Artur Bajerski

Abstract

A number of investigations have recently been devoted to the issues of inequalities in the international academicdiscourse. Hardly any of them concern, though, scholarly publishing practices and the actual utilizationof the scientific output of non-Anglophone geographers, especially those from regions undergoing a neoliberalturn in the management of tertiary education and science. The following article aims to partly fill the gapthrough a close bibliometric analysis of the participation of researchers from East-Central Europe in internationalhuman geography. The investigation makes use of information about articles published in 48 geographicaljournals indexed in Web of Science. The results of the examination reveal that the share of researchers from East-Central Europe in the international geographical discourse is rather inconsiderable. The geographersstruggle with the following problems: (1) publishing in a limited group of periodicals (concerning mostly theissues of Europe) coupled with a dearth of publications in important American and British societal journalsas well as the ones of a more radical orientation; (2) infrequent citations of their works as compared to thoseof Anglophone and Western European researchers. All this is accounted for, inter alia, by (1) the negativeimpact the socialist period had on the development of social sciences, (2) a poor command of English, (3)a research focus on well-established and ‘safe’ themes as well as (4) the mechanisms of the Anglophone dominancein science. Giving all these handicaps careful consideration, the authors formulate the idea of double publication policy aimed at ameliorating the discussed problems.

Keywords: East-Central Europe, geographers • bibliometric analysis, scientific communication, Anglophone domination, English language

Artur Bajerski [bajerski@amu.edu.pl], Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management Adam Mickiewicz University, Dzięgielowa 27, 61‑680 Poznań: Poland
Krzysztof Przygoński [k.przygonski@wp.pl], Department of Linguistic Applications in Management Czestochowa University of Technology, Armii Krajowej 19 B, 42‑200 Częstochowa: Poland