Review of Habibie & Hultgren (2022): The Inner World of Gatekeeping in Scholarly Publication

This volume makes use of autoethnography to examine the specific cultural practices of gatekeepers as a social group in research and scholarly publication settings. As a research method, ethnography has a long-established tradition in other disciplines like anthropology or sociology, but recent publications attest that ethnography, together with its multiple approaches like autoethnography, is a promising form of inquiry within the fields of academic literacies and research publication (e.g., Guillén-Galve & Bocanegra-Valle, 2021; Habibie & Burgess, 2021; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Paltridge et al., 2016; Tusting et al., 2019). Autoethnography works at the intersection of autobiography and ethnography to create representations of the cultural experience (Adams et al., 2017). In line with this, The inner world of gatekeeping in scholarly publication is innovative because all chapter authors look at gatekeeping practices from the inside and share their personal experiences by highlighting the process of becoming, rather than of being, a gatekeeper. It is also innovative because it shifts the focus from those academics who are aiming at publication and their writing processes to the same academics that are ultimately responsible for the adjudication and certification of scholarship in today’s global research.