Scholarly Publishing in Korea: Language, Perception, Practice of Korean University Faculty

This study reports how internationalization of academic knowledge is reflected in the language choice of Korean academic journals across disciplines and examines perceptions and practices of eighty-two faculty from various disciplines at three Korean universities concerning publishing in English journals. The results indicate that natural science has the highest percentage of English-medium journals whereas those in humanities and social science predominantly use Korean as a medium of publication. Similar disciplinary patterns are observed in the responses to survey questions about frequency of publication as well as desire and preference for publishing papers in English. The biggest motivation for Korean scholars to publish in English was the desire to reach global scholarly communities. Implications of these findings are discussed.