Publishing Nationally or Internationally in the Humanities and Social Sciences: What Do Journal Websites Say about the Divide?

Abstract

As scholarly publishing continues to expand its international dimension in the globalizing era, authors in non-Anglophone contexts today are increasingly confronted with the decision to publish nationally or internationally. Linguistic challenges aside, such a decision is complicated by the tension between local interests and international solidarity with changing conventions of scholarly publishing in the national context. This study investigated one facet of this tension by comparing national and international publishing activities in the humanities and social sciences based on the data collected from the websites of sixty Chinese-medium national journals and sixty English-medium international journals. The findings point to a complex interplay between local and international traditions, norms, and politics of knowledge production. What these changes mean and how they may bear on author choice is discussed with implications for understanding the dynamic landscape of scholarly publishing in non-Anglophone systems of knowledge production.