WG Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment

WG Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment

WG Objectives

The main objectives of the Working Group on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment:

  1. Raise awareness across all fields about the importance of “multilingualism in practice of science, in scientific publications and in academic communications”(UNESCO);
  2. 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.

Latest News & Upcoming Events

Updated on 8 October 2025

 

Open Consultation on Implementation proposal for language-aware assessments is open until 6th November!

Public consultation on Implementation proposal for language-aware assessments is open until 6th of November!

The Implementation proposal is an actionable policy resource (Type A output) produced by the CoARA WG on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment that is currently in the Community Consultation phase of the Endorsement process.

The WG invites the representatives of CoARA member organisations, CoARA National Chapters and CoARA Working Groups, as well as interested experts, to provide feedback on the Implementation proposal by the 6th of November.

The Implementation proposal is the first approved Type A output to be nominated in the Endorsement Framework and to be reach the Community Consultation phase of the process. By providing feedback in the open consultation, reviewers will be credited with their valuable contributions upon final publication. All feedback will be considered before the final version of the Implementation Proposal is submitted to the CoARA Steering-Board for endorsement and inclusion in the CoARA Toolbox.

If you have any questions, please email janne.polonen@tsv.fi 

 

Upcoming Webinar:

“CoARA Working Group Webinar on Language-Aware Assessments”

21 October 2025 at 15h30-16h30 CET

The WG has also organised a webinar to present the results of the landscape analysis and the Implementation proposal on 21 October 2025 at 15h30-16h30 CET.

This will be the final webinar of the WG, focusing on the presentation of its main outputs. Please click here to register and join us for the webinar!

Resources

Public Webinar: Multilingualism and Language Biases in RA

Presentation slides from the WG's public webinar on 26 September 2024

Multilingualism: Insights from the MCAA Survey 2024

Presentation by Tereza Šímová on the MCAA Survey 2024

Exploring the landscape of multilingualism through bibliometrics

Presentation by André Brasil on misguided internationalization efforts in the Brazilian evaluation system

ECSPM survey on language use in science communication & citizen science projects

Presentation by Theodoros Marinis, Bessie Dendrinos, Monica Barni from the European Civil Society Platform

Questionnaire to CNR scientific community

Presentation by Ginervra Peruginelli and Sebastiano Faro of the questionnaire addressed to the CNR research community

Affiliated Organisations

  • Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV), Finland
  • Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), Global
  • OPERAS AISBL, Europe
  • Coimbra Group, Europe
  • European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism, Europe
  • Research Council of Finland, Finland
  • Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU), Poland
  • ANR – French National Research Agency, France
  • cOAlition S, Europe
  • Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy
  • Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Spain
  • CNRS, France
  • Eurodoc, Europe
  • European Alliance for SSH (EASSH), Europe
  • European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (ENRESSH),
    Europe
  • EuroScience – the European Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology, Europe
  • Global Young Academy (GYA)
  • Hanken School of Economics (Hanken), Finland
  • Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), Europe
  • Italian national agency for the evaluation of universities and research institutes (ANVUR), Italy
  • NIFU – Nordic institute for studies in innovation, research and education, Norway
  • Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), Belgium
  • Sorbonne Université, France
  • Tampere University (TAU), Finland
  • TOUR4EU Tuscan Organisation of Universities in Europe (TOUR4EU), Italy
  • Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
  • Università degli Studi di Milano (UMI), Italy
  • Universities Norway (UHR), Norway
  • University of Antwerp, (UAntwerp), Belgium
  • University of Jyväskylä, Finland
  • University of Leiden (LEI), Netherlands
  • Università di Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB), Italy
  • University Paris Nanterre, France
  • University of Turku (UTU), Finland
  • Latin American Forum on Research Assessment (CLACSO-FOLEC), Argentina
  • Lusófona University, Portugal
  • Stockholm University, Sweden
  • translatE network on language barriers in environmental sciences, University of Queensland,
    Australia
  • UNESCO Chair on Open Science
  • University of Montréal, Canada
  • University of Lleida
  • University of Warwick
  • Fonds de recherche du Québec (observer)

Activities

Updated on 24 October 2024

  • In the summer of 2024, 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

Join the Working Group!

Interested in joining the Working Group?
Do you have any questions?

Please contact:

Emanuel Kulczycki
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

emek@amu.edu.pl

Janne Pölönen
The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies

janne.polonen@tsv.fi

Gian Maria Greco
Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA)

gianmaria.greco@mariecuriealumni.eu

Martine Garnier-Rizet
Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR)

martine.garnier-rizet@anr.fr

Structure and 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: