Di Césare, Victoria; Robinson-García, Nicolás; Costas, Rodrigo
This preliminary study operationalises the knowledge bridging and gap-filling communication functions of scientific journals, originally proposed by Chavarro et al. (2017). Considering their theoretical definitions, we link these functions to our local research framework (Di Césare & Robinson-Garcia, 2026) through the producers and recipients dimensions, and measure them using local or global references and citations drawn from OpenAlex articles. We aim to empirically identify knowledge bridging and gap-filling journals, both within and outside the mainstream. The results suggest that the vast majority of these journals are non-mainstream. The thematic profiles of their references and citations validate our geographical operationalisations. Gap-filling journals belong predominantly to the non-mainstream local Social Sciences, whereas in the non-mainstream knowledge bridging journals, the Health Sciences emerge. These domain-level findings support the journals' theoretical functions of serving, respectively, as venues for the publication of knowledge overlooked by the mainstream, and as bridges between mainstream knowledge and local communities.
