This section addresses the origin and effects of the charged distinction between ‘international’ and ‘local’ journals. The confusion that this cre
ates starts on a very low semantic level: Internationalism implies two
way communication between (citizens of ) nationstates, but this rarely is what is meant when the term is used. Haider (2008, p. 131) found a
‘general trend’ that ‘international journals’ actually mean ‘“western”/Euro
pean/NorthAmerican journals’ (also see Canagarajah 2002; Medina 2013), even if there are exceptions. In the literature, definitions, if they are given
at all,⁸² are diverse. To mention just the most common ones, an ‘interna
tional journal’
1. is indexed either in WOS (see references in Paasi 2005, Vessuri, Gué
don et al. 2014, Ramkissoon and Kahwa 2015⁸³), or other ‘interna
tional bibliographic databases’ (Tijssen, Mouton et al. 2006), passing through the task of defining,
2. works with authors who are affiliated with a wide range of institu
tions situated in different countries, especially if those authors also collaborate,⁸⁴
3. is written in English, especially when authors are from nonEnglish
speaking countries (Paasi 2015), or in another widely spoken lan
guage, or appears in different language editions,
4. reaches a global readership, recognised by citations from different countries (Aman 2016),
5. is mainly edited in the ‘Global North’, or simply outside of (most) authors’ countries,⁸⁵ or has an editorial board composed of members from many different countries, and/or
6. is defined by the international scope of the debate it contributes to (Simonsen 2002; Martín 2017).
A combination of different criteria was suggested,⁸⁶ but it was rarely put into action in scientometric research. It is enigmatic that a term so widely used in the research management context is discussed in depth so little. My suspicion is that putting a weighted combination into place—which also would need to consider fieldspecific differences—is too complex of a task
82 BuelaCasal, Perakakis et al. 2006 confirm that in scientometrics, ‘international’ is
‘used extensively without qualification’.
83 Several other contributions to the ‘UNEScO Science Report’ use the term without definition, but since the bibliometric analyses in the report are based on WOS, it can be assumed that it is used synonymously.
84 According to BuelaCasal, Perakakis et al. l. c., this probably is the most common definition. In my reading, it competes with the first definition of this list.
85 See the promotion policy of the University of Ibadan, discussed by Omobowale, Sawadogo et al. 2013; see below.
86 By BuelaCasal, Perakakis et al. 2006; also including more examples and a discussion of the different definitions.
for mainstream bibliometrics, similar to the task of setting up a database that actually mirrors the communicative centre/periphery pattern for each research subject, and not only publications which for some unclear reason ended up in that database.
Interestingly, some of the above definitions rule out each other. For in
stance, Aman (2016) found that many WOSindexed journals in the hu
manities have a primarily local readership. The study also shows that it is not only the SSH journals from the ‘Global North’ that score high in inter
nationality: journals from Iran, India, Taiwan and China are found many ranks higher than journals from the USA, France, Germany, and Spain.
Tierney and Kan (2016) compared the top North American education journal (AERj), considered an ‘international journal’ according to some definitions, with the top education journal from China (Jiaoyu Yanjiu Yue
kan), clearly seen as a ‘local journal’, and they found that both are reflecting local policy concerns, and are addressing a rather local readership. How
ever, papers published in the North American journal rarely reflect any re
search done outside their local scope, while papers published in the Chinese journal are usually wellinformed about debates taking place abroad.
Regardless of the definition, the literature seems to agree that most ‘local journals’ are not indexed in WOS. However, publishing in WOSindexed journals is decisive for career development—more or less—in every place and field.⁸⁷ This automatically and unpreventably leads to the expectation of quality problems in ‘local journals’, since the results that a researcher perceives of as his or her most relevant and brilliant work are very likely sent to a WOSindexed journal (cf. Murray and Clobridge 2014; Pouris and Richter 2000). Only if there are no WOSindexed journals left to submit to,
87 Trevor Barnes in Ward, Johnston et al. 2009 is very enlightening on different pub
lishing cultures in the SSH: ‘One of the insights that I have gained from serving on the […] Promotion and Tenure Committee at the University of British Columbia is seeing how other disciplines do it. […] Economics has a holy quintet of journals, and if you pub
lish in two of them you become a Full Professor. But under no circumstances should an economist write a book until they publish in the holy quintet. In Psychology, textbooks are good, but pure gold is the multiauthored scientific paper with triplefigure citations.
In History and English, it is a singleauthored book per professorial rank […]. But in Geography anything goes.’
is the rejected paper offered to a ‘local’ journal. Canagarajah (1996, p. 441) maintains that it ‘is widely known that the papers of both Third World and Western scholars published in such journals are usually those rejected by Western journals or by scholars lacking access to Western journals’. Inter
estingly, ‘internationality’ is also used as an indicator for journal quality (see BuelaCasal, Perakakis et al. 2006) which leads to a circular definition:
an international journal is a topquality journal, and a topquality journal is an international journal.
However else ‘quality’ is defined—and it is outside the scope of this thesis to discuss definitions of quality—some of the typical expectations that WOSindexed journal reviewers and editors might maintain seem to be hard to meet by typical ‘local journal’ contributions: the ‘idiosyncratic form of writing used by each national or linguistic educational community’
(Martín 2017) is usually not appreciated there. Those expectations exclude contributions that quite simply deviate from the ‘Global North’ cultural standard (also see Vessuri, Guédon et al. 2014). In an anonymous inter
view, an Ugandan researcher appends well to this by saying that [i]nternational journals have their own standards, and we have had prob
lems with that. So, that is also something that blocks people. There is a hindrance to our development. So, we also need to link into collaborations that promote local publications (Beaudry, Mouton et al. 2018).
In another interview of this study, a Zimbabwean researcher adjoins his experiences with reviewers from ‘international journals’:
They don’t really understand the African context in terms of the issues, in terms of some of the challenges that we face, like, on the ground, and some of the comments that you get from the review process, they’re very depressing if I can use that word. [… Y]ou kind of lose your motivation, because you are on the ground, you see those issues and you want to re
port or write about them, and you really feel very strongly that this is a problem in Africa, but probably it’s not a problem in Canada, it’s not a problem somewhere in Europe. So it kills the drive in many researchers and it also explains probably why many African researchers end up in those pirate journals now. [… T]hey always reject, so the journals, they’re like for Europeans or Americans, a certain group of people, which then also affects the quality of our research […].
Some rejected papers are send to ‘local journals’ (or even ‘pirate journals’, see Section 2.2.7) because the author felt misunderstood, and was not will
ing to change the text according to the reviewers’ comments, since this would change the point he or she wanted to make. ‘Local journals’ could also be a place for experimenting, and for innovation—it is left to future research to validate this conjecture.
For South African science journals, Pouris and Richter (2000) also report other reasons for publishing in local journals: the perception that ‘local journals’ are the best outlet for the paper because of their focus on domestic or regional issues and on a corresponding audience, and that they are a com
munity effort worth supporting (also see Alemna, Chifwepa et al. 1999;
Kell and Czerniewicz 2016). Sivertsen (2016) argues, based on data from Norway, that a local audience interested in the SSH complements the peer community in ensuring quality standards. The ‘SSH would lose their raison d’être by disconnecting from the surrounding culture and society and by mainly communicating in international journals that are only read by peers abroad’ (ibid.). In order to preserve the journals and the abovementioned reasons to publish with them, a respondent of the World Humanities Report survey (Holm, Jarrick et al. 2015) requested ‘a condition that one must publish in local journals and in a local language (say Kiswahili), along with the international avenues, in order to get promotion’. As interviews with Kenyan medical researchers showed, the ‘desire for international recogni
tion overrides social benefits’, namely, providing research information to (local) practitioners. In this case, authors decide to publish in an ‘inter
national journal’ instead of in a (local) openaccess journal (Obachi and Kachero 2012). Similarly, a South African interviewee states that ‘[s]ome of my research is very particular, [t]o a South African context, but I get no recognition if I publish in the South African journal […]. In fact, I’ve been told that I must not publish in that journal because it will look bad’
(Beaudry, Mouton et al. 2018).
From Nigeria, it is reported that even though wellreputed journals with high quality standards exist(ed), the University of Ibadan promotion policy requires that a ‘reasonable number of articles should, at least, be published
offshore.’⁸⁸ As several interviewees in Omobowale’s study (2013) state, the background to this regulation was disingenuous publication practices of some researchers that led to high submission rates at those ‘local journals’, so their editors could not handle the volume. Even though the interviewees concede that measures were necessary, they understand that this policy is the death sentence for those journals. Since the policy is still in place seven years after the publication of the study, a followup investigation about the development of the Nigerian scholarly journals would most likely bring forward only a few remains. Opposing such developments, Obachi and Kachero (2012) argue that, in Africa, ‘a paradigm shift towards building reputable local journals’ is needed.
The newly established Journal Publishing Practices and Standards (JppS) aim at supporting ‘local journals’ from the ‘Global South’ and increasing
‘global visibility’ and ‘respect’, so authors are encouraged ‘to submit their work to regional journals’.⁸⁹ The guidelines have been jointly developed by INASp and African Journals Online (AjOL), and implementation in AjOL and similar platforms started in 2016. Since 2019, all AjOL journals are displayed with one of six possible badges: three stars to no stars, inactive, or new. Are the criteria for a threestarbadge any different from the cri
teria to be included in the WOS Emerging Sources Citation Index (EScI)?⁹⁰ Compared to the three WOS standard indexes, those sources do not need to comply with any impact criteria, but only with 28 ‘quality criteria’.⁹¹
There are some important differences between JppS and WOS criteria (see the discussion of criteria exclusively required by WOS in Section 2.2.4).
However, there also are some problematic (and many unproblematic) com
88 University of Ibadan, Appointments and Promotions Committee for Academic Staff, Regulations and Guidelines of Promotions for Academic Staff, 2019, https://www.ui.edu .ng/sites/default/files/2019%20Promotion%20Guideline.pdf, visited on 29 June 2020.
Also cf. Vessuri, Guédon et al. 2014.
89 JppS, A new framework for assessing publishing practices and standards, https://ww w.journalquality.info/en; and Background, https://www.journalquality.info/en/about/bac kground, both visited on 29 June 2020.
90 See Fn. 19.
91 This approach of consolidating the separation of ‘the “best” (the “west”) from the rest’ has been criticised by Bell 2018; SomozaFernández, RodríguezGairín et al. 2018.
monalities. Regular appearance is one of the problematic ones, required even for ‘new’ JppSassessed journals—a criterion that ‘local journals’ often cannot meet, for a variety of reasons. When the fate of a journal lies in the hands of only a few people, the absence of just one of those people can eas
ily prevent scheduled publication dates from being met. Moreover, when there is political unrest, or even war or famine, editing a scholarly journal naturally receives subordinated priority. There is no reason to assume that the content quality is bad, just because the journal did not follow its sched
ule, and I cannot think of a good reason why this is a criterion at all—it prevents the inclusion of journals edited under poor environmental condi
tions before contentrelated questions are even considered. Furthermore, if an editor were to stick to the schedule even under disastrous conditions, this would necessarily compromise quality.
Another problematic JppS criterion, for which compliance is required by
‘new’ journals as well, is a ‘geographically diverse (or varied)’ editorial board.
WOS actually is less strict here: ‘affiliations, geographic diversity, and pub
lication records must be consistent with the stated scope’. The latter is more adequate, and the comparison clearly points to a double standard:
JppS, which is addressed to ‘Global South’ journals, does not support ‘local journals’ solely edited by locals. WOS would not exclude those journals, officially, because of that, and a ‘European Journal of Some Science’ solely edited by Europeans might be in the realm of the acceptable. It seems like the ‘international/local journal’ distinction is somewhat enforced here, and as long as the role of WOS in research evaluation and bibliometrics is in place, it will always be preferred over the ‘local’.
An open question is if the next resort for a JppS ‘3star journal’ is WOS, and if JppS becomes a somewhat preparatory stage, so the distinction be
tween ‘international/local journals’ resolves. Hazen (1999) cautions that
‘[u]ninformed adherence to international standards can be expensive, un
successful, and profoundly counterproductive’. Furthermore, it leads to homogenisation, as many of the respondents to the Humanities World Re
port survey from the ‘Global South’ bemoan; ‘Global North’ respondents usually do not hit on this issue (Holm, Jarrick et al. 2015).
In a comparison of Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese journals in
dexed in WOS, on the one hand, and Scopus, ScIELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online), or RedALyC (Red de Revistas Científicas de América Lat
ina y El Caribe, España y Portugal), on the other, Chavarro, Ràfols and Tang (2018) found that journals which meet all of the following editorial standards are more likely to be covered by WOS:
1. at least twothirds of the editorial board are not affiliated with the publishing institution,
2. at least half of the authors are not affiliated with the publishing in
stitution,
3. regular periodicity according to stated schedule, 4. at least 40% peer reviewed content, and
5. titles and abstracts are available in English.
External authorship was the criterion most clearly related to being indexed in WOS, but another was having an ‘open’ editorial board. However, even if Latin American journals fulfilled all criteria, the odds of being indexed still did not improve in a relevant way. In contrast, the criterion of be
ing published in Europe showed a massive correlation with being indexed:
‘being covered by WOS is to a good extent an indicator of community be
longing or readership and less an indicator of quality’ (ibid.). Nonetheless, Zincke (2014) writes:
[t]he central indexes, like SScI and Scopus, despite the fact that they began with a definitely local character, referring to countries like the USA and Uk, have defined themselves from the start as global, as representing a science authentically universal, covering the whole world, whereas, in contrast, the regional indexes of Latin America, like ScIELO and Latindex, are con
ceived and projected as local, and are used by the countries of the region—
definitely so in Chile—as second class indexes. [… T]he strong emphasis given to global science by universities and public funding institutions is a threat to the current local focus and relative autonomy of social sciences in this country.
In a study of Czech research, Stöckelová (2012) comes to a similar con
clusion: ‘orientation toward “global” science’ is not always desired. Fur
thermore, there are reports that some of the mostread journals found in ScIELO and Latindex ‘have been approached by commercial companies in
terested in including them in profitable indexes’ (Beigel 2014), which is criticised as ‘predatory’ (ibid.). In my view, as long as the offer does not include the obligation to remove the journals from the Latin American in
dexes, and to adjust to certain guidelines, this would rather lead to more editorial diversity in what is indexed by those ‘commercial companies’, and likely also an increased permeability of the centre/periphery distinction, making a Latin American affiliation less of an obstacle to contributing to centre communication. However, since it is unlikely that it would impact the ‘Global North’ editorial standardsetting power, including those jour
nals contributes to the further normalisation of this power. This would also reinforce a centre/periphery distinction within the contributions indexed in ScIELO and Latindex. While these indexes would still be perceived of as local, journals that have been moved to central indexes would gain a hybrid status, and be referred to as ‘local’ in the context of Latin American indexes, but as ‘international’ in the context of ‘profitable indexes’.⁹²
In conclusion, I tried to show throughout this section that the labels ‘in
ternational/local’ are confusingly used and imprecise. After all, ‘all know
ledge is local’ (Bowker 2010, also see Haraway 1988), especially knowledge that is produced with the approach of stripping all context from it, in the lab, in order to let it appear universal, since this approach in itself is a very European enlightenment idea. ‘Place matters only to those for whom Great Truths are not an option. The local is local for those without the power not to make it matter’ (McDaniel 2003).
Even though there are some forces pulling to strengthen ‘local journals’, many signs point to their disappearance rather than to a gain of momentum (also see Section 4.5.2). There is little understanding in the ‘Global North’
that their support is worthwhile, as Garfield (1997) confirms once more:
[WOS’] coverage of some local journals has discontinued. In fact, total art
icle coverage has increased substantially because Third World scientists in
92 WOS already included socalled Regional Citation Indexes, see 3.6.
creasingly publish in the international peer reviewed journals, where their work is seen and read by peers worldwide.
Albeit this quote is dated, few current initiatives, including the INASp pro
jects AjOL and JppS, which have been criticised for their adherence to
‘Global North’ standards in this section, take a different direction.