International engagement versus local commitment: Hong Kong academics in the humanities and social sciences writing for publication

Abstract

It has been recognized that English as the language of international scholarship represents a more complex picture in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) than in science and engineering, with multilingual scholars in the HSS often negotiating international engagement and local commitment by publishing both in English and their first language. However, the tension in the negotiation is likely to grow with the continuous push toward the globalization of the academia which is having an enormous impact upon the academics in research universities. Following up on an earlier study with mainland Chinese HSS scholars (Flowerdew & Li, 2009), in the present interview-based study we aim to find out how their counterparts in Hong Kong perceive the implications of international publication versus local publication. The findings of the study indicate that the privilege attached to publishing in internationally indexed journals stands out as a leading factor orienting the Hong Kong scholars toward writing in English and employing various strategies to facilitate successful publication. However, there is also clear resistance toward this assessment-driven publication regime and some participants, apart from publishing mainly in English, also publish in Chinese for the purpose of serving their target audiences at the local/regional level. We end by calling for efforts to widen the regional impact of the existing locally-published journals and to enhance collaboration in developing regional databases that are competitive at the international level. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.