A recent paper by Yeung and Thomas (2021) on journals in event management opens up an interesting debate on the role of journals as academic fora. They demonstrate that event management publishing is dominated by a handful of influential journals, which are in turn dominated by a few, predominantly English-speaking institutions and academics. How can we ensure that these journals help to stimulate debate rather that limiting it? How can we open up the debate to new and critical voices, particularly from other language areas and backgrounds? See some initial thoughts in my commentary on Yeung and Thomas, and let's open up the debate.
Journals help expand and share knowledge and experiences worldwide. Transferring academic and research expertise among different countries creates opportunities for growth and development.
Journals help expand and share knowledge and experiences worldwide. Transferring academic and research expertise among different countries creates opportunities for growth and development.
There are scientific journals in different languages (German, Spanish, Chinese etc.). By publishing in any other language than English you limit the opportunities to share your research with a world community.
Dear Olga, you are certainly right in terms of the limitations for individual researchers. There are also other issues, which include the ability of the scientific community to benefit from diverse voices and ideas. If journals in a single language (no matter how widely spoken) dominate the debate, then we lose much of this diversity, which is also supposed to be a source of creativity. So not just the individuals publishing in other languages lose opportunities, we as a global academic community also lose something as well.
Dear Gred, I agree, a global scientific community loses a lot as well as individuals
Dear Greg, thanks for sharing this, interesting thoughts. Quite often one can detect excellent articles written in less popular languages e.g. in the context of the proceedings of a national thematic conference on festivals. On the other hand the motivation to publish in own language is limited as these publications will not be indexed, therefore not a choice in the publish or perish context...
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