“Peripheral” scholarly publications

This article analyses the situation of so-called ‘peripheral’ journals with regard to their publication context. Hence, models relying on voluntarism, with scarce means, and designed to protect a specific type of research and language, are opposed to the practice of publishing with a highly professionalized international scope in terms of market. The different positionings with regard to Open Access is also examined. In addition, the article addresses the difficulties which these journals experience in order to attain a better recognition in the evaluation processes and claim the need of the existence of complete data sources at the national level as well as the specific international databases for the Humanities, such as ERIH. Finally, the relevance of books in the research carried out in field of Humanities is analysed and details concerning Scholarly Publishers Indicators as a source of support in evaluation processes are provided.

Keywords: scientific journals, scholarly books, databases, quality indicators, Humanities, research evaluation, Open Access.