Burdijeov simbolički kapital I reprodukcija nejednakosti u akademskom izdavaštvu malih jezika: wos/scopus indeksacija kao mehanizam konverzije lingvističkog u simbolički kapital

The article examines the mechanism by which Web of Science and Scopus indexation regimes function as instruments of converting linguistic into symbolic capital, and how this conversion produces structural inequality between dominant and peripheral language communities. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's analytical apparatus from Distinction and The Rules of Art, and engaging with contemporary scholarship on academic dependency, evaluation regimes, and epistemic coloniality, the analysis focuses on four small Slavic-language academic communities: Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Slovenian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian. The original contribution of the article is the construction of the Linguistic Capital Conversion Asymmetry Index (LCAI), a new quantitative metric that operationalizes the disproportion between a language community's research-producing capacity and its symbolic recognition in dominant indexation systems. Preliminary application of LCAI to the four cases reveals a factor of asymmetry exceeding forty times when contrasted with the English-language baseline, with Ukrainian and Macedonian communities exhibiting the most severe conversion deficits. The analysis shows that small-language journals operate within a heteronomous field where symbolic legitimacy is allocated by external infrastructures whose evaluation criteria mirror the linguistic habitus of dominant Anglophone production, and where peripheral journals adopt strategies that range from forced linguistic assimilation to refusal-as-survival. The article argues that this conversion mechanism constitutes a form of epistemic coloniality not in the sense of direct imperial domination, but as the quiet operationalization of Bourdieu's logic of distinction at the level of the global scientific field. The paper closes with implications for evaluation policy in semi- peripheral national systems, particularly those that have made Scopus coverage a binding criterion for academic promotion and funding.