Do we need book reviews?

At the last Nordic FORSA conference in Malmö, Sweden 2014, the journal had the opportunity to arrange another symposium about challenges and possibilities for scientific journals. Under the title ‘Searching for the culture in publishing in social work’, our experiences with the journal were presented and discussed. The editors and board members of Nordic Social Work Research presented those challenges and experiences that we have with the journal.

‘Do we need book reviews’ was the question asked in the symposium. And why journals, specifically Nordic Social Work Research, would need book reviews? Is there any motivation to write reviews and especially are there colleagues interested in reading the reviews? I was invited to write a guest editorial to the journal after my presentation. I am grateful for the invitation and hope that this guest editorial inspires our readers to become active in reading and writing book reviews.

There are a number of international and national academic journals devoted to book reviews and reviews are indexed in databases such as Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and some discipline-specific databases. Journals typically have a separate book review editor determining which new books to review and by whom. If a scholar accepts the request for a book review, he or she normally receives a free copy of the book in exchange for a timely review. Publishers send books by request to book review editors in the hope that their books will be reviewed. The length and depth of book reviews vary much from one journal to another.

A good literature review will aim to ‘weigh up the contribution that particular ideas, positions or approaches have made to the topic’ (Hart 1998, 9). Hart’s quote emphasizes the important critical and evaluative function of literature reviews. Of course, being critical does not have to mean being negative – we can also critically examine the strengths and positive aspects of piece of research (Kiteley and Stogdon 2014). Regarding book reviews in academic journals, the issues of being critical and evaluative might be quite similar to that of the literature reviews. However, it is a challenging task to be critical and evaluative in a quite short text. Writing the book review is also time-consuming and requires full concentration. It is certainly a demanding task.

When I prepared my symposium presentation, I collected some comments about book reviews from my colleagues. I sent an email and I was happy, but also surprised that I got a lot of comments, which I now would like to share. Before that, I would like to say as an introduction: I am proud that we have a book review culture in my department. We read academic literature together and some of us also write book reviews. At my workplace, Department of Social Work and Health Science, we organize reading groups or reading circles. We meet regularly once a month and discuss academic literature. It helps us to develop our skills of critical analysis and critical thinking. We function as academic supervisors for each other. In these sessions, we have an opportunity to test out our own interpretations of books. Often different arguments and different understandings of the texts are presented, which makes the reading and discussions interesting and meaningful. The knowledge from these sessions can be used in teaching and writing reviews. These sessions highlight that when reviewing a book, there are three important but different perspectives: the perspective of the writer of the book review, the reader of the book (review) and that of the author of the book.

As a writer of a book review

A review makes an argument. The most important element of a review is that it is a commentary, not a summary. It allows you to enter into dialogue with the author of the book and with its readership. You can agree or disagree with the original text and you can identify the points and topics, which you find exemplary or deficient. Whether you love the book or not, you should give your honest and detailed thoughts so that people can find those new books that are right for them. If you find it difficult to know what to say in a review, it can help to imagine that you are talking to someone who asks you – a student for example – whether s/he should read the book.

There is no definitive method of writing a review. Instead, writing a review is a tactful voicing of agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism. Reviews require you to provide concrete evidence for your assertions as is required in every piece of academic writing.

My colleagues added:

Is it fruitful to spend time in writing book reviews? Do you get any credits to write such a review? As counting the products of our work is so important nowadays, it might be something to think about?

I also think it has been helpful to write book reviews, although it is very sad that there is no crediting on them since it takes a lot of time …

… and I have to add: you must be focused and full concentrate – it really takes time.

Personally, I do not like to write book reviews, as they have to be short,/… But since I like reading them, perhaps also I/we sometimes should write book reviews?

As a reader of a book review

A book review is a form of criticism in which a book is analysed based on content, style and merit. I love to quote my colleague’s remark:

I read book reviews regularly for the simple reason that I find them helpful when sorting out which books to read myself. When taking the number of books published into account, you can’t read them all, and the reviews help you to find those best suited for your purposes. It goes without saying that you may not always agree with the reviewer, but in my experience you rarely find a low quality book that has had a great review.

I’m looking at book reviews. They provide a short and sweet insight on the qualities and weaknesses of new books and are not sales oriented as publishers’ reviews are.

I think, however, that the reviews make a good tool for orientation in the literature jungle. My experience is that one review is not enough. It is a good idea to search for a second opinion.

I have used book reviews as obligatory exercise with my master students for several years. Each year they mention in their course evaluations that it was a difficult task to be critical and to find their own arguments but at the end they like the task. I repeat the task again and again. And for me as a teacher, the book reviews make a lovely reading.

As an author

We all wish and hope that the book we have produced will be discovered and evaluated in a positive way. Writing books counts in our counting system. However, we do not get only positive reviews and we cannot always cope well with the critical arguments. My colleague, who has published a lot tells that:

My experience is that 3–4 reviews of the same book can be very different. And it is not uncommon to find the bad quality reviews of books also in renowned international journals.

I’ve got the impression that the reviewer only takes some samples out of the book and does not bother to read the whole book as the reviewer.

I always try to find out who the reviewers are and what kind of competence they have.

My concluding remarks

Scholars care about books. They like to read and sometimes they write the reviews of the books they have read. This explains why we have book review sections in so many journals. Nevertheless, it is not an easy task.

Please consider the following issues:

•	We all need good books – take the initiative to recommend a good book to be reviewed, or write the review yourself.
•	We need good reviewers – say YES next time you will be asked.
•	We need a good book review culture. Discuss with your colleagues and students and make the ‘not counting’ work into an interesting and meaningful task.

Riina Kiik
Department of Social Work and Health Science, NTNU