The decolonization of knowledge is increasingly high on the agenda of applied and sociolinguistics. This article contributes to this agenda by examining how peripheral multilingual scholars confront their linguistic and epistemic exclusion from global knowledge production. Based on the product of such a challenge -- a Chinese-centric special issue of "Multilingua," a global academic Q1 journal, devoted to crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic and committed to furthering intercultural dialogue in research -- we explore the decades-long knowledge production process behind that product and so provide a look into the "black box" of academic networking and publishing. Advocating for collaborative autoethnography as an inherently inclusive method, we focus on enabling academic and personal networks, textual scaffolding, and linguistic and epistemic brokerage. The article closes with three aspects of linguistic and epistemic citizenship that are central to inclusion, namely recognition of the value of peripheral knowledges, recognition of a collaborative ethics of care, and recognition of shared responsibility.