Humanities, Citations and Currency: Hierarchies of Value and Enabled Recolonisation

Abstract

A comparative analysis examines the relevance of journal measurement indices for the humanities and the sciences. The analysis explains how different measurements work, what they measure and their impact on the integrity of research, paradigm change and citation levels. The increasing use by university auditors of impact factors as performance management and research output indicators is critically examined with regard to implications for the humanities. The effect of this neoliberal approach on African-based academic developments is examined, as are the intellectually re-colonising effects of such systems.

Promoting Epistemic Vigilance Against Racist Attacks on Africans on Mediatised Permanent Education Sites

“…Scholars must not just study the popular sites of mediation for their own sake, but strategically influence these to promote social transformation. Such scholarship with political agency is necessary especially now when substantial numbers of academic publications are not read at all except by reviewers and referees (Tomaselli 2020).…”

“…Analytical journalistic articles cited in this paper show that it is possible to take academia to popular permanent education sites. There, narratives are published in accessible language, and this is helpful if social scientists remain cognizant that most purely academic articles are reaching fewer audiences, and even fewer are cited within academia itself (Tomaselli 2020).…”

Editing for change: From global bibliometrics to a decolonial aporetics of form in South African journal publishing

“…In this regard, we took seriously the radical potential of what Keyan Tomaselli has described as small but legitimate 'cottageindustry' journals that do not score high on STEM-driven metrics for visibility (and are often excluded from DHETaccredited lists) but that nevertheless publish innovative material focusing on local and regional concerns and speak to audiences operating outside of the neoliberal publishing machine (Tomaselli 2019). But importantly -and unlike other journals who operationalise decolonial agendas through content, but keep intact homogenised notions of metric-based journal management, layout norms, style guides and formwe had intuited that an alertness to discursive activity outlining a decolonial rationality and sensibility required a sense of the apparatus also as a proposition of material arrangements radically problematising the notion of academic journals as neutral platforms enabling of bibliometric accounting practices.…”

“…the word 'apartheid' is mentioned only twice -and then only to point to the imperative of 'overcoming the isolationist effects of the apartheid era' by increasing the international relevance of South African scholarship, mainly by advancing 2.For other critiques of ASSAf's neoliberal presuppositions, seeHofmeyr (2012) andTomaselli (2019).international…”

From the Semi-Periphery with Love. A Dream of a Democratic Social Science: A Margin Lever

“…Our aim is not to analyse the complex issue of internationalization. We only want to refer to those positions that emphasize the hidden hegemony of the core countries and the English language, and the resulting inequalities and injustice (Abriszewski et al, 2016;Connell, 2007;Lily, 2020Medina, 2014;Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2013;Rowlands & Wright, 2020;Tietze & Dick, 2013;Tomaselli, 2019;Wang & Zhang, 2020;Warren et al, 2021). Instead of another attempt to describe or grasp injustice, instances of silencing, etc., we want to join the voices looking for practical solutions.…”