In all languages? How minority languages are excluded from scholarly publishing

Abstract

English may have become the lingua franca of academia, but there are good grounds for preserving linguistic diversity in scholarly communication, including public engagement and impact generation at a local level. Several initiatives have emerged in recent years that seek to promote multilingualism in scholarly communication as an expression of bibliodiversity, among them the ‘In all languages’ campaign. But to what extent are minority languages excluded from scholarly publishing infrastructure and initiatives that seek to challenge Anglophonic hegemony? This is the provocative question we ask in this opinion piece, drawing on our experience of publishing the world’s only academic journal in our minority language. We draw attention to three challenges faced by publishers of minority-language academic content: additional steps in the editorial workflow, exclusion from scholarly publishing infrastructure and ineligibility to apply for funding. We end with a plea for a conception of ‘balanced multilingualism’ that extends beyond ‘national’ languages other than English.