Striving for worldwide impact : a multi-method study on the internationalization processes of Chilean scholarly communities

Abstract:Based on different research strategies, this work analyses the internationalization trends in scholarly communities in Chile, discusses the different orientations these processes have taken across time, and sheds light on the possibilities and pitfalls of current expectations. Internationalization processes in science have traditionally been understood as the ‘natural’ path for the development of scholarly communities. In spite of nationalist orientations, which notoriously led to the closure of some networks (e.g., in the Nazi Germany or in the URSS during the Cold War), the universalist ambitions of science often support representations that depict a teleological process oriented to the formation of a worldwide community of scholars with shared normative and cognitive orientations. By using a multi-method approach (scientometrics, discourse analysis and interviews), this Ph.D. dissertation questions this seemingly ‘natural’ path in (semi )peripheral scholarly communities while discussing the ostensibly objective and technical traits of widespread internationalization measures. Since the mid-twentieth century, sociologists and historians of science have developed different strategies to make sense of science and the communities that support it. These strategies vary remarkably in focus, ranging from emphasizing the reward system of science, the shape of cooperation and/or influence networks, power structures, epistemic practices, and so on. This dissertation aims to contribute to this body of knowledge by analyzing the internationalization processes of Chilean scholarly communities from a communicative standpoint. In doing so, it makes use of insights from different strategies in order to empirically observe the complexity of the internationalization processes of scholarly communication networks. This hybrid approach stresses scholars’ practices and enables the research to observe local and national orientations while keeping an eye on global transformations. Based on inductive reasoning, this research aims to propose a complex understanding of the internationalization phenomena by emphasizing in-between network structures. Methods-wise, this study uses both quantitative and qualitative tools. Each chapter in which empirical findings are presented is based on a different dataset, collected by different methods. However, a shared interest in the role of international scholarly databases and indexes (especially Web of Science) in current internationalization pressures underlies all the methodological strategies used. Chapter Two uses a scientometric analysis of 121,451 papers (co-)authored by scholars based in Chile and included in databases of WoS between 1976 and 2015. Chapter Three is based on a discourse analysis of all the editorial material published (since their first issue) by the 47 Chilean journals included in WoS databases in 2015. Chapter Four draws on qualitative interviews with the editors-in-chief of twelve Chilean journals included in WoS. Finally, Chapter Five analyses, on the one hand, 30 qualitative interviews with sociologists who work or worked in universities in Valparaíso (Chile), and, on the other, 230 publications authored by sociologists working in these universities. The different methodological strategies strive to produce a more comprehensive view of the internationalization practices in scholarly communities and of the historical transitions experienced in the different ecologies that underpin scholarly communication networks. The main findings of the research are nuanced. While they show the current omnipresence of images of the world of science provided by international databases and indexes, they also highlight the different reactions to the internationalization pressures. These conflicting reactions – ranging from the reinforcement of continental networks to diverging appraisals of scientometric tools – show that internationalization is far from being a shared, ahistorical, and neutral concept, and highlight the (lasting) important role played by local, national, and continental networks within the world of science. Overall, this dissertation clarifies the consequences of the rise of international databases and indexes to describe and evaluate internationalization processes, discusses the performative effects of the powerful representations of the world of science provided by these instruments, and brings the forms of inequality in the world system to the fore. In the concluding chapter, the pressures which ensue from these internationalization instruments on the scholarly (semi )periphery is problematized and an argument in favor of scientific diversity is developed. Finally, the dissertation reflects on the relevance of political and scholarly commitments to scientific diversity as a way to both permit the preservation and development of different scholarly traditions, and encourage the emergence of challenging approaches to global mainstream paradigms and research programs. Securing scientific diversity is beneficial for the scholarly communities in the (semi-)periphery, but also for the world of science itself, and it may help to protect important aspects of the so-called ethos of science, such as its communalist and universalist values.

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Embargoed