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v2026.1714 entries · CC-BY 4.0
Dictionary termTrack EStablev2026.2

Multilingual scholarship

Scholarly communication that recognises, supports and produces research outputs in multiple languages, in contrast to English-only norms that dominate international academic publishing.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board
· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

  • Is an instance

    A funder accepts grant applications in multiple national languages and translates summaries for cross-panel review.

  • Is an instance

    A journal publishes article abstracts in three languages including the language of the study population.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

  • Not an instance

    An assessment policy that treats non-English publications as automatically less valuable.

  • Not an instance

    A search strategy in a systematic review that excludes non-English sources without justification.

Editorial commentary

English has become the de facto language of international academic publishing, yet most of the world's researchers and publics work primarily in other languages. Multilingual scholarship advocates for: language diversity in publishing venues; multilingual abstracts and summaries; recognition of non-English outputs in assessment; translation support; and infrastructure that makes non-English research discoverable. The Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication (2019), the OPERAS multilingualism task force, and UNESCO's Recommendation on Open Science (2021) all explicitly support multilingual scholarship.

References

  • Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication, 2019 (helsinki-initiative.org). UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, 2021.

Also known as

Linguistic diversity in scholarship · Multilingual research communication

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element
xml
<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Multilingual scholarship"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/multilingual-scholarship" />
Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)
json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Multilingual scholarship",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/multilingual-scholarship",
  "description": "Scholarly communication that recognises, supports and produces research outputs in multiple languages, in contrast to English-only norms that dominate international academic publishing.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/knowledge-equity-diversity-global-south-inclusion/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/multilingual-scholarship",
  "sameAs": [
    "Linguistic diversity in scholarship",
    "Multilingual research communication"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

Adopted by research universities worldwide

University of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoMassachusetts Institute of Technology logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logoUniversity of Cambridge logoColumbia University logoUniversity of Edinburgh logoHarvard University logoMassachusetts Institute of Technology logoUniversity of Oxford logoPrinceton University logoStanford School of Medicine logoUniversity College London logo
  • University of Cambridge logo
  • Columbia University logo
  • University of Edinburgh logo
  • Harvard University logo
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology logo
  • University of Oxford logo
  • Princeton University logo
  • Stanford School of Medicine logo
  • University College London logo

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