Similo Ngwenya

In recent years, scientific communities across disciplines have called for addressing the inequalities that structure their respective fields. Their calls are supported by a growing body of studies concerned with geographical and gender-related inequalities in scientific publishing. However, a persistent disconnect remains between quantitative and qualitative analyses, preventing an understanding of how authorship patterns relate to researchers’ experiences of publishing. Moreover, there is a paucity of studies theorizing the results obtained for a more comprehensive understanding of macro–micro-linkages. We address this gap with a mixed-methods study on publishing in forest governance research that draws on and advances Bourdieusian theory by shifting the spotlight on epistemic choices and struggles in relation to researchers’ capital and field positions. Using a bricolage approach, we triangulate quantitative bibliometric and qualitative interview analysis in an integrative mixed-methods design. We empirically show how geographical and gender inequalities emerging at the publication level (authors and articles) relate to the epistemic choices and struggles experienced by African forest governance researchers. The study highlights the potential of applying a coherent theoretical frame in mixed-methods research on inequalities in scientific publishing across local and international spaces.

This study examines how scholars narrate agency and luck in scientific careers, focusing on geographic space and gender as structuring dimensions. Drawing on interviews with forest governance researchers, we analyze how they discursively construct professional trajectories. European scholars often frame their academic trajectories as outcomes of epistemic interests and agentic choices, while African scholars tend to narrate their careers through the lens of luck and external circumstances. Gender differences are less marked in linguistic expressions of agency but appear in the attribution of luck, with women—from both Africa and Europe—emphasizing private life conditions, particularly partnership and family situations. We argue that these discursive patterns reflect and reproduce social stratifications in global science. Our findings highlight the importance of integrating spatial and gendered contexts into studies of scientific careers and the need for science policies that foster epistemic autonomy and gender-inclusive career conditions across diverse academic landscapes.

Despite shifts in science policy and funding modalities, international research collaborations continue to be shaped by inequalities that structure global science. These include a skewed division of tasks and unequal scientific authority in North-South partnerships. Existing scholarship highlights scholars’ experiences of such inequalities, but offers little explanation of how they are reproduced and affect joint knowledge production. We address this gap with an empirical study of six African-European research projects on forests. Drawing on Bourdieu’s sociology of science, we employ a praxeological methodology that includes participant observation in collaborative meetings, analysis of project-related documents and reflexive interviews with scholars involved. We show discrepancies between how collaborators’ relations were designed and practiced: Even when projects had been set up as equal partnerships aimed at joint knowledge making, the emerging collaboration orders tended to reflect differential roles and unequal authority in epistemic choices. While African scholars exerted authority over field work, European scholars directed the ‘how to’ of conducting forest governance research. We explain the continuity of this pattern with Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus: a practical sense of roles scholars have internalised, resulting from their positions in global science and the capitals (economic, scientific, social, symbolic) they are endowed with. The study illuminates how and why inequalities in research collaborations persist, regardless of formal project constellations and contrary to individual intentions. It highlights the potential of Bourdieusian theory for empirical science studies, with habitus as a concept explaining discrepancies between desired forms of collaboration and actual collaboration practice.

This study used bibliometric analysis as a form of meta-research to examine the practice and cognitive connections between three bibliometric user groups in South Africa. Bibliometric user groups refer to categories of university scholars who apply aspects of bibliometric analysis in their research. The first such group consists of university researchers who use bibliometrics as part of a broader specialisation in science, technology and innovation policy or the sociology of science. The second group involves researchers who specialise in library and information science; and the third group, researchers who specialise in other fields, but who use bibliometric applications in their own field of interest, very often as one-time studies. The connections between the three groups were studied through co-authorship analysis (as proxy for practice connections) and citation analysis (as proxy for cognitive connections), using the SAKnowledgebase as a data source. The latter is database of research outputs by South African universities. Although it has been found that practice connections between the three bibliometric user groups are largely lacking, the analysis of cognitive connections has shown a more promising picture. Recommendations are made regarding the establishment of a community of bibliometric practice.