Arduous institutionalization in Argentina's SSH: expansion, asymmetries and segmented circuits of recognition

BEIGEL, FERNANDA; SORÁ, GUSTAVO

Shaping Human Science Disciplines: Institutional Developments in Europe and Beyond

Palgrave-MacMillian

Lugar: Basingstoke; Año: 2019; p. 327 - 361

The main task of this chapter is to describe the current state of research capacity in the SSH resulting from the recent expansion, in order to analyze the co-existing and diverse principles of legitimation. The participation of the Argentinian scholars in increasingly segmented publishing circuits are defined by different rewards in terms of recognition: a) international (mainstream) journals, indexed in WoS (now Clarivate) or Scopus, are highly valued for tenure and promotion at CONICET, especially in the exact and natural sciences; b) Transnational journals indexed in directories such as DOAJ and Latin American journals, indexed in SCIELO , REDALYC , LATINDEX , are mostly rewarded in the SSH for tenure and promotion and CONICET, while; c)) local, non-indexed journals, are mainly used for teaching career-building at national universities. These different circuits of recognition that exist in the country can be understood by observing institutionalization along with internationalization, combining field analysis with a circulation approach, and paying special attention to interactions and the publishing landscape (Beigel, 2014b).Two major trends involve circulation in Argentina?s SSH, both are discussed in this chapter. First, the polarization between the local and international orientations in production and circulation of knowledge in the country. While natural and exact sciences participate dominantly in mainstream publishing circuits, the SSH tend to feed the national journals and the Latin American circuit, while it is only an internationalized elite that gets involved in the mainstream circuit. Most of the journals belonging to the SSH are still edited in paper and, accordingly, distributed in reduced circles; almost half are not indexed in any international database nor in the national index CAICYT (Beigel and Salatino, 2015). Second, the paradox of the ?nationalist? orientation of the public policies for PhD formation and the requirement of international publications for tenure as a full-time researcher at CONICET. The majority of the new researchers at CONICET have obtained their doctoral degree in Argentina but the agency inclines researchers to publish in foreign journals. A key question will be raised: If the PhD formation is no longer the privileged path for internationalization, what other factors explain the circulation of Argentinian CONICET researchers?In the first section of this chapter, we review the historical process of institutionalization of the SSH in Argentina in the tense atmosphere between CONICET and the national universities. We focus on these two institutions because they are the main pillars of Argentinian higher education and research. As will be shown, together with the expansion, the concentration of resources at metropolitan university of Buenos Aires has reinforced geographical and institutional asymmetries, deepening what Beigel (2014b) describes as the structural heterogeneity of the field. Geographic inequalities are shown by highlighting the morphology of eight academic regions. We outline the main features of pre-graduate and graduate studies in SSH and describe the current state of SSH research capacities in terms of personnel and institutes, focusing on institutional inequalities and differences between disciplines. Finally, we describe the publishing circuits and the particular role of the SSH in the universe of Argentinean scientific journals. Our aim is to examine the recent expansion and consider its impact in historical structures along with genetic processes in order to describe the state of the field in the new context.