Abstract
This chapter reviews the process of institutionalization of the SSH in Argentina, in the tense atmosphere existing between two major public agencies: the CONICET and the National Universities. These two institutions are the main pillars of Argentinian higher education and scientific research. The current state of SSH research capacities is analyzed in terms of personnel and institutes, focusing on institutional inequalities and differences between disciplines. The publishing circuits and the particular role of the SSH in the universe of Argentinean scientific journals are also addressed. Geographic inequalities are shown by highlighting the morphology of eight academic regions. The aim of this work is to assess the recent expansion observable in Argentina’s academic world, along with the reinforcement of the structural heterogeneity of the field.
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Notes
- 1.
Created in Brazil in 1998, SCielo nowadays includes journal collections from 14 Iberoamerican countries and an indexing service. Recently it was acquired by WoS-Clarivate.
- 2.
Created in Mexico in 2003, it had a collection of 932 journals by December 2017.
- 3.
Created in Mexico in 1995, it is the biggest catalogue of Latin American journals evaluated based on 25 criteria, but only part of these journals are available on line. Latindex does not offer an indexing system. Latindex-C is the most inclusive and representative repository of evaluated journals, while SciELO and RedALyC have more restrictive range collections, but they are available in full text and offer citation services.
- 4.
The distance between enrollment and certification in SS and H may be explained by considering differences in social origin and positions of the agents, a crucial issue that has not been studied yet.
- 5.
These regions are 7 and they are called Councils of Regional Planification for Higher Education (CPRES for its Spanish acronym). Buenos Aires is divided in two CPRES: “bonaerense” and metropolitan. But in order to compare regional inequalities without forcing concentration data, it is necessary to observe the capital city as a separated region from the area that includes the big and prestigious Universidad Nacional de La Plata (here called Gran Buenos Aires).
- 6.
For a thorough discussion on the integrity of the field and the institutional stake, see Beigel et al. (2018).
- 7.
When applying for promotion, a CONICET researcher must select his 5 career-best publications and submit them into his online presentation. We built a data base with 23,852 career-best publications in order to assess tendencies regarding styles of production (books, articles and presentations to congresses) and prevalent publishing circuits. It is relevant to note that in the comparison with the complete CV, the trajectories are less attached to the patterns observed in the 5 career-best publications (see Beigel 2017).
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Beigel, F., Sorá, G. (2019). Arduous Institutionalization in Argentina’s SSH: Expansion, Asymmetries and Segmented Circuits of Recognition. In: Fleck, C., Duller, M., Karády, V. (eds) Shaping Human Science Disciplines. Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92780-0_9
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