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Becoming a Scholar Under Unequal Conditions: An Analytic Autoethnography of Authorship, Mentorship, and Publishing in Nigerian Higher Education

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In this autoethnography, I examine my lived experience as a young Nigerian scholar navigating academic publishing within a higher education system characterized by economic constraint, institutional pressure, and unequal global knowledge hierarchies. Drawing on reflective journals, correspondence, institutional documents, and publication records from 2012 to 2025, I analyze how mentorship, promotion expectations, authorship practices, and ethical tensions influenced my scholarly development and publishing decisions. Guided by a constructivist-interpretivist orientation and using thematic and narrative analyses, I explore formative supervision, informal mentoring, vulnerability to predatory publishing, authorship injustice, ethical awakening, toward scholarly leadership. Reflecting on these experiences, I came to recognize that principled mentorship was important in strengthening competence, ethical awareness, confidence and resilience, whereas weak supervision, ambiguous authorship norms, and performance pressures increased exposure to predatory outlets and inequitable research practices. Ethical guidance and meaningful engagement with credible publication processes encouraged persistence and more responsible journal selection. I interpret these experiences as reflections of the structural conditions that influence academic growth in resource-limited systems. With my study, I advanced my understanding of scholarly identity formation and ethical publishing cultures in Global South higher education, and call for strengthened ethical mentorship, transparent authorship policies, institutional support for publishing literacy, and deliberate journal evaluation practices.
DOI: 10.17169/fqs-27.3.4668
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7214646204
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