7.5 Present comprehensive citations for edited volumes

In some disciplines it is very common to publish edited volumes. In these cases the editor typically invests a significant amount of time in coaching contributors to submit their chapters in time and often provides very significant editorial feedback. Edited volumes can make a major contribution to the field as they typically provide a collection the latest research on a particular topic.

Unfortunately, edited volumes are often not appreciated as much as authored books or journal articles in promotion applications. One reason for this might be that the citation impact of these volumes can be quite modest as few authors refer to the edited as a whole. It is more common for authors to refer to individual chapters within an edited volume.

In 1995, I published an edited text-book on International Human Resource Management, with new editions in 2004 and 2011. Although it was a textbook, it generated quite a lot of citations in academic literature. Many of these citations were to the book as a whole, with a combined number of some 135 citations for the 1995 and 2004 editions.

However, as the screenshots above and below shows, there were a further 224 citations to the 1995 edition and another 69 citations to the 2004 edition. The 1995 edition was particularly well-cited, with fourteen of the sixteen chapters in the book receiving some citations.

Unfortunately, these searches still missed about a dozen citations that didn't have a year attached to them in the Google Scholar results and hence were excluded through the year restriction. Overall, the book therefore had nearly 450 citations, which would allow me to more easily argue the case that it has had a significant impact in the field of International Human Resource Management.