Response to Steven Feierman’s ‘writing history: flow and blockage in circulation of knowledge’

Abstract:
I would like to thank Steve for the address and for the advance draft copy of his paper, which I engaged with for this response. Although Steve wrote from the perspective of the discipline of History, my response attempts to encompass other disciplines within the broader humanities, the objective being to communicate the message more broadly. Writing about blockages in scholarship as Steve does, his address covers many aspects of concern in the domains of research and knowledge production in Africa. I would like to pick two aspects here, which are; access to knowledge, and, understanding perspectives in the writing of and about Africa. Ultimately, the paper is about communicating the numerous researches emerging from current research, and how this fits into the ‘global’ scholarship of humanities research. The Nigerian scholar Iruka Okeke (2016) communicated her concerns around the universality of genomics, which she regarded as a global discipline – perhaps in monolithic terms, where scientists work hand in hand with other researchers, but in the process, she realises African scholars are compromised in the knowledge production process. It is important that her publication is contextualised in African Studies, because this is what they are ultimately about, in the larger scheme of things. This concern is equally prevalent in other disciplines, with the West seeking to produce universalised approaches in the sciences and the humanities. I do not believe that there is only one genomics, one history, one biology, one mathematics, one literature, etc., as such, literary. It is imperative that we consider the traditions of scholarship across the world, that have crystallised into these disciplinary domains that we seek to globalise or formulate into universal knowledge. History writing in Africa, for example, is not the same as in the West, because the objectives behind such an exercise are different. I would argue, this also applies to other humanities disciplines as well. I want to briefly argue here that any attempts to globalise disciplines in the manner Iruka Okeke complains about in the sciences, is bound to fail. I resort to history to illustrate my case, by citing two prominent publications in the field of the history of ideas, delivered as part of the prestigious Trevelyan Lecture series at the University of Cambridge between the 1960s and the first decade of this century. These are Edward Hallet Carr, What is History? (1961) and Anthony Grafton’s What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (2007). The debates in Carr are about how to write history in the just ended twentieth century, while Grafton focuses on the period 1550–1700, on how to
Author Listing： Innocent Pikirayi
Volume： 37
Pages： 36 - 38
DOI： 10.1080/02589001.2019.1627294
Language： English
Journal： Journal of Contemporary African Studies

Journal of Contemporary African Studies

J CONTEMP AFR STUD

影响因子：0.8 是否综述期刊：否 是否OA：否 是否预警：不在预警名单内 发行时间：- ISSN：0258-9001 发刊频率：- 收录数据库：ESCI/Scopus收录 出版国家/地区：- 出版社：Taylor & Francis

期刊介绍

年发文量 24
国人发稿量 -
国人发文占比 0%
自引率 0.0%
平均录取率 -
平均审稿周期 -
版面费 -
偏重研究方向 AREA STUDIES-
期刊官网 https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjca20/current
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质量指标占比

研究类文章占比 OA被引用占比 撤稿占比 出版后修正文章占比
100.00% 8.16% - -

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期刊预警不是论文评价，更不是否定预警期刊发表的每项成果。《国际期刊预警名单（试行）》旨在提醒科研人员审慎选择成果发表平台、提示出版机构强化期刊质量管理。

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具体而言，就是通过综合评判期刊载文量、作者国际化程度、拒稿率、论文处理费（APC）、期刊超越指数、自引率、撤稿信息等，找出那些具备风险特征、具有潜在质量问题的学术期刊。最后，依据各刊数据差异，将预警级别分为高、中、低三档，风险指数依次减弱。

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WOS期刊SCI分区是指SCI官方（Web of Science）为每个学科内的期刊按照IF数值排 序，将期刊按照四等分的方法划分的Q1-Q4等级，Q1代表质量最高，即常说的1区期刊。
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关于2019年中科院分区升级版（试行）

分区表升级版（试行）旨在解决期刊学科体系划分与学科发展以及融合趋势的不相容问题。由于学科交叉在当代科研活动的趋势愈发显著，学科体系构建容易引发争议。为了打破学科体系给期刊评价带来的桎梏，“升级版方案”首先构建了论文层级的主题体系，然后分别计算每篇论文在所属主题的影响力，最后汇总各期刊每篇论文分值，得到“期刊超越指数”，作为分区依据。

分区表升级版（试行）的优势：一是论文层级的主题体系既能体现学科交叉特点，又可以精准揭示期刊载文的多学科性；二是采用“期刊超越指数”替代影响因子指标，解决了影响因子数学性质缺陷对评价结果的干扰。整体而言，分区表升级版（试行）突破了期刊评价中学科体系构建、评价指标选择等瓶颈问题，能够更为全面地揭示学术期刊的影响力，为科研评价“去四唯”提供解决思路。相关研究成果经过国际同行的认可，已经发表在科学计量学领域国际重要期刊。

《2019年中国科学院文献情报中心期刊分区表升级版（试行）》首次将社会科学引文数据库（SSCI）期刊纳入到分区评估中。升级版分区表（试行）设置了包括自然科学和社会科学在内的18个大类学科。基础版和升级版（试行）将过渡共存三年时间，推测在此期间各大高校和科研院所仍可能会以基础版为考核参考标准。 提示：中科院分区官方微信公众号“fenqubiao”仅提供基础版数据查询，暂无升级版数据，请注意区分。

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