Internationalisation of Knowledge and Local Visibility: Construction of Academic Dialogues

Editors of Scientific Journals looking to become more visible often search for innovation as a means to enhance the journals' impact. This responsibility ends up being a shared activity between editors and researchers; if the latter trust the quality of the output, they will use it and make it more visible within different communication spaces in the academic debate; in this way, this communication will be a source for dialogue and for the construction of training scenarios.

The dialogue between communities is clearly a challenge because of their intentions, their interests and their histories (cognitive and emotive). These asymmetries make it complex. Particular dynamics of the Universities, Centres and Countries make it impossible to accurately predict how to conduct communication and cooperation.

Frequently, social science debates whether local knowledge has a global interest. The main problem is that the information measures that tap into this relationship have been available to us only recently. At the moment, regional and local output is increasing, but the relationship is still unverified. Our region has been mainly a consumer and replicator of knowledge, and outputs have been associated to diverse hegemonies linked to the academic training centres in our countries. Some examples in certain areas of Psychology may be used as predictors of this relationship between production and consumption. Even though output has been growing, direction trends are still maintained in the cases of Europe and emergent economies in Latin America, which leads us to suggest that there is a relationship between economic and social development and knowledge production¹. Several studies have attempted to support this common idea — cognitive development is associated to economic and social conditions².

With regards to content, local Social Psychology is dominated by a socio-constructionist qualitative perspective. his should clearly move dialogues in that direction, but papers in Social Psychology with other perspectives need to find their own spaces for academic dialogue. The virtue of this research will be determined by the ability to turn these new spaces-communities into reference points.

On the other hand, it is clear that other knowledge production scenarios must generate communication dynamics. It is also self-evident that international quality production from diverse perspectives prompt other dialogues, transfers, and knowledge appropriations, and this is why we create spaces for internationally edited issues. Also, our journal, which has been traditionally a social science publication, intends to open itself to diverse trends and perspectives related to interdisciplinary research. This is the case of this first special issue on Cognitive Science. The challenge for researchers and authors is then reflected on journals, which must also increase their horizons and challenges.

This issue is part of that perspective — the idea of enhancing the spaces for knowledge visibility and combining the international with the local look. What we intend is to enhance the dialogue scenarios, and our Universitas Psychologica intends to widen the spaces for interaction.

Wilson López-López
Editor

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¹Mani, A., Mullainathan, S, Shafïr, E. & Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function. Science, 341, 976-980. Doi: 10.1126/science.1238041
²Lillo, S, & Martini, N. (2013). Principales Tendencias Iberoamericanas en Psicología Clínica. Un Estudio Basado en la Evidencia Científica. Terapia Psicológica, 31 (3), 363-371.