universidade federal de santa catarina pós-graduação em letras ...

78Senior scholars in the field are less likely to do reviews. A lot of chemistryprofessionals never write reviews, and there are not many willing to act asreviewers because it is just not important enough.works:The willingness to write BRs also depends on the institution in which the scholar[C]...a teacher working in a small college in which she has no realopportunity to do scientific research, but at the same time would like to givesome kind of contribution to science. By writing a lot of book reviews, especiallyabout books others will not want to spend time on, their contribution is made.Although reviews count very little as publications, in a very small institution,where there is little or no other source of publication, they may count aspublications. At the University of Michigan, it is nothing.In some cases, the unremarkable character of the genre is simply due to the lowstatus that books have relative to other communication media in the discipline. As sheinvestigated astronomy and geology titles, Chen (1976) found that these journals do notcarry BRs consistently, suggesting that, in these disciplines, books may not be thepreferred mode of dissemination of disciplinary information. This assumption findssupport in the economics editor’s words:[E]What has happened over time in economics is that the role of books as a whole,their importance, has fallen relative to the role of articles. So somebody who hasprofessional interest will devote his efforts towards writing an article, rather thanpreparing the review of a book that may have questionable importance to startwith.