The metadata of books submitted as research outputs to REF 2014 and REF 2021

This dataset contains ISBNs and below described metadata of 38,050 books which UK universities and research institutions submitted as their best research outputs to the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 and 2021. The initial data was downloaded from the REF's webpages presenting the submissions and results for 2014 REF and 2021 REF. The thorough explanation how initial datasets were transformed into this dataset is provided in a preprint: Dagiene, Eleonora. 2023. "The Challenge of Assessing Academic Books: The UK and Lithuanian Cases Through the ISBN Lens." SocArXiv.  https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/qpwxn 

This dataset contains ISBNs and their metadata, gathered from the Global Register of Publishers https://grp.isbn-international.org/

Description of data columns and remarks:

ISBNs – unique identifiers – at least one author of the book identified by the ISBNs is affiliated with the UK university or research institution;

output_types – ['edited volumes', 'authored books'] – types of books eligible for research assessment;

years – 2008-2020 – book publishing years as reported by submitting institutions;

country – country name – countries where ISBNs were assigned, e.g. books authored or co-authored by UK researchers issued in 81 countries worldwide;

unified_title – titles of publishers – parent publishers, e.g. Springer Nature, Informa (Taylor & Francis);

primary_occupations_main – 'academic publishers', 'universities', 'intermediaries', 'other publishers', 'not publishers' – main types of institutions/companies which registered particular ISBNs;

primary_occupations_detailed – 'academic publishers', 'university presses', 'university departments', 'self-publishing', 'publishing services', 'specialised publishers', 'general publishers', 'societies', 'not publishing', 'research institutions', 'governmental institutions', 'libraries', 'museums', 'non-governmental organisations' – just more types of institutions/companies.