Dr. Pison and the Humanities Journal

One of the challenges we continue to face in Philippine academia is the limited number of seminars, workshops, and professional development opportunities that genuinely help writers, researchers, and faculty members understand the process of publishing their work in scholarly journals. This is especially true for those working outside Metro Manila, where access to publishing mentors, editorial networks, and conversations about academic publishing can be difficult to come by.

While universities regularly encourage their faculty members to conduct research and publish their findings, we do not always provide enough opportunities for them to learn how to navigate the publishing process, identify appropriate journals, prepare manuscripts, and respond to the demands of peer review. Even fewer opportunities are free, accessible to the public, and deliberately designed to include scholars from the regions.

This gap was one of the things I had in mind when I assumed the role of Faculty-In-Charge of the UP Visayas Language Program. I wanted our office to become more than a place that facilitates language-related activities. I wanted it to become a space where knowledge is shared, professional communities are strengthened, and opportunities for intellectual growth are made available not only to our own faculty members and students but also to researchers and writers beyond the university.

Organizing a webinar on humanities research and academic publishing therefore became one of the first initiatives I wanted to pursue. My intention was simple but important: if we could bring an experienced journal editor into a conversation with our faculty members, especially those who are still beginning their research and publication journeys, we could help make academic publishing less intimidating and more accessible to people who have valuable ideas but may not yet know how to bring those ideas into print.

Fortunately, the opportunity came at just the right time. Last month, Dr. Ruth Jordana Pison happened to be in Iloilo, and I saw this as an opportunity to reach out to her. As a faculty member of the University of the Philippines Diliman and Editor-in-Chief of Humanities Diliman, she brings valuable experience in scholarly publishing and the humanities.

I gathered the courage to send her an email and ask whether she might be willing to collaborate with us on a webinar about publishing research in humanities journals. There is always a little hesitation when one approaches a busy academic whose time is already divided among teaching, research, editorial responsibilities, and other institutional commitments. One wonders whether the request might be too much to ask or whether it might simply be lost among the many messages an academic receives.

To my delight, Dr. Pison responded enthusiastically and readily agreed to work with us. Her response reminded me how much a simple act of generosity can mean to someone trying to build something for a community.

I have encountered many generous people in the academe, and I remain grateful for them, but I have also witnessed how knowledge can sometimes become a form of personal capital that people are reluctant to share. Some academics seem to guard their expertise, connections, and opportunities as though helping another person succeed might somehow diminish their own achievements.

This is unfortunate because universities are supposed to be communities of learning, and learning should not end with individual advancement. Of course, academic work demands time, expertise, and considerable labor, and no one can be expected to accommodate every request. Still, there is a meaningful difference between protecting one’s time and refusing to share opportunities when one is genuinely able to do so.

Dr. Pison’s willingness to collaborate reminded me that academic leadership is not measured only by the number of publications one produces, the positions one occupies, or the recognition one receives. It is also demonstrated in the willingness to make one’s experience useful to others.

I was genuinely happy when I finally met Dr. Pison in person last month and we began discussing the details of the webinar. Our conversations helped us shape the activity into something more purposeful than a conventional lecture about writing and publishing. We wanted participants to gain practical knowledge about the publication process while also thinking more critically about the kinds of research that deserve greater attention in Philippine scholarship.

This became the foundation of our webinar, Making Scholarship Visible: Language Research and the Practice of Publishing in the Humanities, a professional development activity organized by the UP Visayas Language Program in collaboration with the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the College of Arts and Letters at UP Diliman.

We envisioned three interconnected objectives. First, we wanted participants to better understand the processes involved in submitting scholarly manuscripts, undergoing editorial assessment and peer review, and navigating the expectations of academic journals.

Second, we wanted to encourage researchers to recognize the wealth of subjects, experiences, languages, histories, and cultural practices in the regions that remain underrepresented in academic discussions.

Third, we hoped to inspire universities across the country, particularly those outside major academic centers, to establish and sustain their own language and humanities journals, with the necessary editorial standards, institutional support, and professional practices that would allow these publications to serve their scholarly communities over the long term.

These objectives were important to me because publishing is not simply about producing articles to satisfy institutional requirements or adding another item to a faculty member’s curriculum vitae. At its best, scholarly publishing allows us to bring local knowledge into wider conversations, preserve and examine our cultural experiences, challenge assumptions, and contribute to the intellectual life of the country.

When researchers are given the tools and confidence to publish, they gain an opportunity to participate more actively in shaping how their communities are understood, remembered, and represented.

The response to the webinar was encouraging. Nearly 300 participants registered online, with educators and researchers joining us from Luzon, Mindanao, and different parts of the Visayas.

As the registrations came in, I found myself thinking about how many people across the country were looking for precisely this kind of opportunity. Behind every registration was a person who might have been preparing a manuscript, developing a research proposal, considering a first journal submission, or simply trying to understand how academic publishing works.

There were teachers who wanted to share the findings of their classroom research, scholars interested in documenting their communities, and faculty members who hoped to develop their writing and research credentials. Their presence reminded me that the desire to produce and share knowledge remains very much alive, even when access to resources and publishing opportunities is uneven.

Imagine what might happen if every participant who attended the webinar eventually developed a publishable paper about their own region, language, community, or field of expertise. Imagine the collection of research that could emerge from the everyday experiences of teachers, the oral histories preserved by local communities, the linguistic practices of our multilingual households, the literary traditions of our islands, and the social and cultural questions that continue to shape life in the Philippines.

The result would be more than a larger number of publications. It could be a richer and more representative body of Philippine scholarship, one in which the regions are not merely sources of data for research designed elsewhere but active contributors to the production of knowledge.

At the same time, I recognize that attending a webinar is only a beginning. We must continue to provide mentoring, writing opportunities, editorial guidance, research support, and institutional encouragement if we want the enthusiasm generated by activities like this to lead to actual publications. Nevertheless, seeing so many people give their time to a discussion about research and publishing was already a reason for hope.

One of the most meaningful moments of the afternoon came when we discussed the possibility of publishing research written in our regional languages. This is a concern close to my heart, particularly because of my work in Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, and other regional literary and language initiatives.

For a long time, I have hoped to see more scholarly studies written in these languages, not merely studies about them written in English or Filipino. There is an important distinction between treating a regional language as an object of research and recognizing it as a language through which rigorous research can be conducted, interpreted, and communicated.

Our languages are capable of carrying complex ideas, critical arguments, historical interpretations, and scholarly insights. They are not confined to everyday conversation, folklore, literary expression, or cultural documentation. They can also be languages of intellectual inquiry, theoretical discussion, and academic debate.

During the webinar, when Dr. Pison was asked whether Humanities Diliman publishes research in regional languages, her answer was candid. She explained that the journal does not currently publish in those languages because it does not have the necessary editors who could responsibly handle manuscripts written in them.

I appreciated her honesty because the answer brought us face to face with a practical reality that we sometimes overlook when discussing linguistic inclusion. A journal cannot simply declare itself open to every language without having the editorial expertise, reviewing arrangements, and institutional capacity to assess submissions responsibly.

Scholarly publishing requires more than good intentions. It requires people who understand the language, can evaluate the research, and can help ensure that a manuscript meets appropriate academic standards without erasing the linguistic and cultural particularities that make it valuable.

What I appreciated even more was Dr. Pison’s openness about the limitations of the present system and her expressed hope that, in the future, she would be able to read more research written in the regional languages of the Philippines. She recognized the importance of developing journals in the regions that could nurture scholarship not only about local islands, communities, and cultural practices but also about the languages themselves.

Her response stayed with me because it transformed what could have been a simple question about a journal’s submission policy into a larger conversation about the conditions necessary for a more inclusive publishing environment.

It is easy to call for greater representation in academic publishing, but we must also ask what practical steps are needed to make that representation possible. Where are the editors who can work confidently in Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Aklanon, Capiznon, and other Philippine languages? How can universities train and support them? How can journals build networks of reviewers who possess both linguistic competence and disciplinary expertise?

What kinds of editorial policies would allow regional-language research to meet rigorous scholarly standards while respecting the different intellectual traditions and expressive possibilities of each language? These are questions that institutions in the regions must begin addressing seriously.

If we want regional languages to become more visible in research, we cannot depend entirely on existing national journals to make room for them. We must also build the capacity to publish in these languages ourselves.

This means developing journals, supporting editors and reviewers, mentoring emerging researchers, and creating a culture in which writing scholarship in one’s own language is regarded as a legitimate and valuable academic practice.

It also means recognizing that multilingual scholarship is not simply a symbolic gesture toward cultural diversity. It is an opportunity to make knowledge accessible to more people and to expand the languages through which scholarly conversations can take place.

As someone who works in regional publishing and language advocacy, I found this discussion especially significant. Through my work with Kasingkasing Press and my involvement in literary and language initiatives in Western Visayas, I have repeatedly encountered the difficulty of sustaining publications that serve communities and languages outside the dominant publishing centers.

The challenges are familiar: limited funding, small readerships, distribution difficulties, the cost of production, and the continuing need to convince institutions and readers that work in regional languages deserves sustained attention and support.

Academic journals face their own set of challenges, including the demands of editorial management, peer review, indexing, regular publication schedules, and maintaining quality over time. These difficulties should not be romanticized.

The people who sustain journals often perform demanding and largely invisible labor, coordinating submissions, communicating with authors and reviewers, editing manuscripts, meeting deadlines, and ensuring that each issue is published according to established standards. In many cases, the work continues despite limited resources and competing professional responsibilities.

Listening to Dr. Pison speak about the realities of journal editing reminded me that editors perform an important form of cultural and intellectual labor. They do not merely select which papers will appear in an issue. They help determine which questions receive sustained attention, which voices enter scholarly conversations, and which forms of knowledge become part of the academic record.

This responsibility becomes particularly important in a country as linguistically and culturally diverse as the Philippines, where much valuable knowledge remains outside the reach of established academic publishing networks.

For this reason, I have come to appreciate editors not only for their technical expertise but also for the patience, discernment, and commitment required to keep scholarly conversations alive. Their work deserves recognition, but it also deserves concrete institutional support, reasonable workloads, resources for editorial development, and a community that understands the value of what they do.

I also left the webinar thinking about the responsibility of universities in the regions. We often speak about research productivity, international visibility, rankings, citations, and the need for faculty members to publish in reputable journals. These are legitimate concerns, especially for institutions that want their research to contribute to wider academic discussions.

However, we must be careful not to reduce scholarship to a checklist of individual accomplishments or to assume that research becomes valuable only when it appears in publications that are already recognized by established academic centers.

We should also ask whether our institutions are creating the conditions that allow faculty members and students to conduct meaningful research and share it with appropriate audiences. Do we provide enough time and mentoring for young researchers to develop their manuscripts? Do we have local journals that understand the research questions, languages, and cultural contexts of our communities?

Do we support the people who serve as editors, reviewers, and publication managers? Are we helping our scholars develop the confidence to write about their own regions without feeling that their work must first be translated into the interests or vocabulary of distant academic centers before it can be considered significant?

These questions are especially important for universities in Western Visayas and other regions whose communities possess rich linguistic, literary, historical, and cultural resources.

Our institutions should not simply encourage faculty members to publish elsewhere. They should also consider how they can build sustainable publishing platforms of their own, develop editorial expertise, and establish journals that meet recognized scholarly standards while remaining responsive to local research priorities.

Such initiatives would require long-term commitment, funding, institutional policies, and collaboration among universities, but the potential benefits extend beyond the production of publications. They would help strengthen research communities, support emerging scholars, preserve and expand the intellectual use of regional languages, and ensure that locally grounded scholarship has a more permanent place in the academic landscape.

When the webinar concluded this afternoon, I felt grateful, relieved, and hopeful. Organizing an online activity of this scale requires considerable coordination, and I know that what participants see on their screens is only a small part of the work that makes an event possible.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to everyone who helped us prepare and carry out the webinar, especially Ms. Janice, our hardworking staff member at the UP Visayas Language Program. Her assistance and commitment were essential to the success of the activity.

I am equally grateful to our university leadership and colleagues who supported the initiative, to our partner unit at UP Diliman, and to everyone who registered, attended, asked questions, and contributed to the discussion.

I am particularly thankful to Dr. Ruth Jordana Pison for sharing her time, experience, and insights with us. Her willingness to engage with our questions, including those concerning the limitations and possibilities of regional-language publishing, made the discussion meaningful.

I hope that our participants came away with more than practical information about journal submissions and editorial processes. I hope they also left with a stronger sense that their research matters, that the questions emerging from their own communities deserve serious scholarly attention, and that they do not have to pursue the difficult work of publishing alone.

For those who have manuscripts waiting in their computers, research findings that have not yet been written into articles, or ideas they have been hesitant to develop because the publishing process seems overwhelming, I hope this webinar has encouraged them to take the next step.

The work does not end with learning how to submit a paper. It begins when we finally sit down to write, revise, seek feedback, and give our ideas the time and attention they deserve.

The afternoon reaffirmed something I have long believed: making scholarship visible is not only about helping individual researchers publish their work. It is also about creating the conditions in which more people can participate in the production of knowledge.

This means making opportunities accessible, sharing expertise generously, strengthening institutions, supporting scholarly editors, and recognizing that the intellectual life of the Philippines cannot be fully represented by the experiences and languages of only a few academic centers.

Our regions have stories to tell, questions to investigate, histories to examine, and languages through which these inquiries can be pursued. We need journals that will take these possibilities seriously, universities that will invest in their development, and scholars who are willing to write with both intellectual rigor and a deep sense of responsibility to their communities.

We also need to acknowledge that building such a publishing culture will take time. One webinar will not resolve the structural inequalities that shape academic publishing, nor will a single initiative immediately produce new journals or a generation of published researchers.

But meaningful institutional change often begins with conversations that help people see what is possible and identify the work that remains to be done. For me, this webinar was one such beginning.

It reminded me why I accepted the responsibility of leading the UP Visayas Language Program and why I want our office to continue creating opportunities for learning, collaboration, and the development of scholarship.

I hope we can sustain this momentum and eventually see more faculty members, students, and independent researchers from Western Visayas and other regions publish their work, including research written in Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Aklanon, and other Philippine languages.

More than anything, I hope we can build a community where knowledge is not treated as a possession to be guarded but as a resource that becomes more valuable when it is shared.

This afternoon, through our conversation with Dr. Pison and the participation of scholars from different parts of the country, I was reminded that there is still much to look forward to in Philippine humanities research and publishing.

The future will depend on what we choose to do with this possibility, and I am hopeful that more of us will choose to write, publish, collaborate, and make our scholarship visible.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at the University of the Philippines Visayas. He teaches in the Division of Professional Education and at UP High School in Iloilo. He currently serves as faculty-in-charge of the UP Visayas Language Program and as secretary of the National Committee on Literary Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). His poetry has been recognized by the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.