The language bias
What info do we miss, if we only consider English language literature?
Example 1: S America has the 2nd largest % of forest area but only the 2nd smallest % of papers overall in English (bubble size) Is there little literature on S American forests or is it only in Spanish/Portuguese? Europe has the largest % of forest area but only the smallest % of papers on the themes studied in English Is there little literature on European forests vs. well being/socio-economy or is it only published in non-English languages? Example 2: 35,6 % of publications on topics related to biodiversity or conservation are not in English Does papers however exist communicating this same information in English? (title and literature type might be different)
[Schmitz 2015]
[Amano et al 2016]
What is the situation for GTTN related topics? 1.
How many papers did you publish in journals on a GTTN related topic?
2.
How many of those papers were only published in a non-English language? [If the same content but with a different title appeared in English you should not count it here. We are not directly interested in the difference in numbers of papers between English and non-English languages (as these numbers might contain doubles) but in the information that is missing when only English literature is considered.]
3.
Every time you published in a non-English language, why did you decide to only communicate these findings in another language than English? Is it always the same reason? Are there different reasons?
Send your answers to Nele Schmitz at
[email protected] and I will collect all answers and update you on the results. Depending on the replies we can then decide if we collect more detailed data within the GTTN community on this issue to make a publication (in as many languages as GTTN is rich?! :)
Thank you! Your questions or feedback are always welcome. I am who I am, because we are 2
References
Amano, T., J. P. González-Varo and W. J. Sutherland (2016). "Languages are still a major barrier to global science." PLoS biology 14(12): e2000933. Schmitz N, 2015. What would happen if we cut all trees? A systematic mapping of the literature on interactions between socio‐economic traits, forest traits and human well‐being. Collegium de Lyon, France. Part I DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3289.6162, Part II DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3551.7600.