{"id":8306,"date":"2024-02-27T01:48:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T20:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.impact.science\/blog\/?p=8306"},"modified":"2025-09-02T12:11:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T12:11:50","slug":"words-without-borders-linguistic-diversity-in-open-access-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cactusglobal.com\/media-center\/words-without-borders-linguistic-diversity-in-open-access-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Words Without Borders: Linguistic Diversity in Open Access Publishing<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

English is recognized as the most extensively spoken language globally (when including both native and non-native speakers<\/a>). Sadly, more than 3,000 languages are considered \u201cendangered<\/a>\u201d today\u2014these are languages threatened by loss because a more prevalent language is being used by community members for instructing and conversing. The prevalent language or \u201clingua franca\u201d in academia is English. English as a language is believed to hold \u201ca near monopoly of published research<\/a>\u201d\u2014a situation expected to continue to be so.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

English is the predominant language for scholarly journals, including those in open access (OA) repositories. Scientists and journals seeking more citations are pushed to publish in English<\/a> instead of local languages. As a result, publications in various local languages, especially in the Global South, have diminished, even though an ever-increasing proportion of researchers belongs to non\u2013English-speaking backgrounds<\/a>. Considering the pervasive dominance of English in academic publishing, the importance of embracing linguistic diversity in this space needs to be recognized.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

See also: How Publishers and Journals Can Encourage OA Submissions from Underserved Groups<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Why do academia and scholarly publishing need linguistic diversity?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Electronic communication and mobilization of researchers globally are facilitating increased international scientific collaboration. This scenario should encourage rather than erode linguistic diversity. A sort of \u201ccross-pollination\u201d is needed to change the current homogeneity and standardization of practices<\/a> in disseminating scientific knowledge, lent by the dominance of articles in English, mostly from the Global North.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

UNESCO\u2019s Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace<\/a> seeks to \u201cpromote human interaction on the Internet by encouraging the creation and processing of, and access to, educational, cultural and scientific content in digital form, so as to ensure that all cultures can express themselves and have access to cyberspace in all languages, including indigenous ones.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A lack of language diversity can lead to an impoverishment of research on lesser-known cultures and traditional knowledge, and even a loss of local languages. Researchers and their valuable work in this space might remain undiscovered because of the lack of visibility of findings disseminated in languages besides English. Open science can help preserve local, traditional knowledge, which is typically available in local or Indigenous languages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It is worth mentioning another crucial need for communicating research in different languages: academic communication in the native language of a target audience leads to greater participation and motivation and stronger connections to concepts in the local culture<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Thus, multilingualism is an important means to support OA and offer diverse methods to produce, communicate, and utilize knowledge.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

See also: Breaking Down Barriers: How and Why Research Societies and Publishers Are Embracing Cultural Diversity<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

How is OA supporting linguistic diversity in scholarly publishing?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There are currently 20,341 journals indexed in the directory of OA journals (DOAJ<\/a>; the largest database of fully OA journals), representing 135 countries and covering 80 languages. About 35% of indexed journals in 2022 published articles in two or more languages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Multilingual journals from the Global South<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Asia:<\/em><\/strong> At present, 3,636 journals from Asia are indexed in DOAJ<\/a>, and 1,253 repositories from Asia are registered on OpenDOAR<\/a>. National-level digital libraries have been developed in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, and Kuwait, with local language OA databases. A study<\/a> on contributions by BIMSTEC countries (seven South Asian and Southeast Asian nations) to DOAJ found that these covered journals in Hindi, Thai, Turkish, Nepali, Arabic, and Sanskrit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Latin America:<\/em><\/strong> Latin America has a long history of non-commercial OA publishing, predating the global OA movement. In their ecosystem of non-APC OA publishing, Redalyc<\/a> and AmeliCA<\/a> promote the inclusion of local science and linguistic diversity. Further, within the DOAJ, the predominant languages of journals after English are Spanish (3,821 journals) and Portuguese (2,450 journals); these are languages used in many Latin American nations. Of note, the Indigenous language Quechua has one journal in this database too.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Africa:<\/em><\/strong> In Africa, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese are colonial languages, and in addition, there is a rich tapestry of local languages. Journals in these languages are indexed in DOAJ, including local languages like Afrikaans and Sotho.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

OA initiatives promoting lingual diversity can provide much-needed global visibility to researchers of the Global South and lead to more citations by researchers in other countries.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

See also: Communicating Research on Indigenous Peoples: The Role of Journals and Publishers<\/a><\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Open Journal Systems<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Open Journal Systems (OJS)<\/a>, a free and open source software application for publishing scholarly journals online, is used by over 25,000 journals, most of which originate in the Global South. OJS is multilingual and has been translated into over 50 languages<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Helsinki Initiative<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication<\/a> was conceptualized in 2019. Signatories support three salient recommendations to be adopted by policy-makers, universities and research institutions, funders, libraries, and researchers:<\/h1>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n