29 Jan New paper in Research Synthesis Methods
We are excited to announce a new publication “Language inclusion in ecological systematic reviews and maps: Barriers and perspectives” led by Kelsey Hannah, a PhD student at translatE.
In this paper she examined the inclusion of non-English-language literature in environmental systematic literature reviews and maps, and the factors that explain the inclusion of non-English language literature. She analysed 72 systematic literature reviews and maps published in the journal Environmental Evidence and also surveyed 32 authors of the reviews/maps.
The paper found that 44% of the reviewed papers excluded non-English-language literature from their searches and inclusions, mainly due to lack of language skills and resource/time constraints. Larger author teams, authors from diverse countries (especially those where English is not a primary language), and multilingual teams used more languages in their searches.
To make a better use of non-English-language literature in systematic literature reviews, the study recommends increasing diversity within review teams, utilizing machine translation alongside the language skills of collaborators, including translation costs in funding applications, and establishing language exchange systems like Cochrane Engage.
This is Kelsey’s first PhD chapter. We want to congratulate Kelsey for leading this amazing research!
Read the paper here.