Languages Are Still a Major Barrier to Global Science

Abstract

While it is recognized that language can pose a barrier to the transfer of scientific knowledge, the convergence on English as the global language of science may suggest that this problem has been resolved. However, our survey searching Google Scholar in 16 languages revealed that 35.6% of 75,513 scientific documents on biodiversity conservation published in 2014 were not in English. Ignoring such non-English knowledge can cause biases in our understanding of study systems. Furthermore, as publication in English has become prevalent, scientific knowledge is often unavailable in local languages. This hinders its use by field practitioners and policy makers for local environmental issues; 54% of protected area directors in Spain identified languages as a barrier. We urge scientific communities to make a more concerted effort to tackle this problem and propose potential approaches both for compiling non-English scientific knowledge effectively and for enhancing the multilingualization of new and existing knowledge available only in English for the users of such knowledge.

From Open Access to Open Science

“…Nevertheless, a huge body of scientific literature is still published in national languages; in some areas of biology up to 36 % of the literature is published in languages other than English, e.g., Spanish, Chinese, and others (Amano et al, 2016). This makes another important barrier between the published research and the end users: the non-English documents cannot be understood fully without appropriate language skills, but what is more important -they cannot be searched using English keywords on Google Scholar and Web of Science even if they actually have English titles, or English abstracts, or both (Amano et al, 2016)! Imagine, if the majority of these journals were published in Open Access mode, it would still not have much sense since the real access to the results of research was lacking.…”

“…Imagine, if the majority of these journals were published in Open Access mode, it would still not have much sense since the real access to the results of research was lacking. Moreover, this further forms gaps and biases in our knowledge, as well as overrepresentation of positive results, as they are more likely to be published in high impact English-language journals (Egger et al, 1997;Amano et al, 2016).…”

Meta‐analysis of management effects on biodiversity in plantation and secondary forests of Japan

“…Whilst their strict protection represents a conservation priority in the face of forest loss and degradation worldwide, the biodiversity potential of disturbed planted and secondary forests is widely acknowledged (Putz et al, 2012). Although several syntheses of this vast literature exist, they have limited potential for practicable recommendations across a range of contexts, because of their tendency towards narrative synthesis over quantitative metaanalysis and a focus on charismatic taxa and tropical regions (Spake, Martin, Ezard, Newton, & Doncaster, 2015), or their inclusion of studies published only in English (Amano, González-Varo, & Sutherland, 2016). Although several syntheses of this vast literature exist, they have limited potential for practicable recommendations across a range of contexts, because of their tendency towards narrative synthesis over quantitative metaanalysis and a focus on charismatic taxa and tropical regions (Spake, Martin, Ezard, Newton, & Doncaster, 2015), or their inclusion of studies published only in English (Amano, González-Varo, & Sutherland, 2016).…”

“…Japan's vast forest area and interest in conservation has generated copious empirical research on biodiversity responses to forest management interventions (Higuchi & Primack, 2009). Many of Japan's forestry studies, however, are published only in Japanese (Nagaike, 2012), reflecting the major barrier that language still presents to the global compilation and application of scientific knowledge (Amano et al, 2016). For example, just as for Japan, the majority of Central European forests are restricted to mountain areas, and have been exploited by clear-cutting and coppicing for millennia (Hilmers et al, 2018;Takeuchi et al, 2003).…”

65 Science reboot. Creation of an evidence-based literature by increasing the use of regional languages ​in science

“…At the same time, non-English speaking countries publish new studies in regional journals, causing contrary effectinformation deficiency in English. 5 Similarly to RCSB PDB and NCBI, the authors suggest to create a novel scientific database in order to: -Enrich the regional languages allowing them to be competitive; -Concentrate on the evidence-based and up-to-date information in order to «restart the science»; -Provide information(1) in suitable for understanding way (reviews) and for accurate data description(2) (handbook). -Create more effective communication between specialists; Methods The model of database includes:…”