Helsinki Initiative 5 years
Emanuel Kulczycki & Janne Pölönen

3rd Helsinki Initiative Webinar on
Multilingualism in ScholarlyCommunication
3 April 2024

PRESENTATION

2

1.

Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication

2.

Multilingual communication for the full benefit of society

3.

Infrastructure for multilingual scholarly communication

4.

Multilingualism in assessment and funding systems

Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism
in Scholarly Communication

HELSINKI INITIATIVE ON MULTILINGUALISM IN SCHOLARLYCOMMUNICATION
3rd of April 2019
• The Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly
Communication was launched in 2019 to foster anenvironment that values multilingual scholarly
communication, science communication and open accessto scholarly publications in all languages.
• The long-term goal of the Helsinki Initiative is to ensure
the continued availability of high-quality research
published in all languages needed across the world for
effective communication of research knowledge within
and beyond academia.

1043 SIGNATORIES FROM 76 COUNTRIES (3 APRIL 2024)

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Support dissemination of research results for the full benefitof the society.
•Make sure researchers are merited for disseminating research results
beyond academia and for interacting with heritage, culture, andsociety.

•Make sure equal access to researched knowledge is provided in avariety of languages.

2. Protect national infrastructures for publishing locally relevant
research.
•Make sure not-for-profit journals and book publishers have bothsufficient resources and the support needed to maintain highstandards of quality control and research integrity.

•Make sure national journals and book publishers are safeguarded intheir transition to open access.

3. Promote language diversity in research assessment,evaluation, and funding systems.
•Make sure that in the process of expert-based evaluation, high quality
research is valued regardless of the publishing language or publication
channel.

•Make sure that when metrics-based systems are utilized, journal andbook publications in all languages are adequately taken into account.

WHAT MULTILINGUALISM?
Researcher••

Multilingualism refers to the existence
and use of many languages side-by-side
by both the individuals and thecommunity.
In scholarly communication,
multilingualism can be approached fromdifferent perspectives:••••••Publication
Researcher
Publisher
Field
Organisation/country
SocietyHow many languages
used incommunication ofresults?

Publisher/journalSociety

Need for availabilityof research-basedknowledge in
different languages

Publication

What publication
language options forjournals and books?

Is document available
or accessible indifferent languages?

Country/

Organisation

Language diversity ofthe entire publication
outputField

Patterns of language
use in communicationand outreachMultilingual communication
for the full benefit of society

SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION ACROSS FIELDS
2b. How large share of the peer-reviewed publication output of Finnish and Polish universities is indifferent languages?
English
0%Finland (N=91,262)

FinnishSwedishPoland (N=1,030,289)

Other

20 % 40 % 60 % 80 % 100 %English0%20 %

40 %Natural Sciences

99%

Engineering and Technology

99%

55%

Medical and Health Sciences

93%

59%

Agricultural Sciences

97%

52%

Social Sciences
Arts & Humanities
All fields

81%

Polish

Other

60 %

80 % 100 %

83%

20%
15%

63%
90%

48%

Pölönen, J., & Kulczycki, E. (2023). Multilingual publishing across fields of science: analysis of data from Finland
9and Poland. In AILA World Anniversary Congress 2023, Lyon. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8162610

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ACROSS FIELDS
3. How large share of the non-peer-reviewed publication output of the Finnish universities is indifferent languages?

Professional audiences (N=13443)

General audiences (N=7282)

EnglishEnglish

Finnish0%

Swedish
20 %

40 %

Other
60 %

80 % 100 %Natural Sciences

50 %Engineering and Technology

56 %Medical and Health Sciences

95 %

0%

20 %

Finnish40 %Swedish
60 %

Other

80 % 100 %

87 %
79 %
73 %

Agricultural Sciences

82 %

94 %

Social Sciences74 %79 %Arts & Humanities

66 %

72 %

All fields

77 %

77 %

Pölönen, J., & Kulczycki, E. (2023). Multilingual publishing across fields of science: analysis of data from Finland
10and Poland. In AILA World Anniversary Congress 2023, Lyon. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8162610

UNESCO RECOMMENDATION ON OPEN SCIENCE
24st November 2021

● Definition: Open science is defined as an inclusive

construct that combines various movements andpractices aiming to make multilingual scientificknowledge openly available, accessible and reusablefor everyone…

● Member-state actions: (I) Promoting a common

understanding of open science, associated benefits
and challenges, as well as diverse paths to openscience. (d) Encouraging multilingualism in thepractice of science, in scientific publications and inacademic communications.

CONCLUSIONS ON RESEARCH ASSESSMENT AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF OPEN SCIENCE
10th of June 2022

● ACKNOWLEDGES that in order to accelerate theimplementation and the impact of Open Science
policies and practices across Europe, action has to betaken to… encourage where appropriate, the use ofmultilingualism for the purpose of wider
communication of European research results.

● ACKNOWLEDGES the important role of multilingualism
in the context of science communication with society,in particular on the national and regional levels; in thisrespect, WELCOMES initiatives to promote
multilingualism, such as the Helsinki initiative on
multilingualism in scholarly communication

DECLARATION FOR MULTILINGUALISM IN HIGHEREDUCATION
24th of Mach 2023

● The signatories of the 'Declaration for

Multilingualism in Higher Education’… support thebasic principles of the 'Helsinki Initiative on
Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication…

● With regard to HE, the signatories commit to:● safeguarding and supporting the use of several languages,●●in addition to the official language(s) of HEIs in governance,
research and publications, teaching-learning, andcommunication
securing and fortifying plurilingualism particularly inteaching and learning, transnational research collaboration
andrelying on the use of language technology tools for services
for teaching and learning that facilitate the use of differentlanguages.

Infrastructure for multilingual
scholarly communicationGLOBAL JOURNAL LANDSCAPE
EnglishMultiple languages

Other languages

Global total (N=149886)

47 %

19 %

34 %Europe (N=52241)

46 %

24 %

31 %

North-America (N=26328)

91 %South America (N=11332) 3 % 17 %Africa (N=4586)
Asia (N=54134)
Oceania (N=1265)

80 %
68 %

33 %

1% 8%
17 %

23 %

15 %

44 %

100 %

Mikael Laakso & Janne Pölönen: Mapping the global landscape of scholarly journals,
Nordic Workshop on Bibliometrics and Research Policy 2023

0%

JOURNALS INDEXED IN DOAJ (MARCH 2024)
APC

DIAMOND

English4926

Multiple incl. English

1200

Indonesian
Persian
Other languages

4471
262

5897
424

209 2072152635

Pölönen, J., Kulczycki, E., Late, E., Røeggen, V., & Sivertsen, G. (2021). Response to BOAI steeringcommittee concerning multilingualism in Gold OA publishing environment. Zenodo.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5592704

ACTION PLAN FOR DIAMOND OPEN ACCESS
2nd March 2022

● Action Plan provides a set of priority actions tofurther develop and expand a sustainable,community-driven Diamond scholarly communication
ecosystem.
● It aims to bring together Diamond Open Accessjournals and platforms around shared principles,
guidelines, and quality standards respecting thecultural, multilingual and disciplinary diversitythat constitute the strength of the sector.
● Serving a fine-grained variety of generally small-scale,multilingual, and multicultural scholarly communities,
these journals and platforms embody the concept ofbibliodiversity.

CONCLUSIONS ON HIGH-QUALITY, TRANSPARENT, OPEN,
TRUSTWORTHY AND EQUITABLE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING
27th of May 2023

● HIGHLIGHTS the importance of not-for-profit,

scholarly open access publishing models that do not
charge fees to authors or readers● EMPHASISES that some publication formats, such asmonographs, books and long-text formats, especiallyin the social sciences and humanities, should continue
to be supported, while promoting open accesspublishing and allowing for a diverse range offormats to co-exist, and for publishing in a range oflanguages;

Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing
Models to Advance Scholarly Communication• 9/2022-8/2025, 23 partners, coordinated by Aix-Marseille Université (AMU)• DIAMAS answers the following needs:
1.
2.
3.
4.

•To fill the knowledge gap on institutional publishing in Europe (disciplinary, linguistic, geographicaldistribution of IPSPs, quality shortcomings and excellence, sustainability, etc.).
To improve the overall quality of publishing services provided by IPSPs.
To overcome the current fragmentation and isolation of IPSPs at various levels of institutional organisation(scholarly societies, research institutions, academies of science, libraries, university presses, departments,foundations).
To address equity, diversity, and inclusion in European institutional publishing by improving access toscholarly communication published in different European languages as stressed in the Helsinki Initiative.

WP4 Building IPSP capacity through knowledge sharing• Developing toolkits, guidelines, and training materials helping IPSPs to manage and increase theavailability of multilingual content, incl. multilingual publishing of full texts and abstracts, humantranslation services, and machine translation tools and literacy, and to address language and genderbiases in their operations.

Creating a Robust Accessible Federated
Technology for Open Access• 1/2023-12/2025, 23 partners, coordinated by the University of Göttingen• CRAFT-OA aims to improve the Diamond OA model:

1. Provide technical improvements for journal platforms and journal software
2. Build communities of practice to foster overall infrastructure improvement
3. Increase visibility, discoverability and recognition for Diamond OA publishing
4. Integrate Diamond OA publishing with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and other largescale data aggregators.

• WP4 Journal Software and Platform Improvement• Requirement analysis regarding both GDPR and multilingualism features for journal

management software. GDPR compliant user and data management will be implemented to OJS
based on the results. Discovered shortcomings of multilingual support will be addressed andsolved in OJS to ensure seamless processing of multilingual content, interoperability andsynchronisation with external systems.

Multilingualism in assessment andfunding systems

METRICS COVERAGE OF SSH JOURNAL ARTICLES••Large share of SSH researchers across 7
European countries published in 2013-15
peer-reviewed journal articles in the locallanguage(s) of their country:• 88% in Poland• 29% in Flanders
Web of Science and Scopus covered only
3%–8% of 94,000 peer-reviewed journal
articles published in the local languages of 7
European countries

Based on data created for Kulczycki, E., Guns, R., Pölönen J., Engels,T., Rozkosz, E., … Sivertsen, G. (2020). Multilingual publishing inthe social sciences and humanities: A seven-country European
study. Journal of the Association for Information Science andTechnology. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24336

QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT & NARRATIVE CV• A narrative CV is a type of CV format that provides structured
written descriptions of academics’ or researchers’
contributions and achievements that reflect a broad range ofrelevant skills and experiences• narrative CV’s inherent emphasis on language use may
introduce bias and noise into the evaluation process• Gendered language and self-promotion tactics may also resultin biased evaluations• Importantly, funding organizations also need to consider andaccount for how narrative formats disadvantage non-native
language applicants for grant funding.

Fritch, R., Hatch, A., Hazlett, H., & Vinkenburg, C. (2021). Using
Narrative CVs: Process Optimization and bias mitigation. Zenodo.

A NEW RESEARCH ASSESSMENT TOWARDS A
SOCIALLY RELEVANT SCIENCE IN LATIN AMERICA
AND THE CARIBBEAN
6th of June 2022

● Principle 8: Writing in English does not confer a
merit per se superior to publications in otherlanguages. Multilingualism favors thedevelopment of socially relevant research andcontributes to sustaining cultural diversity. Weendorse the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism
in Scholarly Communication.

RECOMMENDATION ON A EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK TOATTRACT AND RETAIN RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND
ENTREPRENEURIAL TALENTS IN EUROPE– EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR RESEARCHERS
18th of December 2023

● OPEN SCIENCE: Employers and funders should

support, provide the necessary tools andinfrastructure, and reward a true Open Scienceculture across the Union… while considering
differences among disciplines and culturaldifferences, including multilingualism…

● NON-DISCRIMINATION: Employers and funders ofresearchers should not discriminate against
researchers in any way based on gender, age, ethnic,
national or social origin, religion or belief, sexualorientation, language, disability, political opinion,social or economic condition.

AGREEMENT ON REFORMING RESEARCH ASSESSMENT
20th of July 2022

● 1st core commitment: Recognize valuable

contributions that researchers make to science and forthe benefit of society, including diverse outputs beyond
journal publications and irrespective of the language
in which they are communicated.

● Toolkit: Value diverse outputs (FAIR data sets,replication studies, registered reports, pre-prints) indifferent languages in accordance with the Helsinki
initiative● CoARA Working-Group on Multilingualism andLanguage Biases in Research Assessment

MORE INFORMATION

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