The illusion of academic visibility: database selectivity, language hierarchies, and citation inequality in small-state legal scholarship

Introduction: Academic visibility is increasingly shaped by inclusion in majorbibliometric databases, yet the extent to which these systems accuratelyrepresent scholarly contributions from small academic communities remainscontested. This study examines how database selectivity, language hierarchies,and citation inequality influence the visibility of legal scholarship in a small-statecontext.Methods: Using a comparative bibliometric analysis of Google Scholar, Scopus,and Web of Science, the study focuses on three leading law faculties in NorthMacedonia: Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje (UKIM), Goce DelcevUniversity (UGD), and South East European University (SEEU).Results: The findings reveal a layered structure of academic visibility shaped bydifferences in database coverage and indexing practices. While Google Scholarcaptures a broad spectrum of scholarly output, Scopus and Web of Scienceprovide increasingly selective representations, resulting in substantially lowerlevels of measurable research activity. Across the analyzed institutions, citationimpact is unevenly distributed, with a small number of researchers accountingfor a disproportionate share of total citations, although the precision of inequalityestimates varies across institution-database combinations. Publication languageemerges as an important factor associated with differences in citation visibility.English-language publications account for the dominant share of citationsacross the analyzed databases, whereas Macedonian- and Albanian-languageoutputs show substantially lower citation visibility despite their presence in overallpublication volume.Discussion: The findings suggest that international visibility is associated not onlywith research productivity, but also with linguistic and structural characteristicsembedded within contemporary systems of scholarly communication. Academicvisibility in small-state contexts is socially and institutionally constructed throughthe interaction of database inclusion, language dominance, and cumulativecitation dynamics. The study contributes to debates on research evaluationand academic publishing by demonstrating how bibliometric systems mayproduce partial representations of scholarly activity, particularly in disciplinescharacterized by strong local and national orientations. The findings highlightthe need for more context-sensitive approaches to assessing research impact inperipheral academic systems.

(PDF) The illusion of academic visibility: database selectivity, language hierarchies, and citation inequality in small-state legal scholarship. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/416654134_The_illusion_of_academic_visibility_database_selectivity_language_hierarchies_and_citation_inequality_in_small-state_legal_scholarship [accessed Oct 24 2026].