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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in India, this study explores outsourced labour involved in global academic publishing by mapping the invisible actors, and analyzes its implications on global knowledge evaluation.

Paper long abstract

In academic publishing, “technical work” such as copyediting or typesetting is often outsourced to countries like India and Philippines. However, what is considered “technical” has expanded quite a lot in recent years. One of the most significant yet overlooked transformations amongst major publishers concerns the outsourcing and offshoring of editorial and peer review activities. While outsourcing is often framed as a cost-saving strategy or a means of fostering global collaboration, it raises important questions about power, colonial relations and labour conditions. Drawing on ethnographic field research in Indian outsourced companies, this study explores the global division of labour in academic publishing beyond the familiar triangle of editor, author and reviewer. Focusing in particular on labour related to peer review, the study traces the multiple, often invisible actors who participate in manuscript evaluation, reviewer selection and editorial decision-making. Contrary to the dominant image of an individual reviewer and editor in the process, our findings show that both the “reviewer” and “editor” are fragmented into a range of discrete tasks distributed across global labour markets. These tasks, frequently performed by outsourced workers in India, reconfigure how knowledge in academic publishing is evaluated, mediated and governed. Informed by postcolonial STS literature and global labour studies, our research tries to map the invisible and precarious labour sustaining academic publishing and questions its implications for the research system and those involved in it.