Social Work Journals: The Rocky Road Towards Academic Recognition

Abstract

For many years, the discipline of Social Work has reflected on the conditions,resources, methods and results of social intervention dealing with a wide range of problems and difficulties. And yet, its academic status has only been recognized recently, especially when compared to other similar disciplines such as Sociology, Psychology or Anthropology. Beyond the Anglo-American context, where Social Work enjoys a relatively high degree of recognition, Social Work in other languages is still before a long road toward full incorporation as an academic discipline. In this sense, academic journals, as vehicles used for communicating carefully validated research results, must play an importantrole in strength eningthe discipline
by promoting an open debate between academia and professionals, theory and practice, science and ideology, reflection and social reform, or tacit and explicit knowledge. On the other hand, such academic recognition entails a number of risks for the
discipline. While it is true that Social Work has already been successfully integrated in higher education, it should never abandon the environments where professional practice and intervention take place, and which serve to validate Social Work’s field of knowledge in a practical way. However, traditional standards of academic accreditation (number of citations, impact factor, etc.) often fail to account for other components of this discipline which are much connected to its ultimate objectives, and which go beyond the
scope of higher education by introducing the perspective of citizens as users of social services. Hence, journals must offer more than merely publishing carefully crafted and academically faultless articles, and should promote in researchers openness to alternative perspectives (experts and practitioners) that help enrich the debate.