Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A consortium funds Global-South-led OA infrastructures as part of its open-science strategy.
- Is an instance
A literature review explicitly searches Global-South databases alongside Northern ones.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A meta-analysis that draws only from Web of Science and Scopus, omitting Global-South sources.
- Not an instance
Hiring criteria that treat Global-South publishing venues as inferior by default.
Editorial commentary
Global-South publishing emphasises scholarly knowledge production rooted in local research priorities, languages and community needs, often through diamond OA, community-led platforms and multilingual outputs. Notable infrastructures include SciELO, Redalyc, AmeliCA, AfricArXiv, the African Open Science Platform, the Asian Digital Library, and IndiaRxiv.
The structural disadvantages this framing responds to
Knowledge-equity work foregrounds several specific, documented mechanisms rather than a general sense of unfairness: Northern-centric indexing (major citation databases historically under-covered non-Northern, non-English journals, which then undercounts their measured impact); English-language hegemony in what counts as “internationally visible” scholarship; citation patterns that systematically under-cite Global-South-authored work even when it is indexed; and APC-driven OA mandates that assume Northern-style institutional research budgets, disadvantaging authors without funder support to cover a fee.
What this means in practice for a research office
A literature review or evidence synthesis that searches only Web of Science and Scopus will systematically under-represent Global-South-produced evidence; a hiring or promotion process that treats a Redalyc- or SciELO-only publication record as “not internationally indexed” is applying exactly the Northern-indexing bias this framework names. Funders increasingly respond by explicitly recognising diamond and community-run venues in their own OA policies rather than requiring publication only in APC-charging, Northern-indexed journals to satisfy a mandate.
Where this connects
See bibliodiversity for the underlying principle and multilingual scholarship for the language-specific dimension.
References
- Chan L, Costa Sousa S ‘Knowledge sovereignty: A new global ethic for biodiversity-rich scholarly communication’ 2020.
Also known as
Global South scholarly publishing · Southern publishing
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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