The Internationalisation of Fashion Studies: Rethinking the Peer-reviewing Process

The International Journal of Fashion Studies argues that the reception of contributions from countries with less visibility in English-language academic publications has been long overdue. This is why it has set as its main aim the dissemination of the work of non-anglophone scholars who write in their first language by publishing their writings in English translation. To do so, the journal has put into place a peer-reviewing process whereby it reviews submissions written in the authors’s chosen language, whether English or not. The paper discusses the socio-cultural and epistemological issues related to the operationalizing of such a peer-reviewing process. It first looks at the development of fashion studies to situate the journal’s approach. It then discusses its linguistic project in relation to the cultural issues pertaining to the internationalization of fashion studies. Finally, it engages with the epistemological issue of being a journal that welcomes contributions by scholars situated outside the Anglophone world and western regions whilst also being embedded in a form of scientific publishing that originates from the West and is informed by, and reproduces, ‘western’ norms and values.