Webinar on Academic writing and publishing: Insights from the global North and global South

Considering the stark inequalities in disseminating academic knowledge production and the persistent proliferation of predatory publishers, it is imperative to demystify the dynamics of writing and publishing scholarly research. In addition, studies have shown the dominance of the global North, with most publications heavily weighted toward the global North institutions (Collyer, 2018). Appelhans (2024) also opined the West-centric nature of international urban studies discourse and the ‘absence’ of Southern and Eastern world regions. According to the Nature Index from 82 natural science journals, there is a distant goal in addressing the disparity between the global North and global South in the selected publications. The 13,580 articles in the index involved at least one author based at an institution in the global North and at least one author from the South, but this was only 2.7% of all publications in the database (Baker, 2023). Between 2015 and 2022, there were 24 articles with collaborations from South-South, while the equivalent analysis for North-North partnerships was about 200,000. Thus, there is a need to focus on contemporary development in academic writing and publishing with specific attention to the distribution of academic knowledge. Hence, this webinar aims to discuss and offer analysis that can drive equitable production and distribution of academic knowledge across the North-South. Also, the webinar will bring to the fore pathways to achieve research parity and ameliorate the dichotomy between global North-South academic partnerships. Finally, emphasis will be placed on addressing the proliferation of predatory publishers and the ripple effect on academic writers and publishers. The webinar seeks to answer the following and related questions:

• What are the major challenges facing research scholars from the global South, and how can they be addressed?
• What are the dynamics of global North and global South research work?
• How can we identify predatory publishers and several factors that portray publishers as predatory?
• How best can we build transnational circuits that create pathways for effective academic writing and publishing?
• How can we create a balance—publish locally and perish globally, publish globally and perish locally?

Speakers

Dr Lazaro Eliyah Mngumi, Researcher, the Institute of Human Settlements Studies, Ardhi University, Tanzania. Dr Allison Laskey, Associate Editor, Nature Cities (Springer Nature, USA).

Convenor

Dr Emmanuel T. Busayo (Wits University)

Please register here.