IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jinfst/v71y2020i11p1371-1385.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multilingual publishing in the social sciences and humanities: A seven‐country European study

Author

Listed:
  • Emanuel Kulczycki
  • Raf Guns
  • Janne Pölönen
  • Tim C. E. Engels
  • Ewa A. Rozkosz
  • Alesia A. Zuccala
  • Kasper Bruun
  • Olli Eskola
  • Andreja Istenič Starčič
  • Michal Petr
  • Gunnar Sivertsen

Abstract

We investigate the state of multilingualism across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) using a comprehensive data set of research outputs from seven European countries (Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Flanders [Belgium], Norway, Poland, and Slovenia). Although English tends to be the dominant language of science, SSH researchers often produce culturally and societally relevant work in their local languages. We collected and analyzed a set of 164,218 peer‐reviewed journal articles (produced by 51,063 researchers from 2013 to 2015) and found that multilingualism is prevalent despite geographical location and field. Among the researchers who published at least three journal articles during this time period, over one‐third from the various countries had written their work in at least two languages. The highest share of researchers who published in only one language were from Flanders (80.9%), whereas the lowest shares were from Slovenia (57.2%) and Poland (59.3%). Our findings show that multilingual publishing is an ongoing practice in many SSH research fields regardless of geographical location, political situation, and/or historical heritage. Here we argue that research is international, but multilingual publishing keeps locally relevant research alive with the added potential for creating impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Emanuel Kulczycki & Raf Guns & Janne Pölönen & Tim C. E. Engels & Ewa A. Rozkosz & Alesia A. Zuccala & Kasper Bruun & Olli Eskola & Andreja Istenič Starčič & Michal Petr & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2020. "Multilingual publishing in the social sciences and humanities: A seven‐country European study," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 71(11), pages 1371-1385, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:11:p:1371-1385
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.24336
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24336
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.24336?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe Mongeon & Adèle Paul-Hus, 2016. "The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 213-228, January.
    2. Diana Hicks, 2005. "The Four Literatures Of Social Sciences," IBT Journal of Business Studies (JBS), Ilma University, Faculty of Management Science, vol. 1(1), pages 1-1.
    3. Diana Hicks & Paul Wouters & Ludo Waltman & Sarah de Rijcke & Ismael Rafols, 2015. "Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics," Nature, Nature, vol. 520(7548), pages 429-431, April.
    4. Emanuel Kulczycki & Tim C. E. Engels & Janne Pölönen & Kasper Bruun & Marta Dušková & Raf Guns & Robert Nowotniak & Michal Petr & Gunnar Sivertsen & Andreja Istenič Starčič & Alesia Zuccala, 2018. "Publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities: evidence from eight European countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 463-486, July.
    5. Kaare Aagaard, 2015. "How incentives trickle down: Local use of a national bibliometric indicator system," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(5), pages 725-737.
    6. Linda Sīle & Janne Pölönen & Gunnar Sivertsen & Raf Guns & Tim C E Engels & Pavel Arefiev & Marta Dušková & Lotte Faurbæk & András Holl & Emanuel Kulczycki & Bojan Macan & Gustaf Nelhans & Michal Petr, 2018. "Comprehensiveness of national bibliographic databases for social sciences and humanities: Findings from a European survey," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 310-322.
    7. Mark W Neff, 2018. "Publication incentives undermine the utility of science: Ecological research in Mexico," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(2), pages 191-201.
    8. Carla López Piñeiro & Diana Hicks, 2015. "Reception of Spanish sociology by domestic and foreign audiences differs and has consequences for evaluation," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 78-89.
    9. Hicks, Diana, 2012. "Performance-based university research funding systems," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 251-261.
    10. Barbara Good & Niki Vermeulen & Brigitte Tiefenthaler & Erik Arnold, 2015. "Counting quality? The Czech performance-based research funding system," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 91-105.
    11. Verleysen, Frederik T. & Weeren, Arie, 2016. "Clustering by publication patterns of senior authors in the social sciences and humanities," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 254-272.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marek Kwiek & Wojciech Roszka, 2022. "Academic vs. biological age in research on academic careers: a large-scale study with implications for scientifically developing systems," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3543-3575, June.
    2. Cristina Arhiliuc & Raf Guns, 2023. "Disciplinary collaboration rates in the social sciences and humanities: what is the influence of classification type?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(6), pages 3419-3436, June.
    3. Siti Khadijah Abdullah Sanek & Akmal Hidayah Halim, 2024. "Bibliometric Examination of "Bona Vacantia": Charting Patterns and Research Trends," Information Management and Business Review, AMH International, vol. 16(2), pages 219-235.
    4. Mrowinski, Maciej J. & Gagolewski, Marek & Siudem, Grzegorz, 2022. "Accidentality in journal citation patterns," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    5. Taşkın, Zehra & Doğan, Güleda & Kulczycki, Emanuel & Zuccala, Alesia Ann, 2021. "Self-Citation Patterns of Journals Indexed in the Journal Citation Reports," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    6. Matias Federico Milia & Ariadna Nebot Giralt & Rigas Arvanitis, 2022. "Local emergence, global expansion: understanding the structural evolution of a bi-lingual national research landscape," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7369-7395, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Renata Kudaibergenova & Sandugash Uzakbay & Asselya Makanova & Kymbat Ramadinkyzy & Erlan Kistaubayev & Ruslan Dussekeev & Kadyrzhan Smagulov, 2022. "Managing publication change at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University: a case study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 453-479, January.
    2. Kulczycki, Emanuel & Korzeń, Marcin & Korytkowski, Przemysław, 2017. "Toward an excellence-based research funding system: Evidence from Poland," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 282-298.
    3. Gabriel-Alexandru Vîiu & Mihai Păunescu, 2021. "The citation impact of articles from which authors gained monetary rewards based on journal metrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(6), pages 4941-4974, June.
    4. Hladchenko, Myroslava & Moed, Henk F., 2021. "The effect of publication traditions and requirements in research assessment and funding policies upon the use of national journals in 28 post-socialist countries," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    5. Raminta Pranckutė, 2021. "Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World," Publications, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-59, March.
    6. Przemysław Korytkowski & Emanuel Kulczycki, 2019. "Examining how country-level science policy shapes publication patterns: the case of Poland," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(3), pages 1519-1543, June.
    7. Pantea Kamrani & Isabelle Dorsch & Wolfgang G. Stock, 2021. "Do researchers know what the h-index is? And how do they estimate its importance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5489-5508, July.
    8. Daniela De Filippo & Fernanda Morillo & Borja González-Albo, 2023. "Measuring the Impact and Influence of Scientific Activity in the Humanities and Social Sciences," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-17, June.
    9. Eugenio Petrovich, 2022. "Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and uses of bibliometric indicators in the Italian daily newspapers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2195-2233, May.
    10. Jordi Ardanuy & Llorenç Arguimbau & Ángel Borrego, 2022. "Social sciences and humanities research funded under the European Union Sixth Framework Programme (2002–2006): a long-term assessment of projects, acknowledgements and publications," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-13, December.
    11. Vít Macháček & Martin Srholec, 2021. "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Predatory publishing in Scopus: evidence on cross-country differences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(3), pages 1897-1921, March.
    12. Sánchez-Gil, Susana & Gorraiz, Juan & Melero-Fuentes, David, 2018. "Reference density trends in the major disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 42-58.
    13. Koski, Timo & Sandström, Erik & Sandström, Ulf, 2016. "Towards field-adjusted production: Estimating research productivity from a zero-truncated distribution," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 1143-1152.
    14. van den Besselaar, Peter & Heyman, Ulf & Sandström, Ulf, 2017. "Perverse effects of output-based research funding? Butler’s Australian case revisited," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 905-918.
    15. Andreea Mironescu & Alina Moroșanu & Anca-Diana Bibiri, 2023. "The regional dynamics of multilingual publishing in web of science: A statistical analysis of central and eastern european journals and researchers in linguistics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(2), pages 1133-1162, February.
    16. Konstantin Fursov & Yana Roschina & Oksana Balmush, 2016. "Determinants of Research Productivity: An Individual-level Lens," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 10(2), pages 44-56.
    17. Linda Sīle & Raf Vanderstraeten, 2019. "Measuring changes in publication patterns in a context of performance-based research funding systems: the case of educational research in the University of Gothenburg (2005–2014)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 71-91, January.
    18. Brauer, Rene & Dymitrow, Mirek & Tribe, John, 2019. "The impact of tourism research," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 64-78.
    19. Giovanni Abramo & Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo & Myroslava Hladchenko, 2023. "Assessing the effects of publication requirements for professorship on research performance and publishing behaviour of Ukrainian academics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(8), pages 4589-4609, August.
    20. Christian Schneijderberg & Nicolai Götze & Lars Müller, 2022. "A study of 25 years of publication outputs in the German academic profession," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 1-28, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jinfst:v:71:y:2020:i:11:p:1371-1385. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.