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Beyond Indexing: Why Visibility Still Eludes Global South Journals
In the age of open access and global research networks, visibility is a currency for journals. Yet many high-quality publications from the Global South remain largely invisible in major indexing platforms like Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed. This invisibility affects citations, recognition, and opportunities for collaboration, perpetuating a cycle of underrepresentation.
Reports from UNESCO, EASE, and INASP highlight persistent barriers that hinder these journals, from language and technical limitations to editorial constraints and systemic biases. Understanding these challenges is crucial to achieving true global research equity.
Barriers to Visibility
Language Limitations
English dominates scholarly communication, and journals publishing in regional languages often struggle to gain global attention. Even high-quality research can remain unseen if abstracts, titles, and keywords are not available in English. UNESCO notes that language is a systemic barrier, limiting inclusion in international indexing and citation networks. Multilingual abstracts and translated keywords can bridge this gap, allowing local research to reach global audiences without losing linguistic diversity.
Technical and Infrastructure Gaps
Technological limitations pose another significant challenge. Many Global South journals operate on outdated publishing platforms, have inconsistent or absent DOI registration, lack standardized metadata, and face difficulties integrating with systems like ORCID or Crossref. Limited infrastructure for digital preservation and long-term archiving further reduces discoverability. Indexing platforms require compliance with these technical standards, but journals with constrained resources often struggle to meet them, reducing their chances of global recognition.
Editorial Challenges
Editorial capacity and workflow are critical determinants of visibility. Many journals face irregular publication schedules, limited training for editors and reviewers, inconsistent peer-review procedures, and weak adherence to publishing ethics. These shortcomings can prevent journals from meeting rigorous indexing criteria. Additionally, global perception biases favor journals from North America and Europe, marginalizing research that addresses regional or local priorities and further limiting recognition for high-quality publications from the Global South.
Strategies to Boost Visibility
Despite these barriers, journals can take practical steps to improve their global presence. Enhancing metadata quality is crucial, as metadata directly affects discoverability. Journals should provide English-language titles, abstracts, and keywords, adopt structured XML formats such as JATS, standardize author affiliations, integrate ORCID identifiers, and ensure all articles are registered with DOIs. Even modest improvements can substantially increase indexing potential and search engine visibility.
Adding multilingual abstracts and keywords allows journals to maintain local relevance while increasing global accessibility. This approach aligns with UNESCO’s recommendations for inclusive scholarly communication.
Strengthening editorial workflows is equally important. Journals should implement consistent peer-review timelines, provide training for editors on ethics and reporting standards, maintain regular publication schedules, and adopt plagiarism detection and ethical guidelines. Strong editorial management enhances credibility and directly improves indexing eligibility.
Regional collaboration and networking can further amplify visibility. Platforms such as African Journals Online (AJOL), SciELO in Latin America, J-STAGE in Japan, and regional citation indexes like the ASEAN Citation Index or Malaysian Citation Index provide infrastructure, best practices, and pathways to broader indexing. These networks help journals build recognition and develop citation ecosystems that support global indexing.
Ethical transparency is increasingly required for indexing. Journals should clearly communicate authorship criteria, conflict-of-interest disclosures, peer-review procedures, and data availability statements. Such practices not only satisfy indexing requirements but also build trust within the research community.
Towards Global Equity
Improving visibility cannot rely solely on journal-level interventions; systemic reform is essential. Indexing criteria should accommodate diverse languages, publication practices, and regional research priorities. Editorial boards of indexing platforms must include greater representation from the Global South, and investments in infrastructure, training, and capacity building are critical. Only through these structural changes can the research output of the Global South be fully recognized, valued, and integrated into the global scientific dialogue.
Closing the Indexing Divide
The invisibility of Global South journals is not a reflection of quality but the result of language, technical, editorial, and systemic barriers. By improving metadata, adopting multilingual strategies, strengthening editorial processes, and leveraging regional networks, journals can enhance their global presence. True equity, however, requires a broader rethinking of how scholarship is evaluated and valued. Only then can research from the Global South be seen, cited, and celebrated on the global stage.
Keywords
Global South journals Scholarly publishing Journal visibility Indexing barriers Metadata quality Multilingual abstracts Editorial capacity Research equity
Editor’s Brew delivers fresh updates, community highlights, and editorial insights on behalf of ACSE. These posts represent the “daily blend” of news, initiatives, and collective wisdom from across the scholarly publishing community.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of their affiliated institutions, the Asian Council of Science Editors (ACSE), or the Editor’s Café editorial team.
