Social Science editors in Public Health: practices and limits in the creation of a scientific habitus

Abstract

Scientific publishing is a socially valued practice, modulating academic trajectories. Scientific journals operate between two distinct social fields, the editorial and the scientific, having as axis the objective and intersubjective relationships of the scientific field. This article analyzes the performance of Social Science editors in the field of Public Health, as well as their conceptions about the process of evaluating scientific articles, their perspective and relationship with other agents of editorial practice, and their role in shaping a scientific habitus. The methodological option was the thematic analysis of 13 semi-structured interviews with editors-in-chief and associates of the Social Science area of prominent journals in Public Health. Editors are agents who operate with the contradictions and pressures derived from productivism in a relative autonomy of the editorial practice. They gradually create an editorial habitus coined by empirical practice, self-taught training, and voluntary dedication. They also establish a dialogue between authors and the peer-competitor community in the field. They delimit objects and themes of interest in the area from the legitimacy based on the "disinterested" action demanded by the scientific field. They will impose barriers to articles considered of low quality, defined especially by theoretical-methodological gaps and lack of originality. However, their didactic work of inculcation in a way considered appropriate in the management of theories and methodologies of Social Science is limited to the refusal of texts, which suggests the importance of greater articulation between editors, editors' forums, graduate programs, and other agents of training of researchers in the field.