Resources
In this section, you will find the recent recording of the public webinar hosted by the WG, as well as useful links from recent survey findings.
Working Group: Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment
By addressing language diversity and biases in assessment, this WG supports the EU (and other) institutions in fulfilling their duty to enhance, promote and uphold linguistic equity, diversity and non-discrimination in Europe and globally. This requires fostering an academic culture that values diverse competencies, interactions and communications in all languages without exclusions or priorities.
Access resources on recent survey findings at the following links:
CoARA_Multilingualism_WG_presentation
Key Objectives
The main objectives of the Working Group on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment:
- to raise awareness across all fields about the importance of “multilingualism in practice of science, in scientific publications and in academic communications”(UNESCO);
- to 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.
Activities
Recent activity updates:
Updated on 24 October 2024
- Over the summer, 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
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
Affiliated organisations
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Structure & 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
Find out more!
Contacts:
- Emanuel Kulczycki, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, emek@amu.edu.pl
- Gian Maria Greco, Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), gianmaria.greco@mariecuriealumni.eu
- Janne Pölönen, The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, janne.polonen@tsv.fi
- Monica Dietl, Initiative for Science in Europe, monica.dietl@initiative-se.eu