Globalization of regional academic journals: A case study of three linguistics journals published in Taiwan

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(1)Globalization of Regional Academic Journals: A Case Study of Three Linguistics Journals Published in Taiwan. One-Soon Her Professor and Chair Graduate Institute of Linguistics National Chengchi University Taipei, Taiwan 116 (R.O.C.) Tel: +886-2-29387246 Fax: +886-2-29387466 Mobile: +886-926142388 Primary e-mail: osh@nccu.edu.tw Secondary e-mail: onesoon@gmail.com. Abstract of a 20-minute individual paper This paper discusses the pressing issues that regional academic journals, especially those published outside of the US and Western Europe, must face in their globalization efforts. After a brief presentation of the overall situation of humanities journals in Taiwan, we then, as a case study, focus on the globalization strategies and efforts by the three linguistics journals Language and Linguistics, Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, and Taiwan Journal of Linguistics. We will discuss the following issues: languages of publication (English only, bilingual, or multi-lingual), editing services for authors, editorial policies and practices, international diversity of editorial board members and contributors, diversity in subject areas, formats of publication (hard copies, CD-Rom, e-journal, etc.), and marketing and circulation. Recently commissioned by Taiwan’s National Science Council, Wang et at (2006) conducted a study, where 10 internationally recognized linguistics scholars, half being editors of international journals, were selected (by a panel of 12 domestic linguistics scholars) to anonymously evaluate the quality and international standing of the three journals mentioned above and rank each of the three journals on the scale of a selected and ranked list of journals published outside of Taiwan. We will critically review this study and contend that the mixing of quality with globalization is misleading, and without specific criteria the comparison between any two journals is not meaningful. Rather, reviewers’ comments and suggestions addressed to a specific journal are far more useful. Finally, we argue that for these three regional linguistics journals the best globalization strategy to is to systematically implement the required features of journals included in a globally established citation index scheme, for example the A&HCI (Arts and Humanities Citation Index) and ECIH (European Citation Index in Humanities) and, if not more importantly, to allow and promote comprehensive webbased free access..

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