Language barriers exacerbate publishing challenges for scholars from the Global South. “Native-like” English proficiency often becomes one of the criteria for evaluation. Photo: TUCHONG

When discussing her recent experience submitting to a leading international journal, Dolors Armenteras, a distinguished professor of landscape ecology and conservation biology at the National University of Colombia, still struggles to conceal her indignation.

“I remember a paper being dismissed as ‘too local to be relevant,’ while very similar European case studies were framed as global contributions,” she recalled. “It was not the quality of my work at stake, but the geography of who was speaking.”

Armenteras’ experience reflects the broader predicament facing many scholars from the Global South. In recent interviews with CSST, academics from Latin America, Africa, and Asia reported encountering multiple barriers when submitting to international journals. Our survey suggests that within the international academic publishing system, a paper’s likelihood of acceptance is strongly shaped by factors such as the author’s geographic location, language background, and methodological approach. Global South scholars are operating within a system dominated by the Global North, where English functions as the lingua franca and commercial interests exert significant influence, embedding structural bias and inequality deep within the publishing ecosystem.

Heightened bar for trust

Bias on the part of reviewers and editors was the most frequently cited obstacle. Carolina Santacruz-Pérez, senior science officer for the Latin American and Caribbean Region at the International Science Council, told CSST that such bias often appears in assessments of the relevance or originality of research produced in Latin America and other parts of the Global South.

“Even when the science is robust, studies that address region-specific challenges or apply locally adapted methodologies may be undervalued because they do not align with dominant theoretical frameworks or global research agendas,” Santacruz-Pérez explained. This, she added, creates a systemic imbalance that reinforces epistemic dependence and limits the visibility and impact of regional knowledge.

María Romina Schiaffino, a researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council, pinpointed structural inequality in the evaluation of scientific value as the most pervasive “invisible barrier” in academic publishing. In her view, the system clearly favors institutions, frameworks, and research methods rooted in the Global North. “Even high-quality research from Latin America often struggles for visibility and legitimacy within this uneven system,” she said.

Several interviewees also noted that Global South scholars are frequently required to provide additional layers of verification. In a recent study on fires in Colombia’s savannas, Armenteras’ team relied on FireCCI51, a widely validated global fire dataset. Reviewers nevertheless demanded that the entire analysis be rerun using alternative datasets, such as MCD64A1—a request rarely made of researchers based in Northern institutions using the same data. Although the team complied and demonstrated that both datasets yielded identical conclusions, the episode underscored a broader pattern: Findings from the Global South are often met with greater skepticism, and methodologies are subjected to a kind of “double validation” not routinely imposed elsewhere.

Language further compounds these challenges. The perceived “authenticity” of English expression frequently becomes an implicit evaluation criterion.

“Even having paid for professional revisions, I would still get comments on my English,” Armenteras said. Santacruz-Pérez echoed this concern, noting that “even when manuscripts were carefully written in English, certain expressions or styles that differ from those common in North American or European academia were sometimes perceived as weaknesses, rather than as legitimate scientific communication from a multilingual research community.”

Western-centrism and economic barriers

Interviewees consistently pointed to a pronounced Western-centric bias within their respective disciplines. “The dominant ‘international mainstream’ continues to be shaped by institutions, funding priorities, and editorial networks located primarily in Europe and North America,” Santacruz-Pérez observed. “This influences not only the visibility of research output but also which questions are considered globally relevant, and which remain perceived as regional or peripheral.”

“Most leading journals, editorial boards, and theoretical frameworks are dominated by institutions from the Global North,” said Schiaffino, a devoted researcher in microbial ecology. “For example, Latin American authors represent less than 10% of publications in top ecology journals, despite the region’s global biodiversity importance.”

Similar dynamics prevail in landscape ecology and conservation science. According to Armenteras, a specialist in the field, prevailing standards of “excellence,” evaluation metrics, and even the language of science itself—English—reproduce exclusion. She pointed out that only a small fraction of global biodiversity research funding is directed toward tropical regions, even though these areas contain most of the world’s biodiversity. This imbalance perpetuates a distorted cycle in which theoretical production remains concentrated in the Global North, while the Global South is reduced to a source of data or case studies.

Laçin İdil Öztiğ, a professor at Yıldız Technical University in Türkiye, identified comparable patterns in international relations (IR) research, noting that “the IR discipline is marked by inequality between Global North and Global South scholars.” She added that geographic differences in IR knowledge production persist, alongside stark disparities between the Global North and the Global South in representation within high-ranking IR journals. “Furthermore, even though Global South countries have enormous potential to enrich and globalize IR with their history, religious, and philosophical traditions, this potential remains largely untapped.”

Economic pressures further constrain participation. “For example, colleagues at my university are willing to pay up to $1200 to have their papers published in international journals. To put in perspective, to publish locally—in South Africa—journals may charge $170,” explained Kevin Teise, a senior lecturer from the Faculty of Education at Sol Plaatje University in South Africa.

In Pakistan, Taimoor ul Hassan, a professor from the Faculty of Media and Mass Communication at the University of Central Punjab, described how exorbitant fees—sometimes as high as $3,000 for guaranteed acceptance—have given rise to a gray market in academic publishing, in which, he noted, “Publication cartels have emerged, offering authorship slots and claiming connections with journal managements.”

Institutional pressures exacerbate these difficulties. In many countries, international publication is directly tied to performance evaluations and promotion. “We are ‘coerced’ by our institutions to publish in international journals,” Teise admitted, noting that such requirements constitute a key factor in performance evaluation and promotion.

Hassan added that in Pakistan, the Higher Education Commission requires 10 to 12 Web of Science–indexed articles for academic promotion—a challenging benchmark given that many faculty members struggle to publish even one.

“High publication fees disproportionately affect researchers from institutions with limited funding, ultimately narrowing the diversity of voices represented in global science,” Santacruz-Pérez said.

Seeking balance and paths forward

Faced with systemic inequities, some scholars choose accommodation, while others attempt to strike a balance between international recognition and local relevance. Schiaffino, for instance, designs research that connects local issues to global debates, publishing in international journals for visibility while continuing to publish in regional outlets to maintain local impact.

Armenteras often presents the same research in two forms: “Once in English for visibility, and again in Spanish so it could inform decision-makers and policies in Colombia. For example, some of my most influential work for Colombian conservation policy was published in Spanish reports with direct uptake by institutions. These had no weight in global rankings, but real impact locally,” she explained. “Conversely, publishing in high-impact journals brought international recognition but felt disconnected from the immediate needs on the ground. Balancing both has been exhausting but necessary.”

Meanwhile, journals across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are working to build a more equitable academic space. “Journals in South Africa try to keep their rates low, improve their turn-around-time, and include international scholars on their boards,” Teise told CSST.

Across Africa, scholarly communication systems are evolving in response to local needs and a spirit of innovation. The open-access platform “African Journals Online (AJOL)” has indexed over 500 journals, making research findings from across the continent more visible globally. Regional networks such as the “African Open Science Platform (AOSP),” the “West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN),” and the “UbuntuNet Alliance” are also developing infrastructure to connect universities and research institutions, support the establishment of knowledge repositories, and promote making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

“Latin America has been a pioneer in developing diamond open access models—journals that are free to read and free to publish in. Initiatives like SciELO, Redalyc, and AmeliCA have established non-commercial, scholar-led platforms that aim to reduce the financial barriers to publishing. These platforms are designed to prioritize regional relevance over commercial interests,” Schiaffino said proudly.

These platforms also support local and regional languages, promote multilingual publishing, and provide peer-review and editorial assistance in Spanish, Portuguese, and even indigenous languages. Many journals publish papers in multiple languages, creating space for more diverse and plural knowledge systems to flourish.

Asia presents yet another landscape. China has promoted open access through multiple initiatives, establishing open platforms that facilitate academic discovery and sharing. Governments in countries such as India, Indonesia, and Thailand are also developing integrated academic platforms that emphasize local relevance, inclusivity, open access, and capacity building. Together, these efforts reflect a shared push to foster an endogenous circulation system for knowledge dissemination in the Global South, gradually reducing dependence on the academic infrastructure of the Global North.

Armenteras envisioned an ideal academic ecosystem in which knowledge from the Global South is not treated merely as “case studies,” but recognized as a source of theory, innovation, and leadership. In her view, such a system would move beyond a model in which the Global North dictates priorities or monopolizes knowledge production. Instead, collaboration would be more horizontal, with South–South cooperation valued alongside North–South exchanges, and with genuine co-design and shared leadership replacing symbolic consultation. “In such a system, equity would mean more than access: It would mean fair authorship, funding, and decision-making. Knowledge from the South would not be validated only when it echoes the North, but valued in its own right,” she concluded.