What the study found
English remains the dominant language in scholarly communication, but Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish have grown faster than English in the period studied. The authors also report that multilingualism is linked to bibliodiversity, meaning diversity in the kinds of publications available.
Why the authors say this matters
The study suggests that policies recognizing both national-language and English-language publications have had a concrete impact on how languages are distributed in global scholarly communication. The findings indicate that language is a major source of systemic inequities in science, especially for scholars whose first language is not English.
What the researchers tested
The researchers carried out a large-scale global analysis using two bibliometric databases, OpenAlex and Dimensions. They examined the language of publications and the language of cited references, covering 87,577,942 publications and 1,480,570,087 cited references from 1990 to 2023.
What worked and what didn't
The analysis found that only Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish expanded faster than English over the study period. Country-level analyses showed that this trend was associated with the growing strength of Latin American and Indonesian academic circuits. The results also confirmed a same-language preference phenomenon, especially for languages other than English, and showed that social sciences and humanities are the least English-dominated fields.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not describe detailed limitations beyond the scope of the databases and time period analyzed. The findings are based on bibliometric data from OpenAlex and Dimensions, so they reflect publication and citation patterns in those sources.
Key points
- English remains the main language in scholarly communication.
- Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish grew faster than English from 1990 to 2023.
- The trend was linked to stronger Latin American and Indonesian academic circuits.
- The study confirmed a same-language preference, especially for non-English languages.
- Social sciences and humanities were the least English-dominated fields.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- English remains dominant, with growth in some other languages
- Authors:
- Carolina Pradier, Lucía Céspedes, Vincent Larivière
- Institutions:
- Université de Montréal, Consortium For Research and Innovation In Aerospace In Quebec, Université du Québec à Montréal, National Research Foundation
- Publication date:
- 2026-01-28
- OpenAlex record:
- View
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