Challenges and strategies for writing to a global audience from a local context
Do you consider the cost of publishing in top-tier journals if you are a researcher from the Global South? No, I am not talking about the article processing charges. I am talking about the cost to tax payers who supported your research.
Publishing in top-tier journals pressures African, Asian and Latin American researchers to generalise their results to Western sensibilities, thus neglecting the local context – that is, the local tax payers. For example, a recent study by Herlin Chien found that publications in two top-tier journals by researchers from Asia and Africa rarely offered policy recommendations relevant to their local context.[1]
When I was working in China, I had a manuscript rejected because it was considered regional. The manuscript investigated a local problem (electronic waste pollution at the country's largest dumping site) caused by global consumerism and the trafficking of electronic waste by Western countries. The sticking point for the reviewers was that the recommendations I gave were too local-centric.
Four challenges in speaking to a global audience
Geographic bias
The weirdest rejection I received was for a manuscript I recently co-authored with some colleagues from Nigeria. The paper looked at climate change in several countries in West Africa. The manuscript was rejected because it was perceived as too regional. The weird part is that the area investigated in the study was larger than Europe or the United States of America.
“research that addresses local needs of developing countries is unlikely to attract much attention from the world’s academic community.”
Disparate research priorities
I agree with Tijssen et al. (2006), who observed that “research that addresses local needs of developing countries is unlikely to attract much attention from the world’s academic community.” [2] Hence, local researchers draft their manuscripts to satiate Western scientific curiosity and sometimes abandon the research focus and practices they know are relevant to their local research community.
Local journals have low visibility
Local journals are the best ‘vehicles for disseminating relevant results of indigenous research activities dealing with issues or problems of predominantly or exclusively local relevance’ as noted by Tijssen et al. (2006). [2] However, local journals often lack local and international visibility. Hence, researchers from Africa, Asia and Latin America face a dilemma – publish in international journals and lose local context relevancy or engage with domestic journals and lose visibility.
Joining conversations rather than starting your own
A study by Lages et al. (2015) concluded that researchers from Africa and the Middle East are expected to present their manuscripts in a manner that demonstrates that they are joining a conversation that began in Europe or the USA. One interviewee even recommended that one could ‘increase the potential of publication if the background and findings from the study [are] put into US and European context’. [3]
How to become global without losing local context relevancy
To prepare a manuscript that informs local and international audiences without losing visibility, you must address the following questions, some of which were developed by Karen Holl.
Are my conclusions constructively aligned with my hypothesis/objectives?
Write down the principal conclusions that can be drawn from your research. Identify the major policy implications and possible actions that can be drawn from each conclusion. Illustrate how these conclusions are relevant to global audiences. Always ensure that your conclusion is supported by your results and that it is aligned with your research hypothesis/objectives.
Your work can be based on diverse literature from Asia, Africa and Latin America that is foundational to interpreting your results and proposing practical implications and yet remain palpable to a global audience
Are my introduction and discussion rooted in a sound theoretical and practical framework?
The good thing about theory is that it does not have to be rooted in Eurocentric epistemology. Your work can be based on diverse literature from Asia, Africa and Latin America that is foundational to interpreting your results and proposing practical implications and yet remain palpable to a global audience. Hence, embedding your research based on sound theory can help your manuscript shed the regional misnomer.
Is my research methodology sound enough to permit generalisation?
Journals in environment and ecology tend to favour methodologies that are expensive and inaccessible to researchers from low-resource countries. Despite that limitation, you can improve your chances of getting published in these journals by ensuring that your research method is valid, reliable and repeatable.
A valid research method can adequately address the research objective/hypothesis, a reliable research method produces the same results over time, and a replicable research method is one that other researchers can adequately reproduce to obtain comparable results. This can be achieved using multiple study sites and linking the findings to previous studies.
References
- Chien, H. Evaluating impacts of researchers to enable sustainability transition: using urban ecosystem service literature as an exemplary field. Environ Dev Sustain 24, 2345–2361 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01536-4
- Tijssen, R.J.W., Mouton, J., van Leeuwen, T.N., Boshoff, N., How relevant are local scholarly journals in global science? A case study of South Africa. Res. Eval. 15(3), 163-174 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3152/147154406781775904
- Lages CR, Pfajfar G, and SHOHAM A. International Marketing Review 32 52–77 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-12-2014-0374
Edmond Sanganyado is a senior lecturer in Environmental Forensics at Northumbria University, UK. Before that, he was an associate professor at Shantou University, China. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Toxicology from the University of California Riverside, USA, and a BSc (Hons) in Applied Chemistry from the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe. He is interested in understanding the behavior of chemicals in the environment, and his primary goal is to develop techniques for mitigating chemical pollution. Edmond is associate editor of Frontiers in Water, academic editor of PLoS ONE and PeerJ, and editorial board member of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, BMC Chemistry and Communications Earth & Environment. He is a member of the Zimbabwe Young Academy of Sciences and the Global Young Academy. Edmond was elected as a Fellow of the Institution of Environmental Science in recognition of his outstanding contributions to environmental science and sustainability.