If you walk through the corridors of a university that’s not one of the big ones you will see them. They have websites and small groups of people who edit the content. Some universities even have journals that are run from their libraries or departments or one part of the university. These journals are written in the language and they focus on things that are important to the region. They do not try to be famous around the world. University journals, like these are often overlooked by people who read. A new study says that people might be missing out by not paying attention to university journals.
People do not usually think about university journals when they consider the publishing system.. University journals are actually a big part of it. Some researchers recently looked at this topic. Published their findings, in Scientometrics. They found out that universities and their departments publish a lot of journals. Than 19,000 active university journals to be exact. These university journals are peer-reviewed. Come from 148 different countries. The number of university journals is really surprising because many people think that big companies control most of the publishing. University journals are a part of the global publishing system.
This is important because academic journals are where a lot of academic life still happens on the ground. Academic journals are where new researchers publish their research papers. Academic journals are where social scientists write about policy debates that affect people. Academic journals are where historians and linguists and education scholars publish their work that does not easily fit the priorities of citation markets.
The study gets its information from places, some of which are well known and some that are not as well known. The main source of information is Ulrichsweb. The study also checks this information against Scopus, Web of Science the Directory of Open Access Journals and OpenAlex. When you look at all of these sources together you get an idea of what is really going on and you can see that global rankings and citation metrics do not always give you the whole story. Global rankings and citation metrics can be misleading. The study shows this by looking at Ulrichsweb and the other sources.
One thing that really stands out is that university journals are not well known in the systems that decide what is important in academics. University journals are not well known in these systems. Three quarters of university journals are found in OpenAlex. About half of university journals are found in DOAJ.. University journals are not found as much in other places. Than one in four university journals are listed in Scopus and fewer than one in five university journals are listed in Web of Science. For people who do research and need to be in those databases to get ahead the point is simple. When you publish in an university journal it is, like publishing in secret. University journals are not seen by people.
Invisibility is not the same. The United States and Indonesia have the cases of this. Brazil, Russia, Türkiye and Ukraine are also on this list.. Just looking at the numbers does not give us the whole picture. When we look at how many journals there are compared to the number of universities countries like Spain and Türkiye are really good at this. The universities in these countries like Spain and Türkiye publish a lot of journals. People, in other countries do not often read these journals from Spain and Türkiye.
Language is really important. A lot of university journals than a third only publish things in languages other than English. In some places, like the Middle East and North Africa there are journals that use languages but they do not use English at all which is pretty surprising. This makes a lot of sense to the people who edit these journals and to the people who read them. The Language also explains why these journals have a time being seen by systems that are built around people citing things in English and that is because of the Language.
Discipline is really important. University journals are mostly, about sciences and humanities. These subjects are usually connected to what’s happening in a particular country what people are talking about and local records. University journals do not work well in the system where people want to publish things quickly and be cited by others from different countries.
Medical fields and technical fields are different. They have mostly moved to publishing.
Open access is something that’s really good. When data is available a lot of university journals do not charge authors to publish their work. This is called the Diamond open access model. It is very common in university journals that are listed in the DOAJ. This shows how these university journals actually work. They are not there to make money. The university journals survive because of the support they get from the university the work that editors do. Because the people who run them feel a sense of responsibility, to academics and to open access.
This model is not very strong. The people who edit these journals are often teachers at universities. They have a lot of work to do. They do not get credit for what they do. The journals do not do much to market themselves. Some journals do not even get an ISSN, which’s a special number that helps people find them. Because of this people can not find these journals in lists of journals like Ulrichsweb. There are websites like Open Journal Systems that make it easy to start a journal.. Even with these websites it is still hard for people to find the journal. The Open Journal Systems and other websites like it have made starting a journal but the journal still has to be visible to people and that is a separate problem, for the journal.
People who were asked about the study say the thing. Universities say they want to be known over the world and have a big impact but they still use local journals to teach and share knowledge. In some places like parts of Africa and the Middle East, where resources are limited these local journals are the places where scholars can really publish their work. Universities and scholars rely on these journals. Local journals are important for scholars, in these areas.
The study really shows us that there is a difference between how we measure what is important in academics and how knowledge is actually made. University journals are really important to the people who make up the knowledge ecosystems. They help the groups of people who study the things. They make sure that many different languages are still used. They give people the space to do more detailed research.. The systems we use to decide if research is good or not do not pay much attention to university journals. University journals are still very important. They are, at the centre of knowledge ecosystems.
There is no solution to this problem. Adding journals to Scopus or Web of Science could be helpful for some journals but the thing is, not all journals want to be part of this or even need it. What might really make a difference is making infrastructures like DOAJ and OpenAlex better. This is something that could matter a lot in the future. It would also be helpful if universities and institutions recognized the work that editors do because right now this work is not really valued. Editorial work, for journals is something that happens behind the scenes. It needs to be recognized.
The bigger question lingers in the background. If universities continue to overlook their own journals, what kind of academic system are they quietly building? One where knowledge travels far but floats free of place, language and community. Or one that still values the slower, messier work of thinking locally while speaking globally. The answer is already being written, issue by issue, in journals most people never see.
