Academic
dependency and the publication of journals
NARUMI SHITARA
IN 2000, Syed Hussein Alatas called for an emancipation from
intellectual imperialism and the development of creative and autonomous social
sciences in developing societies.1 Twenty years later, this call remains
central in debates around western-centred systems of scholarly communication
and academic evaluation, including the use of English as the lingua franca
of the research world, university rankings, and publish-or-perish regimes that
more highly value English-language journals. As scholarly communication
continues to expand and become more complex, so does the need to examine
academic dependency in the publication of journals. To that end, I offer
findings and reflections from Japan, a country that despite its economic power,
remains on the periphery in terms of knowledge production.
Academic journals are a primary media of
scholarly communication, or the series of systems through which research is
produced, evaluated, distributed, and stored.2 The explosive proliferation in the number
of academic papers since the latter half of the 20th century has brought about
two major changes in scholarly communication: (i) the commercialization
of academic journal publishing and the growing oligopoly of major publishers
mainly based in Europe and the U.S., and (ii) the development of
citation indexes and the increasing evaluation of research performances through
bibliometrics based on the data of these indexes.
As Fujii points
out, Ôthe majority of journals in citation indexes are from English-speaking
countries and, furthermore, published by major academic publishers such as
Elsevier and Springer,Õ3 which are based in Europe. Thus, to put
it very simply, in todayÕs academics, the West dominates in both the
publication and evaluation of research results, putting the process of
knowledge production in the hands of the West. This has caused an academic
dependency among researchers in the non-western world and in non-English
speaking countries. However, as Syed Farid Alatas notes in the introduction of
this special issue, in our age of academic globalization, it is difficult for
academics to break free from the existing western based system of knowledge
production.
I have been working at a university in Japan
for the past 10 years as the managing editor of both English and Japanese
language journals. During that time, I have witnessed first-hand both the
imbalance of todayÕs knowledge production system and the challenges of
emancipating from this system. In this essay, I discuss three major obstacles
facing academic journals today, how Japan is attempting to overcome these
obstacles, and potential ways forward.
Here it is
useful to review what the citation index is and how it works. A citation index,
as the name implies, is an index of citations of academic writings. The
citation index allows us to know the works that a given work refers to as well
as the works by which a given work is referred. In other words, a citation
index ostensibly shows, with objective figures, the process of research
development and the impact of individual studies. Web of Science or WoS (by
Clarivate Analytics) and Scopus (by Elsevier) are currently the two leading
citation indexes in the world.
The citation
index was originally developed as a tool for libraries to assess which journals
to purchase at a time when research communities were overwhelmed by the
afore-mentioned explosion of scholarly articles. Since its inception, however,
use of the citation index has gone beyond its original purpose and it is now
commonly employed by research institutions and individual researchers to
evaluate and analyze research outputs based on data extracted from the citation
index. In this regard, use of the citation index to generate an Ôimpact factorÕ
has had far reaching ramifications in academia.4
According to Pendlebury, the National
Science FoundationÕs report of 1972 was the first to use publication counts and
citation data to measure the research activities and relative positions of
national units in the global competition of knowledge production. In the 1980s,
the use of citation data to measure the impact and influence of research spread
to European academic research groups, and with the adoption of New Public
Management by universities in the 1990s, publication counts and citation data
became widespread in the analysis and evaluation of academic departments,
research groups, and even individuals.5 Today, citation index data are used as a
main indicator in determining the World University Rankings.
For example, one
of these rankings, Times Higher Education (THE), evaluates the performance of
each university based on five points: Teaching (the learning environment);
Research (volume, income, and reputation); Citations (research influence);
International outlook (staff, students, and research); and Industry income
(knowledge transfer). In evaluating performances in the categories of Research
and Citations, THE uses Scopus data. Thus, the citation index is now used
globally to evaluate the research performances of researchers, institutions,
and even nations.6 This
creates pressures not only for researchers, but also university administrators
and academic policy makers to increase the number of journal articles, if
possible, in journals included in these indexes that have higher impact
factors.
Amid this pressurized situation, financial
means loom large. As is well known, the commercialization of academic journal
publishing and the oligopoly of major global publishers have caused the price
of journals to rise, straining the budgets of university libraries. The
resulting Ôserials crisisÕ, or inability of researchers to access journals,
compelled each country to promote negotiations with publishers. Publishers
responded by offering institutions Ôbig dealsÕ, or increasing the number of
accessible journals by adding a small amount to the conventional price of
e-journals. In effect, the cost of purchasing journals was not curbed, and
widening a disparity in the research environment in which access to journals is
dependent on the financial resources of each university or researcher.
To overcome the
serials crisis, open access initiatives have been launched. These fall into two
main categories: (i) Green Open Access, in which authors themselves make
their papers available online through institutional repositories, and (ii)
Gold Open Access, in which authors pay an article submission charge (APC) to
make their papers accessible online for free. The latter system, in which
authors bear the cost of publication instead of readers, is becoming more
common, especially in the field of natural sciences, and its use is
accelerating in Europe, supported by policies like OA2020.7
However, while
Gold Open Access has attracted attention as a solution to the serials crisis,
Bonaccoroso et al. sum up the problem that Gold OA creates: while readers can
now read for free, authors cannot publish for free, and under this system the
economic power of the authors or their institutions determines their evaluation.8 The problem of APCs is a global one, but
it is more acute in countries at the margins of knowledge production and where
research funding is limited.
In addition to financial disparity, the
language bias of the oligopoly of western publishers presents another obstacle.
Tennant documents Ôthe linguistic and geographic biasesÕ of citation indexes,
arguing that although ÔScopus is larger and geographically broader than WoSÉ
Scopus covers only a fraction of journal publishing outside of Europe and North
America.Õ9 A 2019
study by Angel Vera-Baceta et al. found that English-language research
represented 92.64% and 95.37% of all that indexed in Scopus and WoS
respectively.10 Given
these percentages and the pressures to get published in journals indexed in the
major citation indexes, we can surmise a declining interest on the part of
researchers to publish research in their native language. Certainly, the
language of publication differs from field to field. In the natural sciences,
English has already become the lingua franca and in the social sciences,
English is becoming a main language of communication, especially in economics,
while in the humanities, many papers are still published in native languages.
However, the use of WoS and Scopus indicators by various evaluation regimes may
urge researchers to publish in English in any discipline.
In May 2021, the
publication of a controversial article (in Japanese) entitled ÔHow long should
we continue with Japanese journals?Õ by the journal of the Japanese Society for
Artificial Intelligence (JSAI)11 sparked a heated debate across
disciplines on SNS. Those in favour of keeping such journals stressed their
educational significance for young researchers and for preserving cultural
diversity, while opposed argued that writing in Japanese was only a means to
increase oneÕs number of achievements and that researchers could no longer
survive as researchers if they did not present their work in English.
Writing academic papers in oneÕs native
language is useful as a training ground for young researchers. What is more, I
would like to stress the significance of publishing in native languages in
returning research results to the wider society, including the general public,
which supports researchers by paying taxes. The reduction of incentives to
publish in native languages will result in a loss of these significant
opportunities. In addition, we should mind the danger that some researchers may
no longer focus on ÔlocalÕ topics, which are not preferred in international journals,
as Tennant discussed.12 The
obstacle of language bias cannot be overcome simply by publishing in two journals,
one in a native language and another in English, as this can be considered a
double submission – a major ethical breach.
Finally, western-centred journal publishing
and citation indexes are threatening the diversity of research. Sato rightly
points out that Ôjournal-driven researchÕ is spreading as a side effect of
research evaluations based on citation indexes.13 Some researchers no longer seek an outlet
to publish their results after conducting research, but instead choose
their target journal before deciding what to research, and then proceed with
their research so that the results will be more likely to be published in the
targeted journal. Such a reckless approach to research carries a high risk of
limiting not only the theoretical framework of the research, but also the
breadth and depth of research topics, as well as the geographical areas covered
and the perspectives included in the study.
The problem of
research diversity should also be viewed from the dimension of referred works.
Drivasa and Kremmydas argue that as a journalÕs ranking rises, so do citations
to the papers it publishes, due to Ô(i) more authors learning about and
viewing these outlets and their publications and (ii) researchers
signalling their paperÕs own impact by citing highly ranked journals.Õ14 This fuels the so-called Matthew effect,
or early success increasing future success chances, in journal publishing. I consider
this is a very serious threat to journals in the periphery because without
change to the current system, journals from all regions outside the West, which
are currently dis-advantaged in journal rankings and do not have Ôhigh impactÕ,
cannot expect future success.
Here I would like to refer to my own
citation analysis of four journals of Southeast Asian studies (two in social
sciences and two in humanities) published in Japan during 1987-2016.15 Among the English and Japanese articles
published in these four journals, I selected only the Japanese-language
articles and analyzed the various journal articles cited in them (excluding
self-ciations). During the 30-year period, English and Japanese language
articles accounted for the majority of citations, while Southeast Asian
articles were cited to some extent. As for the country of publication, while
Japan accounted for around 40% of citations, English-native countries (the US,
the UK, Canada, and Australia) and Southeast Asian countries accounted for
about 25% respectively, but since the 2000s, there has been a striking increase
in the percentage of citations coming from journals published in English-native
countries.
Though the trend is not yet clear in the
humanities, in the social sciences, researchers are increasingly citing
research (a) published in the English language and (b) approved
by gate-keepers in English-native countries, while citations from journals
published in Southeast Asian countries have also been decreasing since the
2000s and overall citations to articles in Southeast Asian languages declined
during the 2010s. Although my research is a preliminary case study based on
only four journals, which needs to be carefully examined and compared with
other countries, it is important to consider carefully whether and how the
spread of the citation index can endanger the diversity of research.
What measures
does Japan have in mind to deal with these challenges? Statistically, Japan is
an economic powerhouse, and the number of academic papers produced by Japanese
researchers is high globally. However, in terms of knowledge production, Japan
is on the periphery and is therefore a country concerned about intellectual
imperialism.
Since last year,
two proposals have been put forth vis-ˆ-vis the publication of journals, one by
the Science Council of Japan16 and one by the Japanese Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.17 The former, concerned about JapanÕs
declining global status in research, suggests publishing its own international
journals, without depending on large foreign publishers, and innovating a
system of simultaneous multilingual publication through machine translation
based on AI technology.
The latter,
concerned about expenses including subscription fees and APCs, suggests
evaluating the potential for publishing research results in media other than
journals by major publishers. It emphasizes that Japan should recognize that
research cannot be evaluated by quantitative indicators alone, and institutions
should use indicators such as the number of papers or citations with caution.
Here we see two conflicting directions in
these suggestions. The first assumes a world in which citation indexes are
supremely significant and puzzles how to survive in such a world, while the
second aims to create a new evaluation system independent of the current one.
In other words, the first directs to accept academic dependency and to try to
survive within it, while the second directs to break free from such dependency.
These suggestions reveal the dilemma facing peripheral countries and how
difficult it is to solve problems surrounding todayÕs knowledge production
system.
In this essay, I
have introduced, from the standpoint of a researcher and an editor on the
periphery of todayÕs knowledge production system, some of the obstacles
confronting academic journals in the face of academic dependency. As seen in
JapanÕs ambivalent strategy, overcoming these obstacles is complicated and
difficult. To do so, there is a growing call for the revival of bibliodiversity
– diversity in the distribution of academic information in various
languages, through various media, and assessed by various evaluation regimes.
Originating in Latin America in the twentieth century, bibliodiversity is now
back in the spotlight among researchers, librarians, research administrators,
and others considering intellectual imperialism in scholarly communications. In
Japan, a 2020 declaration for the revival of bibliodiversity18 was translated and published and a seminar
on this theme was held by a national research institute. However, discussions
on what specific measures are necessary to recover bibliodiversity are still
lacking and should be considered by each individual and organization involved
in the various dimensions of knowledge production.
Here the role of journals published in the
periphery and the revitalization of regional journals are critical. As a person
involved in journal publishing in such a region, I would therefore like to
conclude this essay by considering what we can do to restore bibliodiversity,
or, in other words, to free ourselves from academic dependency.
While improving
the quality of regional journals is paramount, improving their visibility is
also vital. To that end, linking databases being developed in each country will
increase the visibility and accessibility of research published in non-western
and minor journals, which is often not included in global databases such as WoS
and Scopus. Fortunately, many countries have developed their own databases of
local journals (for example, J-Stage and CiNiiArticles in Japan, the ASEAN
Citation Index in ASEAN countries, and country-specific databases in Thailand,
Korea, India, and so on). Linking such databases will expand the reach of
individual databases and the journals included in them. Furthermore, it will be
useful to make the citation data on the linked databases freely available.
Recently, a new initiative called Open
Citation, which makes all citation data available in an analyzable and open-access
format, has been launched to compete with the fee-based citation data. The
development of local journal citation data and its inclusion in the linked
databases will lead to increased visibility and legitimate evaluation of such
journals.
It is difficult to deny the trust that major academic publishers have elicited in their brands, and the convenience and excellence of the platforms they operate. For their part, the major citation indexes provide clear indicators and are convenient tools to use when evaluating research performances and making decisions. Therefore, even though we may understand the problems of todayÕs western-centred knowledge production system, it is difficult to break free from our academic dependency on it. A positive way forward will be for those in the periphery to cooperate and create a new knowledge production system, rather than criticizing or avoiding – the realities of the current system.