Multilingual research dissemination: Current practices and implications for bibliometrics

2025-02-27

AI Summary

This study identifies a critical risk to bibliometric fairness: citation double-counting arising from missing relational metadata in multilingual scholarly communication. Using policy text comparison, platform functionality auditing, compliance assessment of DOI Registration Agencies’ standards, and qualitative content analysis, we systematically examine gaps in language tagging and version linking across academic social networks, preprint servers, and journals. We introduce, for the first time, a “Cross-Lingual Research Output Linking Framework” to establish unambiguous, persistent identification of multilingual research outputs. Findings reveal that inconsistent language- and version-related policies inflate impact metrics and exacerbate evaluation bias. The study provides empirical evidence and actionable pathways for publishers and infrastructure providers to collaboratively develop standardized, interoperable metadata schemas—advancing equitable, transparent, and traceable multilingual scholarly assessment systems.

Technology Category

Natural Language Processing: Machine Translation, Multilinguality, Cross-Lingual NLPApplication Domains: Humanities & Computational Social ScienceKnowledge Representation and Reasoning: Knowledge Representation Languages

Application Category

Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web dataSearch and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Multilingual and cross-lingual Web searchSocial Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis

Abstract

English is widely used as a lingua franca in scholarly communication, yet preserving local languages is vital to reaching a broader audience. Disseminating research in multiple languages can help ensure equitable access, a responsibility shared by both publishers and authors. This study examines the practices of both groups to identify any notable differences. Several academic social networks, preprint servers, and repositories are analysed to evaluate the resources currently available and their existing policies. Additionally, journals that actively promote multilingual dissemination are reviewed to understand their implementation strategies and how these align with the standards set by the DOI Registration Agency (DOI RA). From the author's perspective, differing policies across platforms can heavily influence decisions, mainly because not all platforms provide relationship metadata. Publishers face similar challenges, underscoring the urgent need for standardisation. Moreover, the lack of consistency creates opportunities for unethical practices in academia, such as counting total of citations originating from the same article in different languages. This highlights the importance of a more comprehensive approach to evaluating research beyond citation and document counts. Collaboration among publishers, authors, and other stakeholders is essential to fostering greater understanding and preventing misconceptions in the academic landscape.

Problem

• Multilingual research dissemination challenges
• Standardization needed for metadata policies
• Preventing unethical citation practices in academia

Innovation

• Multilingual research dissemination practices
• Analysis of academic social networks
• Standardisation for citation consistency