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From Gatekeeping to Brokerage: A Collaborative Ethnography of Editorial Work in International English as a Foreign Language Journals

delete2026-04-01
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PRE
AI
L
Le, Thanh Thao *
P
Phuong, Hoang Yen
P
Pham, Trut Thuy
DOI:10.1002/leap.2053delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Editors are often cast as gatekeepers who police the boundaries of knowledge. Yet in non-Anglophone settings, editorial practice is also translational, relational and identity-forming. We present a collaborative ethnography by a three-member authorship team, including two women and one man, who simultaneously served in editorial roles across international, English-medium journals in English as a foreign language (EFL)/applied linguistics. Drawing on fieldnotes, decision letters, reviewer exchanges, platform logs and reflexive journals, we theorise editorial brokerage: the day-to-day mediations through which editors translate standards across epistemic traditions, mobilise networks to calibrate judgement and negotiate role/time frictions within teaching-intensive institutions. We integrate sociocultural theory and communities of practice to propose the Editorial Brokerage Cycle: linking tensions, mediations, identity work and outcomes. Findings are organised as five ethnographic vignettes, including decision letters as pedagogical genre, epistemic translation, reviewer ecologies, temporal/role frictions and becoming an editor. Each ends with a micro-proposition.
Keywords:
editorial brokerage
international academic publishing
Vietnamese EFL lecturers

Journal

L
Learned Publishing
IF:
0
Papers:
38
Citations:
0

Organization

N
Nam Can Tho University
Scholars:
76
Papers: 46
Citations: 0
C
Can Tho University
Scholars:
1.6K
Papers: 1.0K
Citations: 1.1K
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