In recent years, local scholars have been playing an increasingly significant role in the global knowledge system. However, in the context of Vietnam, interaction and engagement between Vietnamese social sciences researchers (VSSRs) with the global academic world are limited despite efforts from the Vietnamese government and tertiary institutions. This study explores the barriers that prevent Vietnamese scholars engaging with the international academic community. Eighty-two Vietnamese scholars in various fields of social sciences responded to an online self-reporting questionnaire including 13 closed-ended and nine open-ended questions. The results show that various individual factors (e.g., the researchers’ inadequate proficiency in English or limited research capacities), organisational factors (e.g., the lack of a supportive research environment, the lack of funding and resources, and unsupportive policies), and broader factors (e.g., political censors or the tradition of social research) could significantly influence VSSRs’ engagement with global academia. The study underlines the need for in-depth scholar-centred research to understand the process in which local researchers, who are disadvantaged by their contextual factors, participate in the international academic community. More importantly, findings are used to develop a potential framework to study local researchers’ academic engagement with global academia.