Publish or perish. Basque scientific journals in the science communication system

Abstract

The science communication system has suffered deep changes in the past years and studies about Basque scientific journals are still scarce. The current research evaluation system promotes publishing in some English scientific journals. Even so, in some subjects, especially in social sciences and humanities, the local journals which publish in local languages accomplish other functions, such as training, knowledge bridging and filling knowledge gaps. In this study, I identify 41 journals that publish Basque articles out of the total number of journals listed in Inguma and I analyse the following characteristics: journal subject areas, the percentage of articles in Basque published during the last year, the type of publisher, the languages used in both the abstracts of articles and the websites of journals, the type of formats and access, the copyright holder, the type of CC licenses and, finally, the indexation on databases. Open access journals published by the publishing services of universities and non-profit organizations, more than half of them in the social sciences, predominate. Their presence in indexing databases is fluctuating, with a greater presence in national databases.