Knowledge production and creativity: Editing and publishing a journal at the semiperiphery of Political Science and International Relations

A bleak viewpoint might be that Political Science (PolSci) and International Relations (IR) journals based in Central and Eastern Europe are (semi)peripheral in the context of global academic publishing. While the structure-oriented assessment of these journals’ position is accurate in many respects, there are limits to what this perspective can reveal. Moreover, as suggested by some of the existing debates in sociology of knowledge, the semiperiphery may be a space which fosters creativity and originality (provides a higher degree of freedom and opportunities to experiment) due to unestablished, underdeveloped or loose standards. This paper acknowledges the semiperipheral status of the CEE-based journals but tries to understand more specific characteristics of regional journals. More specifically, it argues that the situation of CEE-based PolSci and IR journals represents an unfulfilled promise of semiperipheral creativity/originality. The paper delves into the reasons for that. They include, for example, the limited internationalisation of these journals and their aspiration to follow standards defining what science should be like that are mainly defined by the core. The paper’s reflection on the suggested topics primarily derives from the authors’ experience with editing one of the region’s journals, namely the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies (CEJISS), and – to lesser extent – authoring and reviewing papers for other regional journals.