Browsing by Subject "Globality"

Although scientific knowledge is centered around academic institutions of the Global North, publications claiming to be “global” have surged recently. This thesis used a rigorous systematic literature review to identify articles with “global” in the title or author keywords, then analyzed the exact locations from where their dataset originates. Furthermore, it examined circulation metrics of each assessed article, as determined by their journal’s impact factor, to investigate if there are any discrepancies among an article’s impact factor and its global representativeness. Finally, it compared the impact factor of these “global” papers to similar non-global articles to get an idea if “global” papers are published in more reputable journals than their non-global counterparts. The results of this thesis show there is an overrepresentation of “global” environmental science data from Eastern Asia, Northern America, Western Europe, Southern Europe and Northern Europe, and an underrepresentation of environmental science data from Southern America, Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, Eastern Africa, Western Africa, Northern Africa, Middle Africa, and Central Asia. Moreover, all journals, regardless of their prestige, publish articles with these globally unrepresentative results. Yet, articles with “global” in the title or keywords circulate in journals with higher impact factors than non-global papers. My results signal that data from only a few regions dilute “global” environmental studies, while marginalizing many parts of the world. Therefore, “global” environmental science research needs a stricter threshold of globality.