A periphery inside a semi-periphery: The uneven participation of Brazilian scholars in the international community

Abstract

The internationalization of academic production has changed the publishing culture in all corners of the world with increasing participation of scholars from semi-peripheral countries in international journals (Belcher, 2007). While there has been growing interest in how multilingual scholars see this internationalization process, little is known about Brazil. To address this gap, a survey was distributed to scholars (N = 290) from different research fields in this country. The analysis of the data revealed important disciplinary differences, suggesting the existence of a peripheral group of scholars inside this semi-peripheral country. The scholars from the exact and biological sciences reported that they publish in English much more frequently than Portuguese, and few reported language-related issues. They contested the existence of a nativeness bias, although some perceived prejudice against Latin-American research. Scholars from the humanities and the social sciences publish substantially less in international journals, reporting challenges particularly with language. Overall, the data suggest that international publication has become part of the disciplinary culture in Brazil in the hard sciences while the humanities and the social sciences seem to remain in a peripheral position. This appears to be particularly true for disciplines such as education and language and literature.