Building Bridges for Social Justice in Global Publishing: Seeking the Mexican Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT At the NASIG 2019 Conference, the presenter outlined how the dominance of English-language publishers based in the Global North negatively impacts researchers in Puebla, Mexico. Universities in the Global South must compete in world-wide university ranking systems, which intensifies the pressure to compete with researchers in the Global North to publish in journals of the Global North in order to demonstrate global competitiveness and local career standing. To support those competitive publishing expectations, institutions of the Global South must also subscribe to English-language journal packages of the Global North, thus locking in a cycle of academic publishing dominance. Meanwhile, Latin America is developing quality Open Access (OA) alternatives. In May 2018, the presenter received funding from a NASIG grant to interview journal editors and librarians at universities in Puebla, Mexico. Through these interviews, the presenter sought to explore challenges for researchers publishing in Global North journals, discuss the role of OA at the interviewees’ institutions, consider the future outlook for OA in Mexico, and examine the social justice implications of the academic journal publishing ecosystem. The presenter reported on findings from the interviews and invited members to discuss how engagement with researchers from the Global South can help the global scholarly communication ecosystem become more equitable.