Читать книгу Political Science and Digitalization - Global Perspectives - Группа авторов - Страница 35

The purpose of this section is to report the main changes in institutions related to political science research in Mexico. Some important changes have occurred in recent years that impact the topics and funding for research in this area. The first change is that the National Association of political science is no longer active. This organization had gathered practitioners and scholars of this area nationwide. In the meanwhile, five years ago, another organization has emerged, namely, the Mexican Association for political science (AMECIP) which has been organizing five national conferences on the field, mostly [50] oriented to attract undergraduate students and practitioners rather than scholars and researchers. Up to now, it has become the best place to publish and report on a national level.

The second change is that Mexican journals dedicated to political science¹³ have been modernized using Open Journal System (OJS) and implemented new policies to improve their quality and access from authors and indexes. Even though, very few new journals have emerged due to the lack of funding and a national public policy to promote them. Most new journals accept papers related to the digital revolution, social media, e-government, and open government. Unfortunately, very few of them have international recognition in the research rankings such as JCR. The third change is that political scientists are cooperating with scholars from public administration and communication, normally sharing facilities along universities. Besides, the National Council of Science and Research (CONACYT) has promoted a national policy to foster research groups that integrate different disciplines and provide funding for these kinds of relationships.

Finally, about research centers in political science, there is not good news. The most recent research center is the National Laboratory of Public Policy (http://lnpp.cide.edu/), more related to public administration rather than to political science. At this moment, there are no new research centers in this area, and some of them are disseminated in public universities across the country. There are important lacks in this matter which we discuss in the following section.