­ iarity. Commercial publishers claimed nine of the next ten highest rankings for quality. The remaining university and commercial publishers were interspersed throughout the ranking, with the bottom four places held by commercial presses. The authors found that quality and fa­ miliarity are correlated strongly but do not always track together. Two university presses (North Carolina and Wisconsin), for example, ranked high on quality (twenty-two and twenty-three) but were known by less than half of the respon­ dents. On the other hand, several presses that ranked low on quality were well known. McGraw-Hill and Greenwood, for example, were ranked twenty-two and twenty-eight, respectively, for famil­ iarity but were forty-two and fifty-eight for quality. The primary purpose of the APSA study was to identify the political science 316 College & Research Libraries July 2000 presses that members of the discipline viewed as publishing the highest-quality books so that association members could make more informed publishing choices. Because APSA members write textbooks as well as research titles, textbook pub­ lishers were included in the survey along with other commercial publishers and a large number of university presses. Com­ ments from a number of survey respon­ dents indicated that they felt it was not feasible to compare all these types of pub­ lishers on the same scale because the gap in quality was so great. However, the au­ thors found that after the top dozen presses were set aside, the gap between different types of publishers was not great. For example, their results indicated that publishing with Routledge (nineteen quality, eighteen familiarity) or Sage (twenty quality, seven familiarity) should be more career enhancing than publish­ ing with Temple (forty-seven quality, forty-seven familiarity) or Louisiana State (fifty-four quality, tied for fifty-five famil­ iarity).5 Members of ACRL’s Law and Political Science Section (LPSS) were identified as an appropriate audi­ ence for the survey. Goodson, Dillman, and Hira con­ cluded that “there is reputational capital in publishing” and that “with whom one publishes does matter.” Political scientists attribute “a certain (and different) value, quality, and/or market niche” to books published by specific publishers. The value of these “trademarks” represents capital for authors, who assume some of the reputation of the houses with which they publish.6 The present article applies the meth­ odology used in the APSA study to a tar­ geted group of academic librarians who make collection development decisions for the discipline of political science. To­ gether with the APSA study, it can pro­ vide useful information, albeit subjective, for librarians who need to evaluate pub­ lishers of political science books. In addi­ tion, to the extent that some of the same publishers were included in the Metz and Stemmer study, the results can be com­ pared to see what, if any, differences are seen in the surveyed librarians’ percep­ tions of academic publishers in general and the perceptions of the quality of the publisher ’s output within the discipline of political science. Methodology Members of ACRL’s Law and Political Sci­ ence Section (LPSS) were identified as an appropriate audience for the survey. LPSS’s purpose is to represent librarians in the fields of law and political science and to act for ACRL in cooperation with other professional groups in regard to those aspects of library service that re­ quire special knowledge of law and po­ litical science.7 A review of the member­ ship roster for LPSS indicates that, in actuality, many of its members join be­ cause they are interested in the subject matter, even though their job responsibili­ ties may encompass very different areas. To the extent that job titles were included on the LPSS membership roster, these were used to identify law librarians and other persons whose job responsibilities did not appear to include selection for the discipline of political science. Surveys were sent to persons whose listing on the roster identified them as social sciences, political science, public administration, or government documents librarians and to a sampling of those whose job responsi­ bilities were not indicated on the roster or were very broad in scope (e.g., refer­ ence librarian or bibliographer). Three hundred surveys were mailed in October 1999. An e-mail reminder was posted to the LPSS listserv on November 17, 1999. Fifty-six persons returned surveys, of which forty-seven provided usable data, for a response rate of 18.66 percent. Respondents were asked to evaluate the general quality of the political science books published by sixty-two major pub­ lishers by scoring them on a five-point scale. The publishers were taken from the APSA survey and thus were a variety of An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians 317 TABLE 1 Size of Acquisitions Budgets at Respondents' Libraries Budget Range No. of Respondents < $500,000 9 $500,000-$999,999 11 $1,000,000-$3,000,000 10 $3,000,000-$5,000,000 6 $5,000,000-$7,000,000 3 Over $7,000,000 7 No response 1 large university and commercial presses whose primary products were books and monographs and which had exhibited at major political science academic meet­ ings, advertised in publications such as American Political Science Review, or been suggested by acquisitions librarians at academic libraries.8 The zero to four rat­ ing scale was the same as that used in the APSA survey (zero = poor, one = below average, two = average, three = above average, four = excellent). Respondents were instructed to evaluate only the pub­ lishers they were familiar with and to leave the space next to a publisher ’s name blank if they were not familiar with it. Space was provided for respondents to list other presses or imprints. If the recipi­ ent was not the appropriate person at the library to complete the questionnaire, he or she was asked to forward it to the per­ son who was. The survey included several questions on the background of the respondents and their institutions. Respondents were asked how many years they had been in their current position, in the library pro­ fession, and a member of LPSS. They also were asked to list their job title. In addi­ tion, they were asked to identify the ap­ proximate size of their library’s acquisi­ tions budget and the highest degree of­ fered at the institution in the field of po­ litical science or public administration. Those who answered the survey had been in their current position an average of 10.67 years, with a range of less than one year to thirty-seven years. They had been in the library profession an average of 18.5 years, with a range of less than one year to thirty-eight years. Several re­ spondents were not members of LPSS, and others did not know how long they had been members. The most common job titles were bibliographer, government documents librarian, reference librarian, and social sciences librarian. Table 1 shows the estimated acquisi­ tions budget at respondents’ institutions, and table 2 indicates the highest relevant degree offered at the institution. Results University presses had the highest rankings for quality, with the top twelve spots, and they claimed twenty-four of the top twenty-seven spots. Oxford topped the list with a mean of 3.81. It also had the lowest standard deviation, indi­ cating that it was uniformly respected. The other highest-ranked university presses—Cambridge, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, University of Chicago, Columbia, and Cornell—each had mean quality rankings that exceeded 3.50. Con­ gressional Quarterly, the highest ranking nonuniversity press, at number thirteen, was also the best-known publisher, with 96 percent of respondents indicating that they were familiar with it.9 At the top of the rankings, quality and familiarity tended to go hand in hand. However, five university presses that ranked in the top twenty for quality (New York University, University of North Carolina, University of Wisconsin, Penn TABLE 2 Highest Academic Degree Offered in Political Science or Public Administration Highest Degree No. of Respondents Associate 1 Bachelor's 8 Master's 17 Doctorate 19 No response 2 318 College & Research Libraries July 2000 TABLE 3 Perce[tions of Academic Publisher Quality and Familiarity with Publisher Rank Publisher Mean Std. Median Familiarity Deviation 1 Oxford University Press 3.81 .39 4 91% 2 Cambridge University Press 3.71 .45 4 87% 3 Harvard University Press 3.68 .47 4 85% 4 Johns Hopkins University Press 3.64 .48 4 83% 5 Yale University Press 3.63 .53 4 85% 6 University of Chicago Press 3.58 .59 4 85% 7 Columbia University Press 3.55 .63 4 85% 8 Cornell University Press 3.54 .60 4 74% 9 Princeton University Press 3.50 .55 4 77% 10 MIT Press 3.49 .65 4 74% 11 New York University Press 3.47 .66 4 68% 12 Stanford University Press 3.45 .68 4 81% 13 Congressional Quarterly Press 3.44 .68 4 96% 14 University of North Carolina Press 3.42 .61 3 66% 15 University of California Press 3.37 .62 3 81% 16 University of Wisconsin Press 3.33 .67 3 57% t17 Duke University Press 3.30 .67 3 70% t17 University Press of Virginia 3.30 .62 3 49% 19 Penn State Press 3.29 .63 3 45% 20 Westview Press 3.24 .82 3 70% t21 Routledge 3.23 .80 3 83% t21 University of Michigan Press 3.23 .72 3 74% 23 Indiana University Press 3.21 .69 3 70% t24 Temple University Press 3.15 .85 3 57% t24 University of Illinois Press 3.15 .66 3 70% t24 University of Pittsburgh Press 3.15 .52 3 57% 27 State University of New York Press 3.13 .72 3 64% 28 West Publishing Company 3.09 .72 3 68% 29 Blackwell Publishers 3.03 .70 3 74% 30 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 3.00 .75 3 68% 31 St. Martin's Press 2.97 .75 3 72% 32 Louisiana State University Press 2.93 .72 3 57% 33 Lynne Rienner Publishers 2.89 .82 3 60% 34 Rowman & Littlefield 2.86 .79 3 60% 35 MacMillan 2.85 .78 3 70% 36 University of Missouri Press 2.83 .75 3 51% 37 University Press of Florida 2.81 .79 3 45% t38 Sage Publications, Inc. 2.80 .82 3 74% t38 Transaction Press 2.80 .91 3 64% 40 Greenwood Publishing Group 2.78 .78 3 79% t41 University of South Carolina Press 2.75 .70 3 43% t41 Markus Weiner Publishers 2.75 .66 3 17% 43 Longman Publishing Group 2.64 .89 3 53% 44 W.W. Norton and Company 2.62 .77 3 72% 45 Basic Books 2.56 .79 3 68% 46 Humanities Press 2.53 .82 3 40% http:Press3.13 An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians 319 TABLE 3 (CONT.) Perceptions of Academic Publisher Quality and Familiarity with Publisher Rank Publisher Mean Std. Median Familiarity Deviation 47 Penguin Putnam Inc. 2.52 .62 2 62% 48 Simon and Schuster 2.47 .78 2 72% 49 Prentice Hall 2.45 .72 2 62% 50 Chatham House Publishers 2.43 .90 2 45% 51 McGraw-Hill, Inc. 2.42 .82 2 70% 52 Houghton-Mifflin Company 2.40 .84 2 64% 53 Ashgate Publishing Company 2.38 .84 2 45% 54 Frank Cass Publishers 2.37 .67 2 40% 55 Wadsworth Publishing Company 2.36 .64 2 47% 56 Random House, Inc. 2.31 .71 2 74% 57 Allyn & Bacon 2.30 .71 2 57% 58 University Press of America 2.23 .94 2 66% 59 Nelson-Hall, Inc. 2.21 .56 2 30% 60 HarperCollins College Publishers 2.17 .73 2 64% 61 Harcourt Brace College Publishers 2.14 .63 2 62% 62 D.C. Heath 1.94 .78 2 38% State, and University Press of Virginia) were in the middle of the pack in terms of familiarity. Likewise, several well- known commercial presses ranked rela­ tively low on quality. Random House, for example, was familiar to 74 percent of respondents but was ranked fifty-sixth for quality. Because textbook purchases are generally not a priority, librarians’ perceptions of the quality of text­ book publishers are likely to suffer as well. Respondents’ familiarity with sur­ veyed publishers ranged from 96 percent for Congressional Quarterly to 17 percent for Markus Weiner Publishers. Just over one-half of the publishers were familiar to at least two-thirds of the respondents. Eighty percent of the publishers were fa­ miliar to at least one-half of the respon­ dents. Table 3 shows the rank, mean, stan­ dard deviation, median, and percentage of respondents familiar with each pub­ lisher. University presses, and particularly Canadian university presses not repre­ sented in the study, received the most “write-in” votes. Two respondents ranked University of Toronto as “excellent.” Uni­ versity of Kansas, University of Iowa, University of Washington, McGill­ Queen’s University, University of New Mexico, University of Oklahoma, and the Council on Foreign Relations Press each was ranked “excellent” by one respon­ dent. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Uni­ versity of Alberta, and Foundation Press received one ranking each as “above av­ erage,” while one respondent listed Uni­ versity of Calgary as “average.” Table 4 compares publishers’ rankings by APSA members and LPSS members. The last column shows the differential in numerical rank between the two groups. Overall, university presses faired even better in terms of quality rankings in this study than in the APSA study. Not only are more of the top spots claimed by uni­ versity presses, all of them fall into the top two-thirds of the quality ranking. The bottom third of the APSA quality-rank­ ing list included seven university presses. Not surprisingly, many textbook publish­ ers, including Houghton Mifflin Com­ pany, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 320 College & Research Libraries July 2000 TABLE 4 Com(arison of APSA and LPSS Rankings for Publisher Quality APSA APSA Rank Mean Publisher LPSS Rank LPSS Mean Ranking Differential 1 2 t3 t3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 t17 t17 19 t20 t20 22 t23 t23 25 26 27 28 29 t30 t30 t30 t33 t33 t35 t35 37 t38 t38 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 3.72 3.61 3.56 3.56 3.48 3.46 3.31 3.24 3.19 3.09 3.06 3.05 3.04 3.02 2.93 2.81 2.78 2.78 2.74 2.71 2.71 2.65 2.63 2.63 2.61 2.59 2.56 2.54 2.51 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.49 2.49 2.48 2.48 2.47 2.46 2.46 2.4 2.39 2.37 2.35 2.32 2.31 2.3 Cambridge University Press 2 Princeton University Press 9 Oxford University Press 1 University of Chicago Press 6 Yale University Press 5 Harvard University Press 3 University of California Press 15 Cornell University Press 8 University of Michigan Press t21 MIT Press 10 Stanford University Press 12 Johns Hopkins University Press 4 Brookings Institution Columbia University Press 7 Congressional Quarterly Press 13 Basic Books 45 W.W. Norton and Company 44 Blackwell Publishers 29 Routledge t21 Sage Publications, Inc. t38 St. Martin's Press 31 University of North Carolina Press 14 Duke University Press t17 University of Wisconsin Press 16 Penguin Putnam Inc. 47 Westview Press 20 Houghton Mifflin Company 52 Chatham House Publishers 50 New York University Press 11 University of Pittsburgh Press t24 Random House, Inc. 56 Rowman & Littlefield 34 Indiana University Press 23 HarperCollins College Publishers 60 Lynne Rienner Publishers 33 Simon and Schuster 48 West Publishing Company 28 Prentice Hall 49 Macmillan 35 State University of New York Press 27 Penn State Press 19 McGraw-Hill, Inc. 51 Longman Publishing Group 43 University of Illinois Press t24 Harcourt Brace College Publishers 61 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 30 3.71 3.5 3.81 3.58 3.63 3.68 3.37 3.54 3.23 3.49 3.45 3.64 3.55 3.44 2.56 2.62 3.03 3.23 2.8 2.97 3.42 3.3 3.33 2.52 3.24 2.4 2.43 3.47 3.15 2.31 2.86 3.21 2.17 2.89 2.47 3.09 2.45 2.85 3.13 3.29 2.42 2.64 3.15 2.14 3 -1 -7 2 -3 0 3 -8 0 -12 0 -1 8 7 2 -29 -27 -12 -2 -18 -11 8 6 7 -22 6 -25 -22 18 6 -26 -4 10 -27 2 -13 9 -11 3 13 22 -9 0 20 -16 16 An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians 321 TABLE 4 (CONT) Comparison of APSA and LPSS Rankings for Publisher Quality APSA Rank APSA Mean Publisher LPSS Rank LPSS Mean Ranking Differential 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 t64 t64 2.26 2.25 2.16 2.14 2.11 2.09 2.08 2.03 2.02 2 1.96 1.95 1.91 1.86 1.83 1.81 1.51 1.47 1.47 Temple University Press t24 Kluwer University Press of Virginia t17 United States Institute of Peace Allyn & Bacon 57 Wadsworth Publishing Company 55 Frank Cass Publishers 54 Louisiana State University Press 32 Transaction Publishers t38 University of South Carolina Press t41 D.C. Heath 62 Greenwood Publishing Group 40 University of Missouri Press 36 Nelson-Hall, Inc. 59 University Press of Florida 37 Humanities Press 46 University Press of America 58 Markus Weiner Publishers t41 Ashgate Publishing Company 53 3.15 3.3 2.3 2.36 2.37 2.93 2.8 2.75 1.94 2.78 2.83 2.21 2.81 2.53 2.23 2.75 2.38 23 32 -6 -3 -1 22 17 15 -5 18 23 1 24 16 5 23 11 and Chatham House, ranked at least fif­ teen places lower in the present survey than in the Goodson study. Most aca­ demic libraries do not purchase text­ books, and if they do, they are likely to purchase textbooks specifically because they are used in courses taught on cam­ pus. In such cases, the publisher is irrel­ evant. Because textbook purchases are generally not a priority, librarians’ per­ ceptions of the quality of textbook pub­ lishers are likely to suffer as well. In ad­ dition, political science professors are more likely to have compared the relative quality of textbooks as they make selec­ tions for courses and possibly shop for a publisher for a textbook they authored. Some commercial publishers were ranked relatively high for quality on both lists. For example, Congressional Quar­ terly, Blackwell, Routledge, Westview, and St. Martin were in the top 50 percent on both lists. However, there were clear differences of opinion between members of LPSS and members of APSA regarding the quality of some commercial publish­ ers. LPSS members ranked Basic, HarperCollins, Norton, Penguin, and Sage at least fifteen points lower than APSA members did but ranked Green­ wood, Humanities, Markus Weiner, M. E. Sharpe, Transaction, Ashgate, and West higher. Twenty-seven of the sixty-two publish­ ers included in the survey also were in­ cluded in Metz and Stemmer ’s reputational study of academic publish­ ers. Table 5 lists the common publishers in order of quality ranking in each study. The rankings show noticeable similarities, with rankings varying by only a few places for most publishers. The largest variations in rank are seen for five com­ mercial publishers: Norton, Basic, and Random House were ranked higher in the Metz and Stemmer study, whereas M. E. Sharpe and Westview were ranked higher in the LPSS study. In the Metz and Stemmer study, Norton and Random House were included in a cluster of pub­ lishers that targeted the “upper-brow” lay reader, so characterized because they 322 College & Research Libraries July 2000 TABLE 5 Comparison of Publishers' Rankings in LPSS and Metz & Stemmer Studies LPSS Study Metz & Stemmer Study Oxford University Press Harvard University Press Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press Harvard University Press Oxford University Press Stanford University Press Stanford University Press Westview Press Blackwell Publishers Routledge Routledge State University of New York Press W.W. Norton and Company Blackwell Publishers Basic Books M.E. Sharpe, Inc. State University of New York Press St. Martin's Press St. Martin's Press MacMillan Sage Publications, Inc. Sage Publications, Inc. MacMillan Transaction Publishers Penguin Greenwood Publishing Group Random House, Inc. W.W. Norton and Company Humanities Press Basic Books Westview Humanities Press McGraw-Hill Penguin Putnam Inc. Transaction Publishers Simon and Schuster Houghton Mifflin Company Prentice Hall Greenwood Publishing Group McGraw-Hill, Inc. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Houghton Mifflin Company Simon and Schuster Ashgate Publishing Company Prentice Hall Random House, Inc. Allyn & Bacon Allyn & Bacon HarperCollins University Press of America Ashgate Publishing Company HarperCollins College Publishers United Press of America ranked fifteen or more places higher for quality than for relevance. Perhaps the lesser degree of relevance of these pub­ lishers’ political science titles to the aca­ demic market helped account for their lower ranking in the LPSS study, in which relevance and quality were not differen­ tiated. The present study was conducted with the hope that it could help inform politi­ cal science librarians’ collection develop­ ment decisions by providing information as to how their colleagues ranked a num­ ber of publishers based on the quality of their output in the field of political sci­ ence. Particularly where the LPSS, APSA, and Metz and Stemmer studies show con­ sistencies, political science collection de­ velopment librarians may find the opin­ ions of their academic colleagues valu­ able. Even so, the careful selector will rec­ ognize the variations in quality among books produced by the same publisher and continue to use all the tools at his or her disposal to make the most-informed acquisition decisions possible. Notes 1. Dave Bogart, ed., The Bowker Annual, 44th ed. (New Providence, R.I.: R.R. Bowker, 1999), 508-9. 2. John Calhoun and James K. Bracken, “An Index of Publisher Quality for the Academic An Assessment of Publisher Quality by Political Science Librarians 323 Library,” College & Research Libraries 44 (May 1983): 257-59. 3. Edward A. Goedeken, “An Index to Publisher Quality Revisited: A Partial Replication,” Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory 17 (fall 1993): 263-68. 4. Paul Metz and John Stemmer, “A Reputational Study of Academic Publishers,” College & Research Libraries 57 (May 1996): 234-47. 5. Larry P. Goodson, Bradford Dillman, and Anil Hira, “Ranking the Presses: Political Scien­ tists’ Evaluations of Publisher Quality,” PS-Political Science & Politics 32 (June 1999): 257-62. Ibid., 261. 7. “Law and Political Science Section Bylaws,” 1982 [Internet, WWW] , available at: http:// facstaff.uww.edu/hansenc/lpssbylw.htm. Accessed Feb. 11, 2000. 8. Anil Hira, one of the authors of the Goodson et al study, kindly supplied the author with a draft copy of their survey. This draft contained a list of sixty-two publishers. It was used as the source for the publishers included on the survey mailed to LPSS members. Goodson, Dillman, and Hira apparently added three publishers (Brookings Institution, Kluwer, and United States Institute of Peace) before actually conducting their survey. 9. Congressional Quarterly Press is a well-known publisher of reference titles and other books relevant to government, political science, and public administration. It is a regular exhibitor at ALA and ACRL meetings and conventions and distributes its catalogs widely. In light of the audience surveyed, however, it should be noted that LPSS and Congressional Quarterly have a special relationship that could affect its familiarity with LPSS members. Congressional Quarterly sponsors the Marta Lange/CQ award, given each year to an outstanding academic or law librar­ ian selected by LPSS.