Abstract / Excerpt:

The academic journal embodies all three roles of the university: research, instruction, and extension. While it advances knowledge through scholarly and peer-reviewed articles, it is largely unanalyzed as a cultural product. The Study then inquired about the context, content, and criteria of academic journals in Mindanao from 1968 through 2005 using Pierri Bourdieu's theoretical toolkit of field-habitus-capital. The context of university journals in Mindanao was investigated through surveys, interviews with journal editors, and library and internet research. To understand journal content or what writers were writing about, journals were retrieved from universities or downloaded from journal databases. Articles were reviewed to map the types, disciplines, and key subjects of articles. The criteria for article selection were derived from editor surveys and interviews on publication practices as well as guides for authors. Editors also reviewed articles to validate these criteria. Results show that the contending forces in the field of academic journal publishing in Mindanao are: the State through ten state universities, the religious agents through an equal number of Catholic schools, and the private sector through five nonsectarian universities. Most produce journals once a year only because of the dearth of articles, the extremely time-consuming process, and the limited human resources working on the journal. Print run, and corollary, reach and readership, are all too finite, even as networked technology is expanding access. Because journals are "products of restricted cultural production," readership is confined to members of the intellectual community and those who have access to libraries and the internet. These cultural products are restricted as well by language and style. In some cases, these journals read as though they were produced only for cultural producers themselves using formal academic English. Mindanao academic journals publish research abstracts, notes and comments, book reviews, and research articles. Top social science and humanities disciplines are education, history, political science, literature, and anthropology. Key subjects of articles are illuminations of aspects of Mindanao-her educational capital and agents; her peoples-indigenous, Islamized, and settler communities-and their evolving cultures; her variegated histories; and her aspirations for peace and development. Nearly all key subjects reflect an abiding concern for the lived present and its complexities. These journal articles are mediated by editors, gatekeepers and arbiters of quality whose standards shape the journal in terms of content and criteria. Editors ensure scholarly rigor in Mindanao academic journals through their own skills, including a good sense of language and style, a keen eye for detail, extensive knowledge and respect for expertise, good networking and management skills. They publish articles using these criteria: advancement of knowledge, new knowledge or data, level of scholarship, appropriate methodology and analysis, relevance to Mindanao realities, theoretical soundness, and acceptable research design. Generally, they adhere to article peer review as the "sine qua non of university-level publishing." Even as journal quality across Mindanao is uneven at best, more focused attention on this issue, including State institutional assistance via CHED, may augur well for the field of Mindanao academic journal publishing.

Info

Source Institution	Ateneo de Davao University
Unit	Social Science and Education
Authors	Castrillo, Pamela B.
Page Count	318
Place of Publication	Davao City
Original Publication Date	March 1, 2011
Tags	Academic Journal

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