A Call to Diversify the Lingua Franca of Academic STEM Communities

Abstract

The current bias in the STEM academy favors English-language research publications, creating a barrier between English-speaking and non-English speaking researchers that is detrimental to the continuity and evolution of STEM research. In this paper, we lay out policy measures that employ U.S. government resources to create infrastructure that standardizes and facilitates the language translation process and hosting of multilingual publications. This proposal aims to increase linguistic diversity in academic STEM publications for the ultimate goal of improving global scientific communication and ameliorating the existing disparity between English and non-English STEM literature.

Publicação Científica, Ciência Aberta e Avaliação de Investigação — Breve Análise Crítica

“…A ciência, em especial nas áreas das ciências, tecnologias, engenharias e matemática, privilegia a publicação de investigação em língua inglesa, criando barreiras entre investigadores de língua inglesa e não inglesa, com eventuais prejuízos na continuidade e evolução da investigação nessas áreas. Henry et al (2021) apresentam medidas para criar infraestruturas que facilitem o processo de tradução de idiomas e hospedagem de publicações multilíngues, visando aumentar a diversidade linguística nas publicações científicas.…”

Toward More Inclusive Metrics and Open Science to Measure Research Assessment in Earth and Natural Sciences

“…Creating secondary non-conventional outputs (e.g., a YouTube video or conversational podcast) to translate a paper written in English would, in a way, help more people to understand the content of the paper. One of several initiatives that further call to diversify language in scientific publications is Helsinki Initiative ( https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/ ; Henry et al, 2021 ). It supports the dissemination of research output, while at the same time encourage in promoting local relevant research and the usage of local language.…”

Closing the computational biology ‘knowledge gap’: Spanish Wikipedia as a case study

“…Thus, production of non-English OERs offers additional benefits to the scientific community worldwide. Calls to diversify the scientific lingua franca entail top-down, multi-agency, large-scale translation efforts, engaging professional translation services to lessen the knowledge gap ( Henry et al 2021 ). While these efforts can potentially improve the accessibility of academic research, we also maintain the position that grassroots efforts among scientists to increase the generation of scientific reference materials (e.g.…”