Growth of non-English-language literature on biodiversity conservation
Chowdhury, S., Gonzalez, K., Aytekin, M.Ç.K., Baek, S.-Y., Bełcik, M., Bertolino, S., Duijns, S., Han, Y., Jantke, K., Katayose, R., Lin, Mu-M, Nourani, E., Ramos, D.L., Rouyer, M.-M., Sidemo-Holm, W., Vozykova, S., Zamora-Gutierrez, V. & Amano, T. (2022) Conservation Biology.
It is often assumed that scientific articles are being published less frequently in non-English languages, as science is becoming increasingly globalised. This partly contributes to the current underestimation of the importance of non-English-language literature in conservation science, policies, and practices. In this study, we compiled the number of articles published annually in English and in 15 non-English languages by searching both local and international literature search systems. We show that in 12 of the 15 non-English languages we investigated, the number of conservation articles published per year has significantly increased over the past 39 years, at a rate similar to English-language articles. About 20% of the sampled non-English-language articles provided neither title nor abstract in English; thus, in theory, they were undiscoverable with English keywords. These results suggest that non-English-language articles will continue to play an important role in improving the understanding of biodiversity and its conservation.
