<p>Despite growing scholarly interest in doctoral publishing in higher education, few studies conceptualize doctoral researchers’ international publishing as a negotiated, agentic practice that spans the national knowledge space (NKS) and the global knowledge space (GKS). Drawing on Archer’s concept of reflexive agency and Marginson’s student self-formation theory, this study examined the agency of 33 Chinese social science doctoral students in international publishing and how this process contributed to their academic self-formation. Findings reveal that amidst the tensions between the NKS and GKS, students enact three forms of agentic practice: claiming space against domestic knowledge hierarchies, building alliances to advance publication, and negotiating locally produced knowledge as globally meaningful innovation. Furthermore, while knowledge-creation experiences during the publishing process facilitate academic self-formation through epistemic development, community self-positioning, and value-driven projection, a purely instrumental stance toward publishing yields limited self-formation. These findings challenge the view that international publishing merely reproduces the center-periphery structure in the GKS and indicate that it may also carry an empowering function for doctoral students in relatively marginal positions within the NKS. The study also delineates the distinction between “knowledge production” and “knowledge creation” in doctoral publishing and enriches student self-formation theory by foregrounding knowledge creation as a central mechanism.</p>