order communication (or observation: communication always relies on observation). Based on Luhmann’s theory of observation²⁰ that I touched upon earlier, omnipresent in his mature œvre, the levels can be described as follows:
1. communication takes place: e. g. in the form of thinking, writing, and distribution,
2. communication is structured to increase its likelihood of success (see Section 2.1.3): primary registration as academic knowledge and scholarly communication, however limited in its scope,
3. structured communication is observed: indexing by, in this case, two service providers who themselves are observing scholarly com
munication, and
4. observations of structured communication are observed: my study observes the indexing of those services.
Basically, the level of meta observation in Section 3.6 is the same as in Chapter 4, where I focus on Southeast African authors, but in the latter, I tried hard to get the big picture, combining all sources of indexing that I could find. The difference therefore is that, in Chapter 4, although still re
maining on the fourth level, I aim at getting closer to the observations from level three in order to form a more precise picture. There are uncountable observations happening on this level, so this picture is only achievable as an excerpt. Therefore, my sampling method includes as many addresses of registration and indexing as were feasible, avoiding copying the limitations of single observers on level three into this study. Unfurling limitations of single observers with the aim of reducing or relocating limitations is, I sug
gest, the general aim of any conceptual chapter.
transition to eonly journals, and some even became open access. Esseh (2011) noted nearly ten years ago that the ‘production of scholarly jour
nals in African universities has seriously declined’. However, in the course of my study, the increased inclusivity of GS also increased the discoverabil
ity of African research. Furthermore, since this project started in 2015, the concerns about what I will call ‘cultural humility’ in research, and about the decolonisation of the university magnified, fostered especially by the
#feesmustfall student movement in South Africa which triggered much debate about decolonising universities (see e. g. BehariLeak 2019). This thesis presents not only a snapshot of the current situation, but contributes to those ongoing discussions, and describes trajectories in academic pub
lishing and indexing, with special attention to a European perspective on Southeast African SSH from 2008 to 2020, and developments in academic library collection management in Europe.
I need to exclude a set of factors from my study which actually have a huge impact on scholarly communication. These are, sometimes vitally important, economic and political factors which prevent many from even starting an academic education, or force or motivate scholars to migrate (brain drain). Connected to these are infrastructural factors, such as a lack of research institutions within reach. Issues like these have to be acknow
ledged (see e. g. Ngobeni 2010), but are not the focus of my attention. The research field of LIS seems to be tailormade for focusing on material which was produced despite these obstacles.
I believe that the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991) is useful when systems of oppression are analysed in detail. Yet this study is an ana
lysis of how the centre of modernity defines itself and therefore also defines what it considers as peripheral. A next logical step could be a more indepth analysis of what exactly is pushed to the margins by the ‘modern’ scholarly communication system. This study limits itself to examining the discover
ability of publications by authors located in Southeast Africa, to find out how far this small section of scholarly communication is marginalised in
‘Global North’ discovery contexts. On this coarse level of magnification, questions of intersectionality cannot be tackled.
It is important to be very clear that this research never intends to study Southeast African authors or publications as such, even though they play an important role in it, but rather the construction of a centre/periphery differentiation in the scholarly communication system, and the libraries’
role in that. Empirical evidence for the representation of Southeast Afri
can SSH in ‘Global North’ databases and European libraries strengthens my argument in order to counter social injustice, which, without doubt, has its roots in the ‘Global North’ (cf. Krenceyova 2014). I agree with Ondari
Okemwa (2007) that scholars who are based in subSaharan Africa are pre
equipped ‘to conduct research and produce scholarly publications on the region’. Without reciting or extending the list of challenges to the global distribution of African scholarship, this thesis provides a case for overcom
ing the challenges involved in discovering and acknowledging specifically Southeast African scholarship with the tools available to myself, to a re
searcher residing in Europe, with access to the Web and to wellsupplied academic libraries.²¹ My conclusions are addressed to SSH researchers, lib
raries, policymakers, funders and journal editors working in the privileged countries. If, along the way, I am able to provide insights into the schol
arly communications system as it unfolds in Southeast Africa, then that is a welcome side product, but the most important message that this thesis hopefully sends to Southeast Africa is solidarity. I will use my ‘unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage’ (McIntosh 1989).
The conceptual discussions related to the ‘Global South’ in the following chapters can be applied to the case of Southeast Africa, and those related to the ‘Global North’ can be applied to Europe. However, I do not claim that Southeast African publications are representative for ‘Global South publications’. Furthermore, European libraries certainly have features that cannot be found in North America or Oceania. Nonetheless, I am still convinced that my empirical findings are informative for those different contexts. Of course, there also is a lot of internal diversity within all those categories, and thus when I talk about very specific points in the following, I will make that palpable in the text.
21 That would be libraries that score high in collection evaluation, e. g. according to the model suggested by Borin and Yi 2008; in this instance, Lund University Libraries.
The decision to study publications by Southeast African authors was due to the fact that out of all rarely studied local communities to whom a peri
pheral status is commonly attributed, the large majority of those authors use English as their primary academic language (see Section 4.2 for details).
In regard to my own language skills, this made the project more feasible.
Also, since English is established as the academic lingua franca globally, the marginalisation of most Southeast African publications in ‘Global North’
contexts cannot be based on the choice of language. Studying this aspect in relation to communities which primarily communicate in another lan
guage requires linguistic expertise which I do not have at my disposal.
The limitation of this study to the SSH is motivated by a perceived lack of attention to those fields in any kind of research about research. In Africa, it is often given lower funding priority than natural sciences with immediate applicability. In the Dakar Declaration (Next Einstein Forum 2016), ‘the scientific community, industry, civil society, media, decisionmakers from across the world, especially from Africa’, makes very clear that the inter
national competitiveness of science education in Africa is the highpriority goal of the increased investment in this sector. Further, the signatories are convinced ‘that youth armed with STEM [Science, Technology, Engineer
ing, and Medicine] training will be capable of meeting tomorrow’s greatest challenges, including violence and discrimination’, without giving any fur
ther explanation of the suggested correlation.
The literature confirms that local as well as foreign funders prioritise STEM, especially medicine and agriculture, over SSH (see e. g. Kell and Czerniewicz 2016; Mouton 2010; Oanda and Sall 2016; Pouris and Ho 2014; World Bank 2014; Zeleza 2002). This emphasis is questionable, since the manifold social problems present on the African continent and in world society as a whole require indepth social and cultural analyses.
Investment in technical infrastructures needs to be prepared by conscien
tious analyses of social and cultural contexts. Since ‘Southern’ SSH cur
rently mostly reproduces ‘Northern’ theory, approaches to rethink social and cultural analyses from within deserve at least the support that the ac
celeration of STEM receives. Although the interest in ‘Southern theory’
clearly is on the rise since Connell diagnosed its insignificance in 2007,
little seems to have changed about the recognition of African SSH scholars in the ‘North’.
The limitation of the empirical part of my study to SSH basic research derives from my interest in different styles of reasoning and the setup of theoretical fundaments. However, this interest remains implicit, and does not result in studies included in this thesis. Rather, it serves as another way to reduce the study’s main unit of analysis and therefore increase its feasibility. For me, basic research in the SSH stands for the discussion and development of theories and methodologies, as well as for the exploration of new subjects of study. Some fields are richer in these types of stud
ies, like philosophy or sociology, while others are more devoted to applied studies, like education, law or economics, but there is no general border
line between basic and applied research between fields. Applied studies in the SSH tend to follow a more or less rigid framework, often concerned with the enhancement of professional practice, and resulting in protocols and procedures (also see Becher and Trowler 2001). This puts limits on in
tellectual creativity. How I define basic research in the specific contexts of my investigations depends on the categorisations used in my data sources, and will be elaborated on in those contexts.
I am aware that the distinction between basic and applied research is contested, and simplifying. I will return to this discussion in Section 2.2.1.
Also, because these categories are blurred for good reason, I think it is a valid decision to avoid a set of hard indicators that would give the impres
sion of prevailing categories. I intend to avoid these types of categories wherever I see opportunities to do so. My research interest and the forms of data available to me drive my subjective decisions, to be made transpar
ent at each point of decision.
Of course, scholarly communication is not always confined to the tight frame of a research paper, nor to the lengthy narration of a monograph.
It also takes place in direct interaction between academics, in seminars, at conferences, on social media platforms, and by the coffeemaker. How
ever, when this knowledge does not find its condensation in formal written formats, it is not registered as a full contribution to the scholarly com
munication system, and does not have equal weight as a reference. Even
though there naturally are very different cultures and traditions of schol
arly communication depending on discipline and research environment (see e. g. Becher and Trowler 2001), the role of registered publications is similar throughout the system. Interaction formats cannot be referred to as neatly, and to study them, a whole different set of analytic tools has to be applied.²² Academic blogs seem to be a semiformal format of re
search dissemination that can be referred to easily, problems of longterm preservation (see Hank 2011) put aside, but ‘consensus seems to suggest that most institutions do not value blogging as highly as publishing in tra
ditional outlets, or consider blogging as a measure of service rather than research activity’ (Sugimoto, Work et al. 2017 with reference to Hendricks 2010). To my knowledge, there is no study describing referencing practices from formal publications to social media platforms. Such a study would reveal if the boundary between formal and informal scholarly communica
tion really is more ‘blurred’ today than before the ‘digital age’ (see Borgman 2007). Contrarily, there are findings that scholarly communication in so
cial media relies on formal publications (Kjellberg and Haider 2019). A huge difference between academic social media and formal publication is that participation in the former is limited to user groups, which are formed by criteria that do not necessarily relate to selection mechanisms of the re
search system. To what extent the marginalisation of contributions along geopolitical lines plays out on social media platforms, or, contrarily, if any effects of empowerment could be observed, would certainly be interesting, albeit offscope, questions to examine.
22 The concept of information formats has been established by Jürgen Markowitz in his unpublished lecture series Soziologie der Organisation, 10th lecture, 19 December 2005, MartinLutherUniversität HalleWittenberg. Fittingly, this very reference demonstrates how unsatisfactory references to interaction formats are. Interaction formats prepare life
world situations (in the epistemic tradition of Husserl) for interaction which is targeted at fulfilling functional requirements; here, for the research system. All the mentioned formats trigger expectations, so academic interaction becomes likely to happen. Of course, it needs specific social media platforms, and a coffee machine placed in an academic institution, et cetera. For an example of how to study interaction formats, see Kranz 2009.
In this thesis, my interest lies in how knowledge is formally dissemin
ated and made discoverable, rather than in how it is produced.²³ There
fore, I concentrate on formats of written communication, publishing, and indexing. Dominant practices of structuring, referencing, footnoting, ac
knowledging, and submitting, compared within the frame of a discipline, have changed very little over the last decades. Neither electronic publish
ing, nor the alleged inclusion of authors from parts of the world which were not touched by academic publishing in any significant way before, had much, if any, impact on these practices.²⁴