Global Disparities in Knowledge Production Within Journalism Studies: Are Special Issues the Answer?

Academic Production and Collaboration Among BRICS-Based Researchers: How Far Can the “De-Westernization” of Communication and Media Studies Go?

“…On the other, artificially raising the ranking of Brazilian journals discourages those struggling to reach international circuits. While Brazil's performance corroborates the idea that "publications by scholars from the Global South are more likely to appear in lower-tier and regional journals" ) Ekdale et al, 2022, p. 2519based scientists published only one paper in their country's journal. This finding corroborates Demeter's )2020( argument that scholars working in Chinese universities seem more interested in competing for space with hegemonic academic communities than turning to South-South interactions.…”

“…Dependency theory is particularly useful here, highlighting the political and economic emphasis usually embedded in the divide between the Global North and the South ) Demeter, 2019aDemeter, , 2019bLauf, 2005(. In this vein, creating mechanisms for attributing intellectual prestige has recurrently disregarded the particularities of peripheral and semi-peripheral countries-reinforcing a dependency that demands Global South researchers meet an agenda sponsored by scholars and editors based in North. As a result, studies from developed regions may gain more visibility not from the merit of the research per se but due to hegemonic self-feeding circuits that become influential to the detriment of peripheral knowledge communities ) Albuquerque, 2021;Albuquerque et al, 2020;Ekdale et al, 2022;Goyanes & Demeter, 2020;Paasi, 2005(. To illustrate, the field of Communication remains heavily influenced by American administrative research ) Smythe & Van Dinh, 1983;Wiedemann & Meyen, 2016(, on top of theoretical and epistemological traditions rooted in the Western European media environment ) Ganter & Ortega, 2019;Hanusch & Vos, 2020;Waisbord & Mellado, 2014(. These dominant perspectives are seldom concerned with justifying the applicability of their theoretical constructions beyond their immediate realities, neglecting sound divergences from the viewpoint of Global South societies ) Albuquerque et al, 2020;Demeter, 2019aDemeter, , 2020Lauf, 2005(. In other words, professedly universal definitions are sometimes unsuitable for explaining contexts as diverse as Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia ) Cheruiyot & Ferrer-Conill, 2021;Ekdale et al, 2022;Mitchelstein & Boczkowski, 2021(. Rather than acknowledging the heuristic limitations of their categories, researchers from the Global North often resort to the simplistic notion that "peripheral" contexts would be unstable, hybrid, or deviant ) Alatas, 2000;Mutsvairo et al, 2021;Voltmer, 2011;Waisbord & Mellado, 2014(. Among the challenges faced by Global South scholars to publish and question such logic of domination are the predominance of American and European researchers on the e...…”

“…In short, the notion of de-Westernization constitutes a movement aimed at recognizing traditions that have been systematically neglected in mainstream literature ) Cheruiyot & Ferrer-Conill, 2021;Mitchelstein & Boczkowski, 2021( besides reflecting on the conditions to criticize the so-called intellectual ethnocentrism ) Mutsvairo et al, 2021(. Dialoguing only with specific Western groups limits the potential of new advancements as it dismisses production routines, phenomena, and references that constitute our diversity of knowledge ) Ekdale et al, 2022;Waisbord, 2022(.…”

“…Despite the growing calls to de-Westernize Communication research (Dutta & Pal, 2020; Goyanes & Demeter, 2020; Mitchelstein & Boczkowski, 2021; Mohammed, 2022; Waisbord & Mellado, 2014), the scholarly literature holds that only a few authors based in Global South countries have been successful in publishing in high-impact international journals (Albuquerque, 2021; Demeter, 2019b; Ekdale et al, 2022). Among the explanatory factors behind this phenomenon are limitations in English language proficiency (Livingstone, 2007; Suzina, 2021), the hegemony of academics working for American and European institutions on editorial boards (Albuquerque et al, 2020), and scarce funding available in developing countries (Oliveira et al, 2021).…”

Mission partly accomplished: European Union Politics at 25

“…The page budget allocated to a volume has increased steadily over time, and the journal will move to an open page budget in 2024 to create more flexibility to publish high-quality research. Unlike other outlets, EUP has only sporadically published special issues as they can fortify intergenerational (Conlon et al, 2006) as well as gender inequalities (Formanowicz et al, 2023) and reinforce the under-representation of scholars from the Global South (Ekdale et al, 2022). 1 Moreover, it has actively increased the number of open access publications in recent years.…”