The Kinaadman Journal participated in the conference of the Asian Journals Network (AJN) at Madja Gada University in Indonesia on 05 October 2023, through the gracious accommodation of Prof Dr Wening Udasmoro, Vice Rector for Education and Learning of UGM.  In the afternoon of the Conference, Kinaadman’s Chief Editor, Dr Arlene Yandug, shared her experience through her talk “Editorial Mediation in Peer Review and Editing,” giving attention to the critical and delicate nodes in the review process, especially with respect to Kinaadman’s history, and its prioritization of local knowledge.

As it was the first or lead-off Conference, many of the participating Journal editors talked about their Journal’s respective history and experiences especially with respect to influence and achievements, some of whom bravely raised the difficult issues regarding metrics obsession, the proliferation and monetization of indexation, and hence questioned the integrity of the whole indexing industry.

AJN is groundbreaking in this regard. It not only brings together Asian Journals whose viewpoints are held together by similar cultures and consciousness, but also locates the positions of these journals with respect to global knowledge systems as they deal with issues and challenges common to all or unique to some of them.

Newly established, the AJN network has been convened by Prof Ma Luisa Torres Reyes who is also Editor in Chief of UNITAS.  Participating journals include: Akda, Concentric, Dialektika, Foreign Literature Studies, Forum for World Literature Studies, Frontiers of Narrative Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature, Journal of Language and Literature, Kinaadman, Kritika Kultura, Kritike, Mobility Humanities, Paradigma, Philippiniana Sacra, Poetika, and Southeast Asian Media Studies Journal.