al
journals, to
their
concentration in a handful of giant
Western
based
publishing companies
,
and
on the other by
the
introduction of
quant
i
fied measurements
,
o
f scientific production
in academic promotion
procedures,
referred
to here as ‘
metrification
’
.
It has been argued that
the quest for a higher IF ranking might induce editors to
prefer ‘citable’,
mainstream papers to more specializ
ed ones (Poria
,
Schwartz and Uysal 2015)
, and shape scholars’
decisions on the kinds of topics and issues they study, and on their choice of methodology and
publication venues (Smeyers and Burbules 2011). The
perceived centrality of IF
might thus deflect
t
he focus of scientific work from
what
to publish to
where
to publish (cf. P
e
rdue 2015),
and
to
m
otivate researchers to pursue mainstream topics of research, believed to be suitable for
publication in high IF journals (Poria
et al.
2015), rather than tackli
ng more innovative, explorat
ory
The
Dissemination
of the
Western
Publication Regime
to
Emerg
ing
Regions
The academic publication regime
is
culturally, institutionally and linguistically rooted in the West
,
and
bears
a distinct Western, or Eurocentric, or even Anglocentric
character
. The regime was
introduced in the West
in
the contemporary
period
under the
pressures of a neo
liberal ideology
,
which
has
expanded from the traditional domain of the economy to embrace
other,
previously
relatively autonomou
s
domain
s such as health
,
art,
religion
and academia.
But
as
th
is
neo
liberal
orie
ntation increasingly spread to
the emerg
ing
world
regions (
Poo
c
haroen and Brillantes
2013),
it engendered
a
process of
‘
university restructuring [which] is taking a similar path in a variety of
countries with
different social, political and economic regimes
’
(Torres and Schugurensky 200
2:
429). Under the impact of
the forces of globalization, and the growing hegemony of neo
liberalism
in many countries,
the leadership of
universities around the world ha
s
reconsidered their traditional
missions in favor of concerns about excellence, efficiency, expenditures and rate
s of retur
n
, and
the enhancement of
their global rankings.
As part of this re
orientatio
n, the
universities’ leadership
adopt
ed
the requirements of the publication regime
, despite its
Eurocentrism,
and a
growing
criticism of its
metric indicators and ranking methods in Western academia.
Consequently,
a major
transition
took place
in the
universities
in th
e emerging
regions,
from
interna
l
traditions of
Though some of these journals copied the Western procedure of
refereeing submissions, the quality of their publications
was often
problematic
and
their impact on
the field
generally low
; they were mostly not included in the major
international
journal indexes
The tendency to relate p
romotion prospects
to ISI
and Scopus
listed journals
has been generated
in no small part by
the creation
in 2001
of the
Thai
Journal
Citation
Index Cent
er
(TCI)
, which
in
2008
expanded
its
coverage
to the humanities and social sciences (
Sombatsompop et al. 201
).
Universities in Asia
, for example,
have
engaged
some
senior, often retired,
internationally recognized academics from Western
countries, to mentor, supervise and guide
early career staff
, and sometimes even to jointly publish
articles with them
.
In Southeast Asia, s
eminars
,
in which foreign researchers co
a
ch
ed
aspiring
local staff in writing scientific papers
,
have been
initiated
by universities in Brunei, Malaysia
,
Indonesia
and Thailand
.
Such seminars are
less concerned with the subject matter of the
early
career staff’s
work, and more with the way of its pre
sentation.
In one such instance,
two of the
authors of this article
were invited
to a workshop organized in 2014
by the
t
ourism
d
epartment of
a
u
niversity in northern Thailand to
guide
and advise
advanced students and
early career
staff
members from several
academ
i
c institution
s
in
writ
ing
papers publishable in prestigious
international journals in tourism studies
.