The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) records tens of languages of publication, reflecting journals that publish in a single or multiple languages, up to 30 different languages in the same title. Some journals may use different languages for different purposes: for example, the website may be available in English, to communicate with the international community, but the full-text contents may be available in the country’s local or regional language. This landscape speaks of a desire to reach balanced multilingualism, despite the global predominance of English in scholarly communications.
In any event, if the journal is available in multiple languages, the information provided must be the same in all languages: this helps avoid ambiguity and ensures that all authors and readers abide by a consistent set of expectations.
Why communicate research in local languages?
It can be helpful to run journals in local languages (either in addition to English, or only in another language) for various reasons:
- Science needs to communicate with society. Besides researchers being the main target of journals, other stakeholders also benefit from publications, such as students, practitioners, policymakers, journalists and the general public. Importantly, some of these stakeholders only speak or can read their local language. Publishing in languages shared by various communities at a national or regional level can help strengthen collaboration and policy impact.
- Each language expresses ways of conceiving the world and knowledge. Therefore, encouraging scholarly publication in the language of the authors and readers strengthens the development of theories, methodologies and general scientific thought among that community of speakers.
Implications of the journal’s language
The decision of what language(s) a journal will adopt depends on many factors, such as the discipline, the intended audience, the socio-historical context of the country, the available budget and more. This decision is usually made by the publisher alongside the editorial team. Some decision points to consider when publishing in languages other than English include the following:
| Area | Decision points |
|---|---|
| Audience |
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| Editorial board |
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| Peer review |
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| Website |
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In any event, it is recommended that journals also publish titles and abstracts in English, so that the international community can understand the journal’s scope, aims and focus and access any materials that may be of interest (including, for example, research data associated with the article).
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- del Rio Riande, G., Lujano Vilchis, I., & Olijhoek, T. (2023). How balanced is multilingualism in scholarly journals? A global analysis using the DOAJ database.
- Kulczycki, E., Guns, R., Pölönen, J., Engels, T. C. E., Rozkosz, E. A., Zuccala, A. A., Bruun, K., Eskola, O., Starčič, A. I., Petr, M., & Sivertsen, G. (2020). Multilingual publishing in the social sciences and humanities: A seven‐country European study. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 71(11), 1371–1385. Portico.
- Lujano Vilchis, I. (2023, March 20). Diversidad en las revistas académicas: Tres recomendaciones desde el DOAJ. Abierto al Público.
- Neylon, C., & WIlson, K. (2018). ccat-lab/scholarly-comms-lexicon: Scholarly communications multilingual lexicon. Zenodo.
- Scholastica. (n.d.). 3 Ways academic journals can better support non-native English speaking authors.
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