Ever since the path-breaking empirical studies by Schott (1998) world systems scholars start from the well-established assumption that world science is a single gigantic center-periphery relationship. The strategic and tactical practical conclusions for individual scholars and their agenda in the scientific periphery and the semi-periphery, to which Europe increasingly belongs, are much harder to draw than the general diagnosis. Where can scholars from outside the US attractively publish their manuscripts for the world market? How does the European Union make its point in the global scientific arena in the field of the debates about social policies and globalization? Is there a way, especially for scholars from the new member countries of the European Union, and from the newly formed “Union for the Mediterranean”, to effectively publish their works on the world market? Only three European social affairs ministries (France, Poland, Spain) afford themselves the luxury to publish their own scientific journal, while others must rely on international publishing to make their expertise heard internationally. This article tries to answer tentatively such a difficult and strategic question, and quantitatively compares the performance of Amsterdam University Press (EU); Ashgate (EU); Blackwell (EU); Cambridge UP (EU); Campus (Frankfurt/Ann Arbor) (EU); Cornell UP (USA); Edward Elgar (EU); Houghton/Mifflin (US); IOS Press (EU); Lexington (US); Monthly Review Press (US); Nova Science Publishers (US); Oxford University Press (EU); Palgrave Macmillan (EU); Praeger Publishers (EU); Routledge (EU); Rowman/Littlefield (US); Sage Publications (US); Springer-Verlag (US); St. Martin's Press (US); and Transaction Publishers (US), which in between them control a sizeable share of the social science academic book publishing market in such fields of political science as globalization or European Union studies, with up to nineteen quantitative performance criteria, ranging from market success rates on global markets both in North America as well as mainly in the Asia-Pacific and European region, comparative library presence rates at international organizations libraries, such as the European Union and the United Nations, and the quantitative impact of published titles on combined indices of peer reviewed journals and the international daily and weekly press. In addition, our study evaluates the impact of the companies’ books and journals on the literature, contained in “Google book search” and “Google scholar”, all per total company book and serials output. In terms of their ability to place books on the markets of now 100+ countries well in comparison to total production, the American companies in our sample hold an unparalleled power. The relative market leaders, which get a large percentage of their total book output to more than 50 global libraries each, are: • Lexington (US) • St. Martin's Press (US) • Rowman/Littlefield (US) • Monthly Review Press (US) • Praeger Publishers (US) • Cornell UP (US) • Ashgate (UK) • Transaction Publishers (US) • Edward Elgar (UK) • Nova Science Publishers (US) Our results, based on simple combined ranks and more sophisticated non-parametric and parametric, multivariate SPSS XV factor analytical evaluations of indicator performance are a further sign of the fact that Europe would do well to further learn from the culture of major US Universities.
