Page 181 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

Extended English abstracts of articles published in the Chinese edition of
Journal of Library Science in China

2016 Vol.42

No.1

A study on the concepts of academic book, academic writing and academic
monograph
YE Jiyuan①a *

The academic books,academic writings and academic monographs are major carriers of
academic presentations and research results. As important information resources,they are also
very important for the innovation-oriented countries. While now in China,neither the academia
nor the press or management circles did truly understand the meaning of the above three terms.
Thus it has an adverse impact on the bibliographic statistics and management of academic
research and academic books. In order to clarify the concept and lay the foundation for the
research and practice,this article,through the concept analysis method,analyzes the meaning
of “book”,“writing”,“monograph” and “academic”,integrates the points of view of most
researchers,identifies the various forms of academic publishing in present China and comes to
the following conclusion:academic books should be taken as hypernym,while academic writings
should be taken as hyponym of academic books and academic monographs should be taken as
hyponym of academic writings. Therefore,it is inappropriate to take them as synonyms. Academic
books refer to the books with content of a subject or a field,having certain innovation,being
valuable to professional study and research and usually having literature comments,references or
index,etc. They include academic writings,academic paper compilation/proceedings,conference
proceedings,college degree and teaching materials/textbooks and reference books,the major
writing manner of which is “writing”,some is “compiling” and very few is “editing”. Academic
writing refers to the books focusing on a problem or a project with innovation and logic
and self-justification,including academic monographs,academic progress review,research
guides,manuals,etc,the major writing manner of which is writing,some is compiling and barely
editing. Academic monographs refer to the works focusing on a particular subject,a field or
a project,which are concentrated,systematic,comprehensive and in-depth discussions. They

* Correspondence should be addressed to YE Jiyuan,Email:yejiyuan@nju.edu.cn,ORCID:0000-0002-4232-8923