Aptitude and Ultimate L2 Attainment, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publish-
ing, mentioned by Rod Ellis. The books are spread over time, with more
books from the 1980s compared to other decades. Again, publications from
2000 onwards still need to develop their impact. As we will see in Chapter 9,
many publications take 15 years to reach their highest impact.
5.3 The role of publishers
The publishing landscape has changed considerably over the last decades.
There has been a complex process of merging publishing houses into larger
conglomerates. For example, Edward Arnold had been publishing books for
over 100 years when in 2001 it became part of Hodder Education, which in
turn was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2012. In the 1980s, Newbury House
was an important player, along with Prentice Hall, Erlbaum, Edward Arnold
and the university presses (Cambridge and Oxford). Newbury House was
taken over by Heinle, Prentice Hall focused on textbooks and Erlbaum
seems to have stopped publishing books on AL. Routledge became one of
the larger publishers in thefield, but also two specialized publishers, John
Benjamins and Multilingual Matters, became increasingly important. Their
dedication and willingness to publish books for a fairly small market has led
to an increase in status. While a couple of years ago the university presses
had higher status, now the two specialized publishers are seen as equal, and
most of the leading authors in thefield have published books with them.
The number of books they have produced is impressive and has grown
almost linearly over the last 30 years. Figure 5.1 presents the number of
books published on AL as defined in this study between 1980 and 2015 in
five-year periods. A broader definition of AL would yield larger numbers,
but the trend would probably remain the same.
The graphs show the enormous growth over time, at least for these two
publishers. No information on the total volume of books published by all
publishers is available, which makes the interpretation of Figure 5.1 problem-
atic. It may be that John Benjamins and Multilingual Mattersfilled in the gap
left by the discontinuation of publishers like Newbury House. Thesefigures
also support the earlier mentioned notion that books still count in ourfield,
both as a means of communicating new ideas, and as a factor in promotion
and hiring of new staff. Though in many countries peer-reviewed interna-
tional journals are the main goal, a CV of an established applied linguist
without one or more books is hard to imagine. As with the journals, there
does not seem to be a tendency to publish books online only. A recent trend
is that book chapters are becoming accessible electronically, which is parti-
cularly important for edited volumes. While books are underrepresented in
databases like Web of Science and Google Scholar, book chapters that are
available separately are typically more accessible than whole books. It should
also be mentioned that the publishers are important sponsors for various
AL related activities.
Most important articles and books in AL 55