Political science in Central and Eastern Europe: integration with limited convergence in Czechia

Editing a journal at the semiperiphery: Ambivalence of juniority and meaningfulness of publishing

“…The Deputy Editor-in-Chief and I have aligned our editorial strategies with the hegemonic models as the easiest and most appealing way to increase the Journal's quality and reputation while the Steering Committee was highly affirmative of those steps. This is somewhat ironic as some (Eberle et al, 2021;Kratochvíl, 2016). Compared to the other Czech IR journals, the Journal also became indexed by Scopus relatively soon, which contributed to its international visibility and domestic popularity.…”

“…The first one relates to the status and identity of the Czech discipline of IR. Characterizing the Czech IR as situated at the (semi)periphery of the global IR is not a new argument, and this is how many scholars consider the place of the Czech IR in the world (Kratochvíl, 2016; Růžička, 2016; similarly Bátora & Hynek, 2009; Eberle et al, 2021). The fact that IR in Czechia was established only after the democratic transition at the turn of the 1980s and the 1990s and, hence, is a young academic field is one of the factors that underpin this semiperipheral position.…”

“…I believe that targeting the Czech or perhaps Central European community of PhD candidates can be helpful for individuals as well as the overall academic environment. In Czechia, senior IR academics often fail to build a community of similarly oriented scholars, provide them with informal academic guidance and form closely cooperating research groups (Eberle et al, 2021). This is not to say that nothing like that happens in the Czech IR, but rather that the element of creating research groups or similar platforms is not that common as, for example, in the United Kingdom.…”

“…Although the aforementioned goal has probably not been successfully achieved in a full sense, this ambition contributed towards the development of an international network of authors and readers around the Journal. It was something rather exceptional for a Czech IR or Political Science journal in the late 2000s and the early 2000s as the overwhelming majority of Czech IR and Political Science journals were published only in Czech at that time (Eberle et al, 2021; Kratochvíl, 2016). Compared to the other Czech IR journals, the Journal also became indexed by Scopus relatively soon, which contributed to its international visibility and domestic popularity.…”

“…It should be noted that the Czech academic environment is less internationalized when it comes to the ratio of domestic/foreign students or teaching staff than Western European countries (cf. Eberle et al, 2021; Kubálková, 2009) and Czech universities are often mainly preoccupied with the domestic academic market.…”