A key feature of the long-observed ‘core’ hegemony in International Relations (IR) is a linguistic one, yet it remains the least explored and confronted, with even today’s ‘Global IR’ discussion unquestioningly taking place in English. However, the non-English IR world is demographically and intellectually immense, and global IR cannot afford to ignore it. This study argues that English dominance in IR knowledge production and dissemination is a pillar of a dependent relationship between an English-speaking core and a non-English periphery. It further argues that this linguistic unilateralism, through assimilation, is structurally homogenising, and impedes the periphery’s original contribution potential in an imperialistic manner. This study examines 135 journals from 39 countries in the linguistic periphery to assess the degree and nature of English dominance in them. It explores the relationship between publication language and ranking and analyses citations to understand whether language matters for being cited in the core. We conclude with recommendations for institutions, individuals, and knowledge outlets, including a call for greater multilingualism, which – though a possible risk for parochialism and provincialism – is necessary for periphery concept development and incorporation into a broadened ‘core’, and a necessary stage to curbing the imperialistic impact of linguistic unilateralism and encouraging a genuine globalisation of IR.

There is a long tradition of excellence in research and clinical expertise in psychiatry across Britain. The BJPsych aims to reflect this wealth of mental science and practical experience alongside the very best of research and clinical practice from around the world using a variety of different kinds of articles.

Despite being in operation for a mere five years, the Soviet-era Tajik (Persian) journal Rahbar-i Dānish (1927–1932) was a key venue for exploring and debating the merits of Tajik literature in the context of new ideological and literary trends. Established litterateurs as well as literary newcomers published examples of their literature and literary criticism in this first Tajik monthly social, educational, and literary journal. The present article reviews the history of Rahbar-i Dānish and some of its authors to trace their influence on Tajik literature and literary criticism in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The article addresses the difficulties of creating a Soviet Tajik literature and scrutinizes the various genres featured in the literary section of the journal. Finally, it presents the trajectories of two literary newcomers, Jalāl al-Dīn Ikrām (who later became known as Jalol Ikromi) and Baḥr al-Dīn ʿAzīzī (who died in a Soviet prison in 1944), whose short stories were most prominent in Rahbar-i Dānish. This article is based on an almost complete set of the forty-five issues of the journal, published between August 1927 and March 1932.

Antibiotic residues have entered into the environment owing to the unreasonable use and disposal of antibiotics. The emergence of antibiotic resistance poses a huge threat to ecosystems and human health. In this study, the network analysis method was used to compare publications on antibiotics in water, soil and sediment from the aspects of countries, institutes, journals, subject categories and keywords based on Web of Science Core Collection. The results indicated that the United States of America and China had dominant positions of studies on antibiotics. The Chinese Academy of Sciences published the most articles on antibiotic research. ‘Chemosphere’, ‘Science of the Total Environment’, ‘Environmental Science and Technology’ and ‘Applied and Environmental Microbiology’ all appeared in the top six journals. ‘Environmental Sciences and Ecology’ was the core subject category of antibiotic research. Further analysis results depicted that ‘Antibiotics’, ‘Tetracycline’ and ‘Antibiotic Resistance’ were found as the research hotspots. Tetracycline and oxytetracycline all showed in the top 50 keywords of antibiotics research in water, soil and sediment. However, chlortetracycline, sulfadiazine and tylosin all emerged only in the top 50 keywords of antibiotics study in soil. In future, more attention should be paid to antibiotic resistance genes and antibiotic resistance bacteria in antibiotics research.

The push to implement Open Access (OA) as the new standard for academic research dissemination is creating very real pressures on academic journals. In Canada, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently adopted a policy requiring that journals applying for its Aid to Scholarly Journals (ASJ) grant make their scholarly content freely accessible after no more than a 12-month delay. For journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) that not only publish high-quality, peer-reviewed articles to a specialized audience but also support the work of scholarly associations through the revenues they generate, the push to move to OA comes with a number of challenges. The Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) and the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP) established a committee to chart the best course of action for the CJPS in light of this changing landscape. This article summarizes the key findings of the committee and underscores some of the challenges of OA for journals with a profile similar to the CJPS, as well as for the broader research ecosystem that they support.

Agricultural economists at land-grant universities were surveyed to evaluate the use and assessment of professional journals. Faculty rankings of journals are reported along with faculty perceptions of changes in the quality of selected journals. Of 25 journals used by agricultural economics faculties, the Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics ranked first among regional agricultural economics journals in personal usefulness, subscriptions held, papers submitted, papers published, and participation in the editorial and review processes. The SJAE was also ranked as the second most improved journal among all journals evaluated.

This essay discusses the sundry ethical considerations confronting editors and reviewers. To begin, journal hierarchy and manuscript lifecycles are reviewed. From there, ethical issues faced by individuals in various editorial roles, who interact with various parties, are discussed. Issues include making fair desk rejections, assigning reviewers ethically, refraining from the promotion of HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known), promoting a holistic view of validity, balancing scientific progress with journal success, providing developmental and actionable feedback, disclosing expertise parameters, and upholding the spirit of double-blind review.

One of the most popular indicators is the Impact Factor. This paper examines the coming into being of this highly influential figure. It is the offspring of Eugene Garfield’s experimentation with the huge amounts of data available at his Institute for Scientific Information and the result of a number of attempts to find appropriate measurements for the success (“impact”) of articles and journals. The completely inductive procedure was initially adjusted by examining the data thoughtfully and by consulting with experts from different scientific disciplines. Later, its calculation modes were imposed on other disciplines without further consideration. The paper demonstrates in detail the inopportune consequences of this, in particular for sociology. Neither the definition of disciplines, nor the selection of journals for the Web of Science/Social Science Citation Index follows any comprehensible rationale. The procedures for calculating the impact factor are inappropriate. Despite its obvious unsuitability, the impact factor is used by editors of sociological journals for marketing and impression management purposes. Fetishism!

Research councils, universities and funding agencies are increasingly asking for tools to measure the quality of research in the humanities. One of their preferred methods is a ranking of journals according to their supposed level of internationality. Our quantitative survey of seventeen major journals of medical history reveals the futility of such an approach. Most journals have a strong national character with a dominance of native language, authors and topics. The most common case is a paper written by a local author in his own language on a national subject regarding the nineteenth or twentieth century. American and British journals are taken notice of internationally but they only rarely mention articles from other history of medicine journals. Continental European journals show a more international review of literature, but are in their turn not noticed globally. Increasing specialisation and fragmentation has changed the role of general medical history journals. They run the risk of losing their function as international platforms of discourse on general and theoretical issues and major trends in historiography, to international collections of papers. Journal editors should therefore force their authors to write a more international report, and authors should be encouraged to submit papers of international interest and from a more general, transnational and methodological point of view.