Internationalization and academic journals in the global South: A quest for quality

This chapter aims to analyse Pakistan’s journal and publication policy for understanding its contextual issues, discursive formation and its ability to improve the quality of national journals at par with the international standards. We used the policy analysis framework proposed by Rizvi and Lingard (2010). The findings are presented under three themes—contextual, discursive and implementation. The contextual analysis shows that the pressure of globalization influenced quest for achieving international quality standards in higher education triggered the quality assurance policy for journal publications in 2005 and continuously revised since then in its quests to meet international quality benchmarks. The discursive formation of policy problem identified it to be a wicked problem, which has implications for policy implementation and outcomes. The implementation and outcome analysis suggests that although the policy emphasizes strengthening knowledge economy through research outputs, most publications in local journals do not seem to contribute either to the advancement of academia, society or economy due to producing low quality publications focusing on ‘numbers’ only. The conclusion highlights that while policy tries to achieve international quality standards through introducing the ‘procedural quality’, it does not pay enough attention to improving the ‘content’ of publications. Bringing quality of academic journals at par with international standards cannot be achieved simply through bringing transparency in the process, registration, and financial support; rather, it requires development of a holistic academic quality culture.