Who navigates the “elite” of communication journals? The participation of BRICS universities in top-ranked publications

1 Introduction

The scholarly literature has increasingly scrutinized the challenges that Global South-based researchers face when trying to circulate in prestigious journals within the field of Communication Research (Ai and Masood 2021; Albuquerque 2021; Ganter and Ortega 2019; Mutsvairo et al. 2021). The requirement to submit papers in English (Cheruiyot 2021), the paywalls maintained by commercial publishers (Oliveira et al. 2021), and the underrepresentation of scholars from peripheral universities on editorial boards (Albuquerque et al. 2020) fuel a framework that not only shapes what is deemed “relevant” or “interesting” (Goyanes 2020) but also leads to the isolation of non-mainstream academic communities.

Despite the growing demand for a more “de-Westernized” approach to knowledge production, progress in this direction remains limited (Demeter 2020; Ekdale et al. 2022a; Hanusch and Vos 2020; Mitchelstein and Boczkowski 2021; Oliveira et al. 2021). To illustrate, one of the most prominent journals in Human and Social Sciences, Political Communication, has recently published an editorial stating: “After conducting an internal audit of scholars from around the globe who have reviewed for Political Communication in recent years … […] We are excited to announce the first fruits of this effort: The addition of two new editorial board members [one from Argentina and another from Chile]” (Lawrence 2023: 3). It is worth noting that these two new board members are the only ones working for Latin American universities, while the United States alone has 26 out of the 42 scholars listed in that same group.

Against this backdrop, our research explores some intriguing aspects concerning the presence of Global South universities in prestigious scholarly platforms. More precisely, we aim to explore if and to what extent access to these publishing venues is restricted to a handful of academic institutions – making them a type of national “elite” authorized to engage in the mainstream intellectual debate. We take as a premise that the differences in academic capital – and consequently, in resources and opportunities for international partnerships – perceived between universities in the Global North and South (Demeter 2019b) can also occur within the countries themselves (Monteiro and Hirano 2020). In fact, the literature has already suggested that due to the scarce availability of funding to invest in all in-country institutions, developing nations tend to concentrate their money on historically more productive intellectual centers (Oleksiyenko and Yang 2015).

Our study entails a comparative analysis of several metrics to gauge the circulation of universities affiliated with BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) within journals indexed in the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). Three research questions specifically related to the field of Communication guide this paper. RQ1) To what extent is the academic output of BRICS countries concentrated within a select few “top-level” institutions? RQ2) How are the research articles from the most productive universities distributed across the journal rankings comprising the SJR database? RQ3) What partnerships do institutions from BRICS countries engage in when producing research articles? Using data from the SciVal and SJR platforms, our paper encompasses a large set of articles published between 2012 and 2021.

Analyzing the representation of BRICS institutions in mainstream academic outlets is relevant for different reasons. First, despite the increasing volume of research on the importance of de-Westernizing Media Studies (Demeter 2020; Ekdale et al. 2022b; Waisbord and Mellado 2014), we still lack a comprehensive and comparative evaluation of the BRICS universities’ performance regarding their presence in the most prestigious domains within the field of Communication. Second, as Demeter (2020: 98) contends, “academic institutions are the primary agents forming the global capital that underpins the knowledge production of the present world system.” However, the rationale behind investment in research and development not only differs when contrasting central and peripheral countries but also hinges upon the strategies adopted by each university. For example, while the leading educational institutions in North America benefit from foundations endowed with billion-dollar funds (Demeter 2020), university systems in poorer countries often rely on government funding, making them vulnerable to budgetary restrictions and political pressure (Altbach and Bassett 2014). Investigating how a group of countries from the Global South compete for “elite” positions in knowledge production enables us to map and discuss their strategies for international insertion.

A third justification is that understanding institutional performance allows us to uncover the varied realities and dynamics influencing the academic contributions of semi-peripheral communities (Monteiro and Hirano 2020). Fourth, universities in developing nations recurrently make decisions about which professors to hire or promote based on publication rates in prestigious journals (Demeter et al. 2022; Paasi 2005). In this regard, our study considers to what extent the SciVal and SJR metrics reinforce an academic rationale that upholds the mechanisms of neoliberal globalization (Amsler and Bolsmann 2012; Paasi 2005; Slaughter and Leslie 2001) and the standardization of the scholarly agenda in accordance with validation benchmarks adopted in the Global North (Albuquerque et al. 2020).

2 Communication studies and the Global South

Scholars based in non-mainstream countries face a range of challenges often overlooked by researchers from Western Europe and the United States (Demeter 2020; Waisbord and Mellado 2014) – including the requirement to attain proficiency in the English language for publication in top-ranked journals (Ganter and Ortega 2019; Livingstone 2007), limited resources for conducting empirical studies (Ai and Masood 2021), or demands to incorporate “riders” in the titles of their works to underline geographical limitation (Harb 2023; Rojas and Valenzuela 2019). In contrast, publications from developed countries often forego the need for such contextual explanations, as it is assumed that readers must already be familiar with figures like Donald Trump or organizations such as “The New York Times.”

Furthermore, the predominance of reviewers and editors from the Global North on the editorial boards of top-ranked journals might play a pivotal role in excluding alternative viewpoints (Albuquerque et al. 2020; Ganter and Ortega 2019; Oliveira et al. 2021) – whether by deliberate judgment (certain subjects can be deemed “irrelevant”) or due to a lack of familiarity with theories and methods that are better suited for understanding local contexts. In addition, international rankings and commercial databases operate as gatekeepers as Global South journals struggle to meet specific requirements to be included on lists such as the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR). Albuquerque (2021: 3) states, “this system artificially introduces scarcity and homogeneity, as it denies full international status to the journals that are not present in the list.” In this regard, “de-Westernizing” entails the study of Communication phenomena with the aim of developing concepts and categories able to transcend traditional geopolitical borders (Goyanes 2020; Pimentel and Marques 2021; Waisbord and Mellado 2014).

In this article, we use the Global North and South conceptions based on Demeter’s (2020) work, which classifies the South as comprising geopolitically dependent and historically colonized or exploited nations – namely, most of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, non-Westernized Asia, and Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, we do not imply homogeneity among these nations. In tandem with Kürzdörfer and Narlikar (2023), we contend that “the term ‘Global South’ should be taken for what it is – a useful shortcut to engage with countries that are too often and too easily dismissed as ‘the rest.’ It needs to be used with care to avoid stereotyping and essentialization.” Accordingly, the authors claim that concepts like the “Third World” or “developing countries” are always simplifications. “Whether the West likes it [the term “Global South”] or not, many countries from the world regions do share memories, myths, imaginations, and lived experiences of colonialism, deprivation, and marginalization.” Kürzdörfer and Narlikar (2023) continue by sustaining that “even while policy-makers and think tankers in the West are rejecting the term, countries from the Global South are reclaiming it, as witnessed in the Voice of the Global South Summit, which was organized by India in January 2023.”

Truth be told, maybe the BRICS countries could be more accurately characterized as semi-peripheral insofar as they possess better resources and academic prominence when compared to poorer nations (Bennett 2014; Monteiro and Hirano 2020; Oleksiyenko and Yang 2015). The bloc – consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and ready to admit six new countries in January 2024 (Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) (Borger 2023) – aims to foster cooperation among emerging economies to defy the dominant logic of global trade (de Coning et al. 2015). Indeed, the group also has marked economic and political differences (Fourcade 2013). Some pundits even raise criticism about an allegedly “artificial character” of the BRICS, indicating that the acronym itself would be the group’s most significant strength (Aouragh and Chakravartty 2016). However, there is no doubt that in terms of economy and foreign policy, such collaborations have had results, such as the increasing relevance of the BRICS Bank. Furthermore, the interest of other nations in joining the group demonstrates the strength of BRICS on the world stage.

The alliance also allegedly nurtures academic partnerships (Finardi 2015; Kahn 2015) through initiatives such as the BRICS Think Tanks Council (BTTC), which is committed to training and empowering intellectual communities within the member countries. However, many actions being carried out (such as the BRICS Network University) prioritize a limited set of areas (Toledo 2023): energy, computer science, climate change, and water resources. Accordingly, data from the Web of Science demonstrate that between 2011 and 2019, BRICS countries published articles mainly in Chemistry, Materials Science, Engineering, and Physics. Articles from the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts comprised less than 1 % of the total (Príncipe 2020) – which reinforces the relevance of studying the unique challenges affecting the integration of Communication researchers based in non-Western countries into more prestigious academic circuits (Albuquerque 2023; Demeter 2019a; Fan et al. 2022; Monteiro and Hirano 2020).

If the “BRICS perspective refers to a common agenda of the struggle for recognition, shared by a group of countries questioning the U.S.-centered unipolar order” (Albuquerque and Lycarião 2018: 2878), what opportunities can such alliance bring to these countries’ universities? On the one side, reputable academic institutions aim to draw in highly productive professors and a larger student body, as individuals recognize that the university’s prestige can offer better job opportunities (Delgado-Márquez et al. 2012). On the other hand, the public influence of their researchers, along with citations in high-impact journals (Marginson 2006), plays a pivotal role in shaping the public perception of educational institutions, as well as in securing research funding.

When analyzing three different university rankings (the Shanghai List, The Times Higher Education Ranking, and the QS List), Demeter (2020) found a discernible waning in the dominance of American universities and a noteworthy surge in China’s academic output and visibility – although this result does not necessarily translate into a reduction in Western influence in the short term. Accordingly, data from the 2023 edition of the Times Higher Education Ranking (Elsevier) (Times Higher Education 2023) highlights the disparity in China’s performance compared to the other BRICS countries. Within the top 500 institutions in the field of Communication and Media, China boasts a total of 20 institutions (with seven of them ranking within the top 100). In contrast, Brazil and India each have two institutions on this list, while Russia has three, and South Africa counts four universities represented. The Shanghai Ranking (Academic Ranking of World Universities 2022) listed three Chinese institutions among the top 300 in the field in 2022 – and only one other BRICS organization appeared in the ranking, the Stellenbosch University, from South Africa. Nonetheless, using rankings to assess universities has encountered substantial criticism (David and Motala 2017). Rauhvargers (2013) argues that these classifications can reinforce the prominence of elite institutions, downplay the importance of the Humanities and Social sciences, and perpetuate the dominance of English-language publications.

One strategy peripheral and semi-peripheral countries adopt to enhance their universities’ global impact is to include nationally-edited journals in databases such as the SJR. However, only 21 of the 439 journals (base year 2021) listed in this database originate from one of the five BRICS nations – ten from Brazil, six from Russia, two from India, two from South Africa, and one from China (Appendix, Table 1a).

The predominance of SJR journals based in English-speaking countries is illustrated by the fact that the United Kingdom and the United States hold no less than 242 periodicals (159 and 83, respectively), representing more than half of the list. Other 42 countries host the remaining titles (Appendix, Table 2a), and many accept submissions in English only. When it comes to the degree of impact, the influence of American and British journals is even more striking: of the 112 SJR publications classified in Q1, 54 are led by the British and 32 by Americans – which corresponds to 76.8 % of the entire Communication area most prestigious SJR stratum. In the case of BRICS, Brazil is the sixth country on the list with the largest number of journals. However, even SJR Brazilian periodicals also accept articles in English. To illustrate, the Brazilian Journalism Research journal accepts submissions in Portuguese, Spanish, French, or English – but if the paper approved is written in one of the first three languages, authors must necessarily prepare an English version at their expense (Brazilian Journalism Research 2023).

Another strategy recurrently used by Global South scholars to strengthen their presence in high-impact journals involves collaborating with international colleagues. According to Fan et al. (2022), between 2011 and 2020, institutions from BRICS countries expanded their overseas partnerships, albeit with notable variations. Brazil, South Africa, and Russia predominantly cooperated through a few prestigious in-country universities. On the other hand, China and India showed a more evenly distributed scenario – although in the Chinese case, the “top-level” universities were primarily located in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Hubei, and Shaanxi (Dong et al. 2020). Therefore, universities’ international reputation and influence are intricately tied to each country’s administrative policies in higher education. For instance, political interference or excessive bureaucracy in allocating research resources can hinder efforts to foster scientific innovation (Altbach and Bassett 2014).

Considering the discussion above, as well as the need to understand how the BRICS countries and universities have been incorporated into internationally prestigious and widely recognized databases, our article puts forth three questions:

1. To what extent is the academic output of BRICS countries in the field of Communication concentrated within a select few “top-level” institutions?

2. How are the research articles from the most productive universities distributed across the journal rankings comprising the SJR database?

3. What partnerships do institutions from BRICS countries engage in when producing research articles?

3 Methods

4 Findings

4.2 BRICS interinstitutional collaborations

This topic analyses whether and to what extent the top 20 most productive institutions in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have established partnerships to publish articles in SJR-indexed Communication journals. At this point, we want to make clear that for this variable, the cumulative performance of the universities under investigation may not align with the total number of articles attributed to the country. More precisely, if the University of São Paulo (Brazil) publishes a paper in collaboration with both Zhejiang University (China) and Amity University Noida (India), this would be counted as two distinct partnerships. The same occurs in the case of partnerships established between universities within the same country.

According to Figure 1, international collaborations exclusively among BRICS institutions are relatively rare. South Africa tops the list – despite only registering 15 partnerships. The country’s highlights are the collaborations with Brazil, with nine occurrences. There were also five partnerships with Chinese institutions and one with a Russian university. The University of Cape Town has cooperated with organizations from three BRICS countries: the University of São Paulo, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, and the Higher School of Economics. In turn, the University of The Free State concentrated its joint work with China: two productions with the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and one with the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Figure 1:

Collaborations among the leading universities based in BRICS countries. Source: The authors with data from SciVal (2022).

Brazilian universities have collaborated with institutions from other BRICS countries on 14 occasions – nine with South Africa, four with Russia, and one with China. The University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) lead the partnerships. The USP co-authored papers with three South African universities (the University of Cape Town, the University of the Witwatersrand, University of KwaZulu-Natal). In turn, the UFSC published in collaboration with a Chinese institution (Sun Yat-Sen University) and had two more works with the Russia-based Higher School of Economics.

Chinese institutions participated in 13 collaborations, with Russia as the leading partner in this case, with seven articles. The co-authorships between Wuhan University and Tomsk State University stand out, with six publications. China also recorded collaborations with South Africa (five pieces) and Brazil (one work).

Russia took part in 12 collaborations: seven with China, four with Brazil, and one with South Africa. Only two Russian universities were involved in such intra-BRICS partnerships: Tomsk State University (six works with Wuhan University, as said before) and the Higher School of Economics (two articles with the Federal University of Minas Gerais; another two with the Federal University of Santa Catarina; one with Sun Yat-Sen University; and one more with the University of Cape Town).

India showed the most significant isolation, with no recorded collaborations between its leading universities and the top 20 institutions in other BRICS countries.

As Figure 1 shows, Brazil outperformed its BRICS partners in terms of domestic collaborations. Over a decade, the 20 Brazilian institutions that published the most in SJR journals formed 490 partnerships with in-country institutions. Notably, the University of São Paulo and the São Paulo State University Júlio de Mesquita Filho took the lead, jointly contributing to 22 publications. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation collaborated on 18 jointly authored articles.

China established 113 domestic collaborations when it comes to its 20 top institutions, with five involving Zhejiang University and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and five more between Tsinghua University and Renmin University of China.

South Africa registered 101 partnerships among its 20 leading universities, including collaborations between the University of Johannesburg and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (nine articles), the University of Johannesburg and the University of Cape Town (six articles), and the University of Cape Town and University of KwaZulu-Natal (six articles).

In contrast, Russia had 79 publications resulting from domestic collaborations. The Higher School of Economics and St. Petersburg State University established the most frequent partnerships, which yielded eight articles. Likewise, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ural Federal University produced eight papers together. The Higher School of Economics and the Russian Academy of Sciences had seven joint pieces. Lastly, India presented a striking scarcity of co-authorships even among its own universities, with only 16 works resulting from domestic cooperation.

5 Discussion and conclusions

Considering that authors and institutions from the Global South face unique challenges when it comes to publishing in top-ranked journals, our research relied on data from the SciVal and SJR platforms to examine the publication trends of BRICS-based universities. More specifically, our study investigated the performance of the top 20 most prolific institutions in Communication and Media Studies in each BRICS country during the timeframe spanning 2012–2021.

Our findings revealed that South Africa, Russia, and Brazil had the highest concentration of academic production within a select few universities – more precisely, the University of Johannesburg (contributing to 19.2 % of total South African publications), the Higher School of Economics (associated with 17 % of all Russian papers), and the University of São Paulo (participating in 11.2 % of Brazilian documents) stood out. Conversely, the 20 most prolific universities in India and China do not account for even 5 % of their respective articles, suggesting a more balanced production in Communication across academic institutions. This finding aligns with the conclusions drawn by Fan et al. (2022) in their analysis of partnerships among the leading BRICS institutions, indicating that the higher education systems in Brazil, South Africa, and Russia remain “significantly unbalanced.”

The disparities between the most and least productive universities can be attributed to a combination of factors. In the case of Brazil, the top five universities excelling in this regard are all located in the Southeast region, precisely the country’s most economically affluent region (Chaimovich and Pedrosa 2021). Conversely, the North Region of Brazil has no institutions among the top 20. Truth be told, the Brazilian government has allocated resources to support projects from less economically developed regions (Brazilian Congress 2019). However, the outcomes have been modest, pointing out the need to design more ambitious policies.

In addition, we must look at the impact of funding policies on the research performance of academic institutions. As Gokhberg and Kuznetsova (2021) discussed, Russia-based universities and researchers frequently encounter barriers that hinder their participation in international funding programs, posing challenges to their research productivity. On the other hand, South Africa is a notable outlier within the African continent, accounting for a remarkable 87 % of all papers from the continent published in Global North journals (Demeter 2020) – despite experiencing only modest growth in research investments over the past decade (Schneegans et al. 2021). Similarly, India has witnessed a decline in the involvement of the government sector in research and development, while private entities are taking on a prominent role in the country’s innovation landscape (Mani 2021).

The contrast among BRICS countries becomes more evident when we look at China’s performance. Although public investment is the primary agent for promoting science in that country, China has implemented a range of strategies that foster international partnerships with Western academic communities – including sending Chinese scholars for training at top-level international universities, in addition to offering competitive salaries and favorable working conditions (Asheulova and Dushina 2014). Furthermore, high-impact journals have been recommended as the prime target for China-based researchers, and additional bonuses are provided for publishing in high-ranking publications (Nature 2017). Consequently, such a country has significantly bolstered its presence in the upper strata of the SJR-ranking listing of Communication journals.

If, on the one hand, domestic-only collaborations and concentration of top universities arise as a result of under-resourced institutions in the Global South, on the other, internal variables must be considered to interpret the results and implications for administrative support for higher education. For example, China’s higher presence in Q1 journals is also due to its academic promotion criteria – what has been called a “monetary reward system of science” (Quan et al. 2017).

At the same time, we noticed that some of the most prolific universities listed in our findings are not necessarily those traditionally recognized as the strongest in their respective national settings. For example, in the Brazilian case, the institution that presents the highest percentage of papers published in Q1 journals is the Federal University of Paraná – which started its Ph.D. program only in 2018. We need to understand which factors contribute to the rise of new players in academic production and collaboration. It is crucial to grasp to what extent the consolidation of international partnerships results from a collective effort or whether it is restricted to the individual actions of a few scholars interested in expanding their international circulation.

If, as Demeter (2020) emphasizes, academic institutions have a crucial role in forming the symbolic capital that supports the global system of knowledge production, the power dynamics established on a worldwide scale – namely, the disparities between institutions in the Global North and South – tend to replicate themselves nationally, that is, within each scientific community. For instance, highly productive researchers often gravitate toward positions at prestigious universities, thereby perpetuating a cyclical pattern of funding and publication concentrated within a select group of institutions deemed “authorized” to speak on behalf of their respective countries.

Furthermore, establishing transnational partnerships among universities in the Global South brings the opportunity to improve theoretical-methodological approaches and share structures that might be available in one country but not another. In fact, teaming up with BRICS scholars has the potential to facilitate the collection and processing of extensive amounts of data – addressing the preference of several top-ranked journals for papers providing multi-case, comparative studies (Goyanes 2020). Thus, the circulation of knowledge produced “from the margins” (Alahmed 2020; Dutta and Pal 2020; Albuquerque 2023) in highly prestigious journals depends on the ambition of academic agreements signed by actors beyond the Western World.

However, even though such collaborations have been mutually beneficial to the partnering institutions, our results indicate that such ties are still incipient, which demands the formulation of Science and Technology policies that also include Human and Social Sciences. That is, interinstitutional collaborations remain relatively rare, even among the most productive universities in each BRICS country. The exception to this trend is also found in Chinese academic institutions, which have expanded their network due to the increasing availability of resources (Demeter 2019a; Demeter et al. 2023) – although they often lean toward forming partnerships with universities outside the BRICS bloc. These results are in line with the findings of Finardi (2015): when studying different areas of knowledge, the researcher did not find a “BRICS effect” in terms of collaboration among the five partners.

Communication researchers based in countries in the Global South face two other challenges to participate in the most prestigious circuits of knowledge production. Firstly, unlike what happens in areas such as Physics or Mathematics, studies in Communication and other Human Sciences are based on language itself (Albuquerque 2023; Demeter 2019a). That is, the authors’ ability to present and defend ideas is more time-consuming for scholars whose mother tongue is not English. Second, as Monteiro and Hirano (2020) highlighted, Social and Human Sciences tend to occupy a peripheral place nationally and internationally regarding funding. It is as if Communication researchers based in the Global South were part of a “periphery of the periphery.”

After all, we consider that the demand for “de-Westernization” goes beyond a mere plea for increased numerical representation. The exclusion of perspectives or phenomena that outline the intellectual landscape of developing regions hinders the progress of knowledge production itself. Moreover, it neglects that purportedly universal definitions and categories often fall short in explaining phenomena that transcend the specific contexts in which they originated (Wasserman 2018). It is essential that researchers from the Global South propose and adopt autonomous strategies to prevent the concept of de-Westernization itself from being incorporated into mainstream research merely as a “niche of studies” and not as a cosmopolitan research practice that allows the encounter among different intellectual traditions.

This study comes with limitations. First, this study only demonstrates BRICS’s presence in elite journals, not their impact on the international academic community. Moreover, we cannot generalize our findings to all academic communities in developing nations as the BRICS members are better characterized as semi-peripheral rather than peripheral countries. Lastly, we should not overlook the importance of regional publishing circuits in these countries (Oliveira et al. 2021). Nevertheless, this paper offers a valuable perspective that encourages the development of strategies for integrating scientists and institutions from the Global South into circuits with increased international visibility.

Future research must compare the strategies adopted by different countries in terms of academic circulation and intellectual influence. Another possible research stream refers to investigating the tension between “writing about” and “writing in partnership with” Global South countries. It is true that we now have an increasing number of Western-based journals focusing specifically on “peripheral” countries, such as the “Chinese Journal of Communication,” “African Journalism Studies,” “Global Media and China,” “Journal of African Media Studies,” and the “Russian Journal of Communication.” However, it is crucial to understand if and to what extent the interest in the Global South reinforces a patronizing approach when it comes to articles circulating in prestigious settings.