WG Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment
WG Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment
WG Objectives
The main objectives of the Working Group on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment:
- Raise awareness across all fields about the importance of “multilingualism in practice of science, in scientific publications and in academic communications”(UNESCO);
- Provide institutions with guidelines, toolbox and implementation proposal for recognizing, rewarding and incentivizing research carried out and communicated in all languages, and for addressing language biases in metrics, expert-assessment and rankings.
Events
Updated on 4 September 2024:
- CoARA WG Webinar on Multilingualism and Language Biases in Research Assessment, 26 September 2024
- Launch of Survey to CoARA signatory organisations on multilingualism and gender in research assessment, 5 September 2024
- OPERAS Conference 24-26 April 2024, Zadar, Croatia
- Research Evaluation in Social Sciences and Humanities (RESSH) Conference 23-24 May 2024, Galway, Ireland
- European summer school for scientometrics (esss), 2-6 September 2024, Vienna, Austria
- The 28th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (STI) conference 18-20 September 2024, Berlin, Germany
Resources
Public Webinar: Multilingualism and Language Biases in RA
Presentation slides from the WG's public webinar on 26 September 2024
Multilingualism: Insights from the MCAA Survey 2024
Presentation by Tereza Šímová on the MCAA Survey 2024
Exploring the landscape of multilingualism through bibliometrics
Presentation by André Brasil on misguided internationalization efforts in the Brazilian evaluation system
ECSPM survey on language use in science communication & citizen science projects
Presentation by Theodoros Marinis, Bessie Dendrinos, Monica Barni from the European Civil Society Platform
Questionnaire to CNR scientific community
Presentation by Ginervra Peruginelli and Sebastiano Faro of the questionnaire addressed to the CNR research community
Affiliated Organisations
- Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV), Finland
- Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), Global
- OPERAS AISBL, Europe
- Coimbra Group, Europe
- European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism, Europe
- Research Council of Finland, Finland
- Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU), Poland
- ANR – French National Research Agency, France
- cOAlition S, Europe
- Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy
- Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
- CNRS, France
- Eurodoc, Europe
- European Alliance for SSH (EASSH), Europe
- European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (ENRESSH),
Europe - EuroScience – the European Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology, Europe
- Global Young Academy (GYA)
- Hanken School of Economics (Hanken), Finland
- Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), Europe
- Italian national agency for the evaluation of universities and research institutes (ANVUR), Italy
- NIFU – Nordic institute for studies in innovation, research and education, Norway
- Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Belgium
- Sorbonne Université, France
- Tampere University (TAU), Finland
- TOUR4EU Tuscan Organisation of Universities in Europe (TOUR4EU), Italy
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
- Università degli Studi di Milano (UMI), Italy
- Universities Norway (UHR), Norway
- University of Antwerp, (UAntwerp), Belgium
- University of Jyväskylä, Finland
- University of Leiden (LEI), Netherlands
- Università di Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB), Italy
- University Paris Nanterre, France
- University of Turku (UTU), Finland
- Latin American Forum on Research Assessment (CLACSO-FOLEC), Argentina
- Lusófona University, Portugal
- Stockholm University, Sweden
- translatE network on language barriers in environmental sciences, University of Queensland,
Australia - UNESCO Chair on Open Science
- University of Montréal, Canada
- University of Lleida
- University of Warwick
- Fonds de recherche du Québec (observer)
Activities
Updated on 24 October 2024
- In the summer of 2024, WG members conducted three surveys. The Institute of Legal Informatics and Judicial Systems (IGSG) launched a survey on multilingualism and language biases aimed at researchers at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) included questions on multilingualism in it’s member survey, and the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism (ECSPM) sent a survey to it’s members concerning language use in science communication and citizen science. Preliminary results from these surveys were presented in a public webinar on 26 September, 20. Almost all (96%) of the 169 registered participants who responded to poll questions agreed that researchers are advantaged or disadvantaged because of language skills and preferences, at least to some extent. For further resources and survey findings, please see the Resources section.
- Preprint of a study recently published, Lucía Céspedes et al., Evaluating the Linguistic Coverage of OpenAlex: An Assessment of Metadata Accuracy and Completeness (2024). The study involved Vincent Larivière from the Multilingualism WG and evaluates the linguistic coverage and metadata accuracy of OpenAlex. Manual validation of metadata on language in a sample of 6,836 articles in OpenAlex, of which 68% were in English, suggests a much more linguistically diverse landscape of global scholarly output than Web of Science (96% articles in English). Access the study here: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2409.10633
Join the Working Group!
Interested in joining the Working Group?
Do you have any questions?
Please contact:
Emanuel Kulczycki
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Janne Pölönen
The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies
Gian Maria Greco
Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA)
Monica Dietl
Initiative for Science in Europe
Structure and Implementation
Activities will be carried out by Task Forces (TF) producing specific Deliverables, and five interest groups (IG) will represent topics or stakeholders throughout activities.
Task Forces and their leads are:
- TF1: Coordination (lead: TSV)
- TF2: Landscape Analysis (lead: AMU, LEI, UAntwerp, ANVUR, ECSPM)
- TF3: Policy Advice and Implementation (lead: ANR, Coimbra Group, ISE, OPERAS, UHR, CNR, UTU)
- TF4: Communication (lead: MCAA)
The IGs and their coordinators are:
- Early career researchers (lead: Eurodoc)
- Civil society (lead: ECSPM)
- Intersectionality (lead: UNIMIB, CNR)
- Language learning and skills (lead: Tour4EU)
- Open Scholarly communication (lead: LEI, CLACSO/FOLEC)
The WG will implement several mechanisms for a continuous involvement of CoARA members and other organisations, making sure that they will be able to contribute to and be actively involved in, and benefit from the WG activities.
CoARA members will be invited to: contribute data;, respond to and distribute surveys; andparticipate in case studies for the landscape analyses; comment through open consultations on each core WG output; and participate in the IGs to make sure that the topics and stakeholder perspectives are taken into account throughout the WG activities.
The WG will also promote a series of online workshops and webinars to share, present and detail its outputs, for instance how to use the toolbox. Online meetings will be organised to cover several time zones to facilitate participation beyond Europe. In-person workshops can be held within events organised by WG members.
Activities Archive
Previous activities:
- WG had its kick-off meeting on 3 November 2023 and has regular monthly meetings the 1st Thursday of the month, 14:00-16:00 CET
- WG was presented at DORA’s National and International Initiatives Discussion Group on 14 November 2023 and featured on DORA’s website on 18 January 2024
- WG completed the Action plan in February 2024. This internal document describes and provides an overview and schedule of all WG activities and needed resources. Action plan will be updated during the WG duration
- WG organized a hybrid satellite event on 14 March 2024 in context of MCAA annual conference in Milan, Italy
- WG and ECSPM co-organized a seminar on 4 April 2024 on Multilingualism in research and assessment in HEIs in Konstanz, Germany
- WG TF2 “Landscape Analysis” is currently preparing literature reviews, surveys, case-studies and bibliometric analyses
- WG TF3 “Policy Advice and Implementation” organized” a hybrid meeting 11 April hosted by the Coimbra Group in Brussels, Belgium
- Questions on multilingualism included in the MCAA 2024 survey to all current or former researchers, whether MCAA members or not, was open until May 15, 2024
- WG members contributed to a webinar 3 April 2024 celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication. Presentations are available on the event website.
- WG member Tatsuya Amano’s co-authored research published 13 March Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Academic publishing requires linguistically inclusive policies
- WG member Elea Gimenez-Toledo’s blogpost published 27 March 2024 in The Conversation: English dominates scientific research – here’s how we can fix it, and why it matters