I suspect that, in sciences, articles are more critical because of timeliness, but that's just a wild guess. My intersection with humanities books tends to be as a consumer and as an amused bystander to the books-soliciting process at conferences. Publishers give the impression of being desperately hungry for book pitches. I don' t know what percentage of pitches end up as books, but I've had publisher solicit me for book projects that I as in no way qualified to write on the basis of a single conference paper. (This leads me to a sneaking suspicion that, for publishers, the economics derive from mere existence and not from specific content.)
But as one anecdotal example: earlier this year when I was doing research for my Margaret of Parma story, the best and most useful reference work I found was one that had been published in 2013--an incredibly detailed biography of her life. (The other works that appeared to be similarly detailed were in non-English languages, and so less accessible to me.) The story would have been very different and far less true-to-the-facts if I hadn't had it available. On the other hand, the technical editing of the book was very poor -- possibly even non-existent. And the author pretty much erased the evidence for her homoerotic possibilities despite citing the paper that led me to them (and misspelling the name of the author of that paper -- see non-existent editing). It was a minor aspect of a very long and complex life, but still telling.
I can't say I read the entire biography in detail, given that the period of her life that I as interested in fell in the first couple of chapters only, though I did skim over the rest.
I'd have to check to see how many cited works in my dissertation were published within 5 years of my use of them. Definitely some, but I have no idea how many.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2015-09-11 02:37 pm (UTC)But as one anecdotal example: earlier this year when I was doing research for my Margaret of Parma story, the best and most useful reference work I found was one that had been published in 2013--an incredibly detailed biography of her life. (The other works that appeared to be similarly detailed were in non-English languages, and so less accessible to me.) The story would have been very different and far less true-to-the-facts if I hadn't had it available. On the other hand, the technical editing of the book was very poor -- possibly even non-existent. And the author pretty much erased the evidence for her homoerotic possibilities despite citing the paper that led me to them (and misspelling the name of the author of that paper -- see non-existent editing). It was a minor aspect of a very long and complex life, but still telling.
I can't say I read the entire biography in detail, given that the period of her life that I as interested in fell in the first couple of chapters only, though I did skim over the rest.
I'd have to check to see how many cited works in my dissertation were published within 5 years of my use of them. Definitely some, but I have no idea how many.