Ibérica (Nov 2015)
Peripheral scholarly journals: From locality to globality
Abstract
This critical literature review examines the problems faced by scholarly peripheral journals. Two categories of problems were identified. The first one refers to the deleterious effect the “publish-or-perish” mantra has on those journals, such as publication drain and the conduction of research that appeals to an international audience. The second category consists in problems that are related to the context in which these journals are published: lack of funds to run the journals, lack of competent editors and reviewers, problems related to publication ethics, endogamy, etc. The solution to overcome such problems is not to publish more and more journals in peripheral countries – which has been the tendency for the last ten years or so – but to upgrade local journals to global ones that should be published online in order to attract high-quality papers from both national and foreign authors. This would strengthen and enhance these journals visibility and international indexing. It would also increase the global influence of the research conducted in peripheral countries and bring global awareness to the specific scientific, social, cultural and economic features prevailing in such contexts.
