Multilingualism in theOpen Access ecosystem
Joanna Ball
Helsinki Initiative Webinar
April 2024

About DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
12

The most diverse and extensive

A community-led and -supported

global index of peer-reviewed

open scholarly infrastructure

open access journals.

About DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
34

Our criteria are an unofficial gold

Commitment to bibliodiversity,

standard for open access journal

and a signatory of the Helsinki

publishing, trusted across theInitiative

scholarly community.

80 134

languages

countries

More than20,000journals

67% of journals in DOAJ are
without APCs

Overview of publisher countries indexed in DOAJ

Data collected 20th February 2024

Why does DOAJ support multilingualism?
Multilingualism
is an essential
element of
bibliodiversity

It advances
knowledge
equity andenables
communities toaddress global
challenges

Promotes
meaningful
collaborations
and avoids“helicopterresearch”

Multilingualjournals are often
not indexed bycommercial
databaseshttps://blog.doaj.org/2023/07/06/doaj-is-confirmed-as-a-unique-platform-for-many-open-access-journals-and-a-key-index-for-african-journals/

The open access ecosystem is larger than DOAJ
34,000+ PKP titles (as atDecember 2023)*

OA Diamond Journals Study
estimated up to 29k titles**Many journals from outside
the global north not listed

But… the community uses
DOAJ as the primary index forOpen Access journals*Saurabh Khanna, Jon Ball, Juan Pablo Alperin, John Willinsky; Recalibrating the scope of scholarly publishing: A modest step in a vast decolonization process. Quantitative Science Studies 2022; 3 (4):912–930. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00228** Bosman, Jeroen, Frantsvåg, Jan Erik, Kramer, Bianca, Langlais, Pierre-Carl, & Proudman, Vanessa. (2021). OA Diamond Journals Study. Part 1: Findings. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4558704

What do the journals in DOAJ
tell us about multilingualism
in the OA ecosystem?

Analysis of DOAJ journal list (20,438 titles)● March 2024: Ivonne Lujano, DOAJ
Community Manager and Ambassador toLatin America.
○ Builds on research done by Ivonne andGimena del Rio Riande: How balanced ismultilingualism in scholarly journals? Aglobal analysis using the DOAJ database○ 10.5281/zenodo.7506238

Multilingual vs monolingual journals

Multilingual journals

Languages
Ten most frequent languages of publication other thanEnglish by the main/first language listed in DOAJ)
SpanishPortuguese
Indonesian
RussianPersianFrenchArabicItalianPolishGermanCatalan

2050
1078
1058
455
433
398
226
199
162
14193

Countries with 100+ multilingual journals

Multilingual journals by business
model

Multilingual journals by business
model

Multilingual journals by disciplineOther trends●

Editors know that DOAJ-indexing helps journals
to achieve greater international visibility●

They believe that English increases the journal’s
profile and prestige●Therefore: article abstracts are translated into
English for DOAJ

Challenges for
multilingual journals

Only 28% of multilingual journals in DOAJ reporthaving adequate preservation in place.
26% multilingual journals in DOAJ do not use
DOIs or other persistent identifiers to aid
discovery.
19% of multilingual journals have submitted no
article metadata to DOAJ in the last year.

Multilingual diamond journals are
thriving in some areas of the world

…and growing in others
National platforms based on PKP’s OJS
24% ofapplications
accepted forPKP’s OJS and multilingualism●●●42% journals within DOAJ use PKP’s Open Journal Systems software, and halfof these are multilingual
PKP has excellent support for multilingual content: Using PKP software in
multiple languages
Increased focus on technical support for institutional publishing through
CRAFT-OA project includes enhanced support for multilingual journals

Summary
Multilingualism iswidespread throughout
the OA ecosystem andthriving in national
platforms.

Multilingualism is closely
related to the diamondmodel, and so faces thesame challenges due tolack of resource.

The current focus andinvestment in diamondpublishing andinfrastructures will
strengthen support for
multilingualism.

“Diversity is the recognition of the plurality ofvoices as well as economic, political, societal andcultural contexts. Its preservation is one of theconditions for globalisation, democratic access toresearch and for the common good.
Multilingualism is a constitutive part of diversity.

Report of the 2nd Diamond Open Access
Conference 10.5281/ZENODO.10683098”

Questions?
Joanna Ball
Managing Director, DOAJ
joanna@doaj.org@joannaball