Beyond Metrics: A Decade of Building Critical Scholarship at the Interface of Forest and Society

Abstract

This editorial reflects on the first decade of Forest and Society by examining how scholarly journals can be understood beyond bibliometric indicators and ranking systems. While metrics remain influential in contemporary academic publishing, they offer only a partial account of how knowledge is produced, evaluated, and sustained. Drawing on a decade of editorial practice, the editorial foregrounds the intellectual, pedagogical, and institutional dimensions through which critical scholarship at the interface of forests and society has been cultivated. Beyond its role as a publication outlet, Forest and Society has evolved as part of a broader scholarly community, most notably through the development of the Forest and Society Research Group (FSRG). Through writing workshops, field-based learning, and sustained engagement with early career researchers, activists, and practitioners, this community has sought to strengthen analytical capacity, reflexive scholarship, and critical engagement, particularly within Southeast Asia and other underrepresented regions. Rather than presenting a retrospective assessment based on numerical performance, this editorial revisit the journal’s core commitments to interdisciplinary environmental research, editorial reflexivity, and the more nuanced elements of capacity building that have emerged in the process. It highlights how tensions between inclusivity and rigor, regional grounding and global relevance, and empirical richness and analytical depth have shaped editorial decision making, peer review practices, and community-oriented initiatives. Situating these experiences within broader debates on scholarly publishing, including the political economy of academic journals, university-based publishing models, and emerging challenges associated with artificial intelligence in academic writing, the editorial argues that durable scholarly impact emerges not primarily from the pursuit of metrics, but from sustained intellectual coherence, collective learning, and the cultivation of epistemic communities. In this sense, the trajectory of Forest and Society illustrates how journals can function as sites of critical scholarship and knowledge production beyond metrics.

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