---
title: "Languages of science"
chunk: 10/13
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:39:42.114015+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Policies in favor of multilingualism ===
A new scientific and policy debate over linguistic diversity emerged after 2015: "in recent years, policies for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Open Science call for increasing access to research, interaction between science and society and public understanding of science". The debate initially stemmed from wider discussions about the evaluation of open science and the limitations of commercial metrics. In 2015, the Leiden Manifesto included ten principles to "guide research evaluation", which included a call to "protect excellence in locally relevant research". Building on empirical data showing the persistence of non-English research communities in Europe, Gunnar Sivertsen (in 2018) theorized the need for a balanced multilingualism "to consider all the communication purposes in all different areas of research, and all the languages needed to fulfil these purposes, in a holistic manner without exclusions or priorities." In 2016, Sivertsen contributed to the "Norwegian model" of scientific evaluation: he proposed a flat hierarchy among a few large international journals, along with a wide selection of journals that would not discriminate against local publications, and he encouraged journals in the social sciences and the humanities to favor Norwegian publications.
These local initiatives developed into a new international movement in favor of multilingualism. In 2019, 120 research organizations and several hundred individual researchers cosigned the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication. The initiative includes three principles:

"Support dissemination of research results for the full benefit of the society", which implies that they should be available "in a variety of languages".
"Protect national infrastructures for publishing locally relevant research" through specific support of the non-commercial/diamond model to "make sure not-for-profit journals and book publishers have both sufficient resources". Non-commercial journals are more likely to be published in a local language.
"Promote language diversity in research assessment, evaluation, and funding systems", in line with the third recommendation of the Leiden Manifesto.
In the aftermath of the Helsinki Initiative, multilingualism has been increasingly associated with open science. This trend was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, which "saw a widespread need for multilingual scholarly communication, not only between researchers, but to enable research to reach decision-makers, professionals and citizens". Multilingualism has also re-emerged as a topic of debate beyond the social sciences. In 2022, the Journal of Science Policy and Governance published a "Call to Diversify the Lingua Franca of Academic STEM Communities", which stressed that "cross-cultural solutions are necessary to prevent critical information from being missed by English-speaking researchers."
In November 2021, the UNESCO Recommendation for Open Science included multilingualism as the core of its definition of open science: "For the purpose of this Recommendation, open science is defined as an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone".
During the early 2020s, the European Union begin to officially support language diversity in science, as a continuation of its general policies in favor of multilingualism. In December 2021, the European Commission issued an important report on the future of scientific assessment in European countries. However, this report overlooked the issue of linguistic diversity: "Multilingualism is the most notable omission". In June 2022, the Council of the European Union included a detailed recommendation on the "Development of multilingualism for European scholarly publications" in its research assessment of open science. The declaration acknowledges the "important role of multilingualism in the context of science communication with society" and welcomes "initiatives to promote multilingualism, such as the Helsinki initiative on multilingualism in scholarly communication." While the declaration is not binding, it invites experiments with multilingualism "on a voluntary basis" and to assess the need for further action by the end of 2023.

== References ==

== Bibliography ==

=== Books & theses ===
Alperin, Juan Pablo (2015). The public impact of Latin America's approach to open access (Thesis). Stanford University.
Andriesse, Cornelis D. (2008-09-15). Dutch Messengers: A History of Science Publishing, 1930–1980. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-17084-1.
Behrens, Julia; Fischer, Lars; Minks, Karl-Heinz; Rösler, Lena (2010). Die internationale Positionierung der Geisteswissenschaften in Deutschland. Hannover: HIS:Projektbericht.{{cite book}}:  CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Bourne, Charles P.; Hahn, Trudi Bellardo (2003-08-01). A History of Online Information Services, 1963-1976. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-26175-3.
Bowker, Lynne; CIro, Jairo Buitrago (2019-05-01). Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community. Emerald Group Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78756-721-4.
Gordin, Michael D. (2015-04-13). Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and After Global English. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-00032-9.
Montgomery, Scott L. (2013-05-06). Does Science Need a Global Language?: English and the Future of Research. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-01004-5.
Moore, Samuel (2019-05-02). Common Struggles: Policy-based vs. scholar-led approaches to open access in the humanities (Thesis). Retrieved 2021-12-11.
Olechnicka, Agnieszka; Ploszaj, Adam; Celińska-Janowicz, Dorota (2018-10-08). The Geography of Scientific Collaboration. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-47192-1.
Poibeau, Thierry (2019-05-09). Babel 2.0: Où va la traduction automatique ?. Odile Jacob. ISBN 978-2-7381-4850-6.
Wächter, Bernd; Maiworm, Friedhelm (2014). English-taught Programmes in European Higher Education: The State of Play in 2014. Lemmens Medien GmbH. ISBN 978-3-86856-017-6.
Wouters, P. F. (1999). The citation culture (Thesis). Retrieved 2018-09-09.

=== Reports ===
Bosman, Jeroen; Frantsvåg, Jan Erik; Kramer, Bianca; Langlais, Pierre-Carl; Proudman, Vanessa (2021-03-09). OA Diamond Journals Study. Part 1: Findings (Report). doi:10.5281/zenodo.4558704.
Council of the European Union (2022-06-10). Research assessment and implementation of Open Science (PDF) (Report).
European Commission. Directorate General for Research and Innovation. (2019). Future of scholarly publishing and scholarly communication: report of the Expert Group to the European Commission (Report). LU: Publications Office. doi:10.2777/836532. ISBN 978-92-79-97238-6.
Ficarra, Victoria; Fosci, Mattia; Chiarelli, Andrea; Kramer, Bianca; Proudman, Vanessa (2020-10-30). Scoping the Open Science Infrastructure Landscape in Europe (Report). doi:10.5281/zenodo.4159838. Ficarra, Victoria; Chiarelli, Andrea (2020). "Open science, open access, open infrastructure, services, sustainability, funding, open standards, open content, good governance, open principles". Dataset: Scoping the Open Science Infrastructure Landscape in Europe (Dataset). doi:10.5281/zenodo.4153741.
Kramer, Bianca; Neylon, Cameron (2022-06-21). Language Diversity in Scholarly Publishing (Report). COKI. Retrieved 2022-06-28.
Ochsner, Michael; Kancewicz-Hoffman, Nina; Hołowiecki, Marek; Holm, Jon (April 2020). Overview of Peer Review Practices in the SSH (Report). European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and Humanities. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12032589.v2. Retrieved 2020-09-24 – via figshare.
Recommendation on Open Science (Report). UNESCO. 2021-11-23. CL/4363.