Category Archives: oa.multilingualism

Measuring Back: Bibliodiversity and the Journal Impact Factor brand. A Case study of IF-journals included in the 2021 Journal Citations Report. | Zenodo

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Abstract:  Little attention has been devoted to whether the Impact Factor (IF) can be considered a responsible metric in light of bibliodiversity. This paper critically engages with this question in measuring the following variables of IF journals included in the 2021 Journal CItation Reports and examining their distribution: publishing models (hybrid, Open Access with or without fees, subscription), world regions, language(s) of publication, subject categories, publishers, and the prices of article processing charges (APC) if any. Our results show that the quest for prestige or perceived quality through the IF brand poses serious threats to bibliodiversity. The IF brand can indeed hardly be considered a responsible metric insofar as it perpetuates publishing concentration, maintains a domination of the Global North and its attendant artificial image of mega producer of scholarly content, does not promote linguistic diversity, and de-incentivizes fair and equitable open access by entrenching fee-based OA delivery options with rather high APCs.

 

A technology?based, financially sustainable, quality improvement intervention in a medical journal for bilingualism from submission to publication – Bachelet – 2023 – Learned Publishing – Wiley Online Library

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“Key points

 

While English is the dominant language in scientific literature, there are many reasons for introducing bilingualism in academic journals.
Bilingualism has generally been avoided due to the perception of high costs and possible inconsistencies between the source language article and the translated version.
A medical journal based in Santiago, Chile, carried out a two-year-long quality improvement intervention to overhaul the peer review, copyediting, translating and publication technologies to ensure full bilingualism from submission to online publication.
The outcomes are full bilingualism for articles submitted in Spanish and simultaneous publication of both language versions while not compromising the financial sustainability of the journal.”

Characteristics of scholarly journals published in non?English?speaking countries: An analysis of Library and Information Science SCOPUS journals – Yoon – 2023 – Learned Publishing – Wiley Online Library

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Abstract:  Although regional journals publish high-quality research in diverse languages, research published in non-English-speaking countries (NESC) tends to have lower international visibility. By outlining the characteristics of SCOPUS journals published in NESC, this study aimed to inform regional scholarly communities interested in internationalizing their journals. A list of 294 SCOPUS journals in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field was extracted from the SCOPUS database; 39.12% of SCOPUS LIS journals (115 journals) were published in NESC. After excluding journals published in English-speaking countries as well as journals published by international commercial publishers, this study analysed the characteristics of 62 journals. Forty-eight (77.42%) of the 62 analysed journals were open access (OA) journals, and 37 (77.08%) of which were diamond OA journals. Although journals from NESC had relatively lower impact, journals that primarily used English (journal homepage, specified manuscript language) had higher impact than non-English journals. This article discusses the importance of supporting OA (including diamond) journals to ensure international access of NESC journals, the limitations of this study, including relying on the SCOPUS LIS journals and quantitative analysis, and an agenda for future research regarding the internationalization of regional journals.

 

Diamond future of open access | Publication Forum

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“In Finland, the expenses of open access publishing were calculated as part of the open science and research monitoring exercise in 2022. According to the monitoring, 4 million euros were used in Finnish research organisations for APCs and book processing charges (BPCs) in 2021.

This development has caused critique across the science community and reinforced the movement towards charge-free open access publishing, i.e. diamond open access. Science Europe, an association representing major public organisations funding or performing research in Europe, defines diamond open access as follows:

“Diamond Open Access refers to a scholarly publication model in which journals and platforms do not charge fees to either authors or readers. Diamond Open Access journals are community-driven, academic-led, and academic-owned publishing initiatives. Serving a fine-grained variety of generally small-scale, multilingual, and multicultural scholarly communities, these journals and platforms embody the concept of bibliodiversity. For all these reasons, Diamond Open Access journals and platforms are equitable by nature and design.”

Science Europe and cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations, published the OA diamond journals study in 2021. It includes a report of the global situation of diamond open access journals and recommendations for funders, institutions and societies. 

The study finds that there are a few main concerns which many diamond journals share. These are, for example, lack of technical skills and resources to publish their content in a format which fulfils the standards specified in Plan S technical requirements. As a cause and effect of this, a large share of OA diamond journals are not included in established indexes for open access journals, such as DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals).

The study highlights that the editorial tasks of the journals are mainly based on the voluntary work of researchers, because the funding is not on a permanent basis. Voluntary work, e.g. editorial tasks or peer-review, is either not taken into account enough, for example, in institutions researchers’ assessment policies.

The study shows that despite common concerns the landscape of diamond journals is very diverse and fragmented. In conclusion, the study recommends measures for better utilising and sharing know-how and resources….”

Guest Post – Scholarly Publishing as a Global Endeavor: Leveraging Open Source Software for Bibliodiversity – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“The scale of the adoption of PKP’s open source publishing software around the world may be surprising, but the numbers should be a cause of celebration, for they are a demonstrable improvement in global knowledge exchange. They reflect an increase in engagement, participation, and diversity of contribution to the global scholarly knowledgebase, in origin, language, purpose, and the generation of research and data to find solutions to local and global issues from a new perspective and through a different lens….”

Beyond Web of Science and Scopus there is already an open bibliodiverse world of research – We ignore it at our peril | Impact of Social Sciences

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“This analysis of the geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary dimensions of these journals speaks to how recent calls for greater bibliodiversity in the research literature can be met through the existing literature. The challenge, however, is with the underrepresentation of this literature in leading indexes, such as the Web of Science, where less than 2% of these journals are indexed, and Scopus, where less than 8% are included. It is not that this literature is invisible, as 88% of it is found in Google Scholar due to its deliberate efforts to be globally inclusive. And it is not that this literature is, as many assume, “predatory,” as less than 2% of these journals are found on the prominent, if questionable, lists associated with Beall and Cabells. Rather, this robust body of work represents an example and an opportunity to realise the ambitious decolonizing agenda of knowledge redistribution called for by the philosopher Achille Mbembe.

All told, this body of journals demonstrate that research is far more of a global and diverse enterprise than is commonly credited or indexed. Studies, such as this one, can assist and encourage researchers to consult the full breadth of the literature that bears on their work. Our hope is, as well, that this work will also help us reflect on whose knowledge guides our understanding of the world.”

Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

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Abstract:  By analyzing 25,671 journals largely absent from common journal counts, as well as Web of Science and Scopus, this study demonstrates that scholarly communication is more of a global endeavor than is commonly credited. These journals, employing the open-source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS), have published 5.8 million items; they are in 136 countries, with 79.9% in the Global South and 84.2% following the OA diamond model (charging neither reader nor author). A substantial proportion of journals operate in more than one language (48.3%), with research published in 60 languages (led by English, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese). The journals are distributed across the social sciences (45.9%), STEM (40.3%), and the humanities (13.8%). For all their geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity, 1.2% are indexed in the Web of Science and 5.7% in Scopus. On the other hand, 1.0% are found in Cabell’s Predatory Reports, and 1.4% show up in Beall’s (2021) questionable list. This paper seeks to both contribute to and historically situate the expanded scale and diversity of scholarly publishing in the hope that this recognition may assist humankind in taking full advantage of what is increasingly a global research enterprise.

 

Open Science Conference 2023 | United Nations

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“Since 2019, when the Dag Hammarskjöld Library held the 1st Open Science Conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the global open movement has been significantly enriched with new national and international policies and frameworks as well as daring and visionary initiatives, both private and public.

At the 2nd Global Open Science Conference, From Tackling the Pandemic to Addressing Climate Change, in July 2021 more than a year into the pandemic that had upturned daily lives globally, participants from around the world engaged in a public dialogue focusing on what open science has learned from COVID-19 and how this can be applied into actions addressing the global climate crisis, at the interface of science, technology, policy and research. The Conference took stock of actions undertaken nationally and internationally, collected lessons learned and identified directions for the way forward. Open science was recognized as the keystone to assert everyone’s right “to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”. Speakers and audience asked for the complete overhaul of outdated scientific processes, publishing and research assessment practices that oppose open science principles, proposed global curation infrastructures for the record of science and platform-agnostic discovery services, as well as enhanced bibliodiversity, inclusivity, and multilingualism….”

Publication in English should not be associated with prestige | Responsible Research

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“Recently, multilingualism in scholarly communication has emerged as one of the central points of concern in the conversations on responsible science and research. This is a report of EuroScience Open Forum 2022 (ESOF) panel discussion on challenges of recognizing and supporting multilingual scholarly work in different geographical and organisational contexts….

Currently, the majority of scholarly communication is conducted in English. For example, in 2020, 95% of all the articles in one of the largest bibliographic databases, the Web of Science, were in English. 

Whilst the prevalence of an academic lingua franca certainly advances international communication between academics, multiple issues arise from this language hegemony. Considering that the majority of the global population does not speak English, the wider society is largely excluded from the scientific discourse and sharing of information. Concurrently, researchers have fewer resources and possibilities to publish in other languages without it negatively affecting their careers. As such, many local non-English Open Access journals, which play an important role as publishers of locally relevant research, are struggling to subsist.

Today, efforts to tackle these challenges are emerging in various localities through education, technological innovation and reformations of research assessment and funding. Moreover, important steps have been taken through international collaboration and policy making, which are essential for the fair and efficient global research community….

Throughout the panel discussion, it was emphasised that funders are in a key position in encouraging and facilitating the language-variety in scholarly communication. The Executive Director of cOAlition S, an Open Access initiative of national research funding organisations, Johan Rooryck presented, that the goal of increasing Diamond Open Access journals goes hand in hand with the effort of widening multilingualism in publishing. Rooryck noted that according to a recent Diamond Open Access study, most Diamond journals are multilingual while serving an international readership. According to Rooryck, national funders can also promote multilingual bibliodiversity of academic books via funding schemes for Open Access books. Rooryck’s message was clear: “Funders and universities should value multilingual publication in the same way as publication in English. We should convince PhD students of this too. Publication in English should not be associated with prestige.”…”

Translate Science – A conversation with Victor Venema, Danny Chan and Jennifer Miller

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“Translate Science is a working group that wants to exchange information, lobby, and build tools to make translations of scientific articles/reports/books,  abstracts, titles, and terms more accessible and (thus) stimulate the production of such translations.

Read more about our work at translatescience.org

We recorded this episode in mid-November 2022. Shortly after, in late December, we were notified of Victor’s sudden death. It is therefore with heavy hearts that we share this conversation with you, however, we hope his words can inspire you to agree with us on the importance of multilingualism in science and the opportunities translation of selected research output can provide for the global society….”

“Open Access helps both: authors and readers” : Peter Suber in an interview with Bodo Rödel (24 June 2022)

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(The interview is in English and the abstract in German.)

Abstract:  From Google’s English:  In the interview, Open Access expert Peter Suber and Bodo Rödel, head of the “Publications and Scientific Information Services” department, discuss the effects of Open Access described in Suber’s 2012 book, the future development of publication platforms, the role of publishers and changed user requirements in science. In addition, topics are also addressed that are not originally caused by Open Access, such as gaining reputation or the impact of the predominance of an academic language on other non-native speakers. 

Recalibrating the Scope of Scholarly Publishing: A Modest Step in a Vast Decolonization Process | Quantitative Science Studies | MIT Press

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Abstract:  By analyzing 25,671 journals largely absent from common journal counts, as well as Web of Science and Scopus, this study demonstrates that scholarly communication is more of a global endeavor than is commonly credited. These journals, employing the open source publishing platform Open Journal Systems (OJS), have published 5.8 million items; they are in 136 countries, with 79.9% in the Global South and 84.2% following the OA diamond model (charging neither reader nor author). A substantial proportion of journals operate in more than one language (48.3%), with research published in a total of 60 languages (led by English, Indonesian, Spanish, and Portuguese). The journals are distributed across the social sciences (45.9%), STEM (40.3%), and the humanities (13.8%). For all their geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary diversity, 1.2% are indexed in the Web of Science and 5.7% in Scopus. On the other hand, 1.0% are found in Cabells Predatory Reports, while 1.4% show up in Beall’s questionable list. This paper seeks to both contribute and historically situate expanded scale and diversity of scholarly publishing in the hope that this recognition may assist humankind in taking full advantage of what is increasingly a global research enterprise.

 

Open Call: Machine translation evaluation in the context of scholarly communication (proposals invited by Dec 23, 2022) | OPERAS

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In 2020, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR) launched the Translations and Open Science project with the aim to explore the opportunities offered by translation technologies to foster multilingualism in scholarly communication and thus help to remove language barriers according to Open Science principles.

During the initial phase of the project (2020), a first working group, made up of experts in natural language processing and translation, published a report suggesting recommendations and avenues for experimentation with a view to establishing a scientific translation service combining relevant technologies, resources and human skills.

Once developed, the scientific translation service is intended to:

address the needs of different users, including researchers (authors and readers), readers outside the academic community, publishers of scientific texts, dissemination platforms or open archives;
combine specialised language technologies and human skills, in particular adapted machine translation engines and in-domain language resources to support the translation process;
be founded on the principles of open science, hence based on open-source software as well as shareable resources, and used to produce open access translations.

Project Goals

In order to follow up on recommendations and lay the foundation of the translation service, the OPERAS Research Infrastructure was commissioned by the MESR to coordinate a series of preparatory studies in the following areas:

Mapping and collection of scientific bilingual corpora: identifying and defining the conditions for collecting and preparing corpora of bilingual scientific texts which will serve as training dataset for specialised translation engines, source data for terminology extraction, and translation memory creation.
Use case study for a technology-based scientific translation service: drafting an overview of the current translation practices in scholarly communication and defining the use cases of a technology-based scientific translation service (associated features, expected quality, editorial and technical workflows, and involved human experts).
Machine translation evaluation in the context of scholarly communication: evaluating a set of translation engines to translate specialised texts.
Roadmap and budget projections: making budget projections to anticipate the costs to develop and run the service.

The four preparatory studies are planned during a one-year period as of September 2022. 

The present call for tenders only covers the (3) Machine translation evaluation in the context of scholarly communication.

Global impact or national accessibility? A paradox in China’s science | SpringerLink

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Abstract:  During the past decades, Chinese science policy has emphasized the international dissemination of research. Such policies were associated with exponential growth of English-language publications and have led China to become the largest contributor to international scientific literature. However, due to the paywalls and language barriers, China’s international publications are less accessible to local Chinese scholars, which suggests that the dissemination to the international scientific community may come at the expense of dissemination to the local Chinese community. This paper investigates the local accessibility of China’s international publications and finds that publishing internationally limits the visibility of Chinese research for the national Chinese scientific community, and the restriction is even worse for immediate access.

 

Less ‘prestigious’ journals can contain more diverse research, by citing them we can shape a more just politics of citation. | Impact of Social Sciences

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“The ‘top’ journals in any discipline are those that command the most prestige, and that position is largely determined by the number of citations their published articles garner. Despite being highly problematic, citation-based metrics remain ubiquitous, influencing researchers’ review, promotion and tenure outcomes. Bibliometric studies in various fields have shown that the ‘top’ journals are heavily dominated by research produced in and about a small number of ‘core’ countries, mostly the USA and the UK, and thus reproduce existing global power imbalances within and beyond academia.

In our own field of higher education, studies over many years have revealed persistent western hegemony in published scholarship. However, we observed that most studies tend to focus their analysis on the ‘top’ journals, and (by default) on those that publish exclusively in English. We wondered if publication patterns were similar in other journals. So, we set out to compare (among other things) the author affiliations and study contexts of articles published in journals in the top quartile of impact (Q1), with those in the bottom quartile of impact (Q4)….”