Why researchers publish in non-mainstream journals: Training, knowledge bridging, and gap filling

Abstract

Papers should be submitted to swps@sussex.ac.uk as a PDF or Word file. The first page should include: title, abstract, keywords, and authors' names and affiliations. The paper will be considered for publication by an Associate Editor, who may ask two referees to provide a light review. We aim to send referee reports within three weeks from submission. Authors may be requested to submit a revised version of the paper with a reply to the referees' comments to swps@sussex.ac.uk. The Editors make the final decision on the inclusion of the paper in the series. When submitting, the authors should indicate if the paper has already undergone peer-reviewing (in other series, journals, or books), in which case the Editors may decide to skip the review process. Once the paper is included in the SWPS, the authors maintain the copyright. AbstractIn many countries research evaluations confer high importance to mainstream journals, which are considered to publish excellent research. Accordingly, research evaluation policies discourage publications in other non-mainstream journals under the assumption that they publish low quality research. This approach has prompted a policy debate in low and middle-income countries, which face financial and linguistic barriers to access mainstream journals. A common criticism of the current evaluation practices is that they can hinder the development of certain topics that are not published in mainstream journals although some of them might be of high local relevance. In this article, we examine this issue by exploring the functions of non-mainstream journals in scientific communication. We interviewed researchers from agricultural sciences, business and management, and chemistry in Colombia on their reasons to publish in non-mainstream journals. We found that non-mainstream journals serve the following functions: 1) offer a space for initiation into publishing (training); 2) provide a link between articles in mainstream journals and articles read by communities with limited access to them (knowledge-bridging); 3) publish topics that are not well covered by mainstream journals (knowledge gap-filling). Therefore, publication in non-mainstream journals cannot be attributed only to 'low scientific quality' research. They also fulfil specific communication functions. These results suggest that research evaluation policy in low and middleincome countries should consider assigning greater value to non-mainstream journals given their role in bridging and disseminating potentially useful and novel knowledge.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration versus coexistence in LIS serials: analysis of authorship affiliations in four European countries

“…In general, this practice presumes that research published in journals with a high position in WoS JCR, SJR and the Scopus CiteScore rankings is excellent and should be rewarded. The DORA declaration (2013) and the Leiden Manifesto (Hicks et al 2015) have warned against this procedure, but such journal-based evaluation systems are used in several countries, including Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Spain and Taiwan (Chavarro et al 2017b;Ràfols et al 2016;Tseng and Tsay 2013;Vessuri et al 2014). It is also important to consider that the inclusion of a journal in WoS seems to be based on entirely objective criteria, but the likelihood of inclusion depends on the country, language and discipline, regardless of its editorial quality or impact (Chavarro et al 2017a).…”

Using Almetrics for Contextualised Mapping of Societal Impact: From Hits to Networks

“…These are scholarly areas which are very badly covered by scientific databases and societal impact indicators, because non-standard publications (Díaz-Faes et al 2016) and informal interactions regarding socioeconomic and cultural issues are more common than in other fields (Olmos et al 2013). Another issue of special interest is the use of these approaches to explore the engagement of researchers with local or global peers or stakeholders, an issue that is hotly debated in countries in the 'scientific peripheries' with pressure to publish internationally (Piñeiro & Hicks 2015;Chavarro et al 2017).…”

Developing scientific capacity in the Global South

“…On the other hand, citations are criticized for being a social construction and not reflecting actual quality (Gilbert 1977;Latour 1987). Moreover, it has been argued that conventional bibliometric indicators are inappropriate in "peripheral" spaces; and that research assessment that is done by existing indicators may not capture science that is not measured through them (Chavarro et al 2017;Hicks et al 2015;Lopez Pineiro & Hicks 2015).…”