Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication

Research is international. That's the way we like it! Multilingualism keeps locally relevant research alive. Protect it! Disseminating research results in your own language creates impact. Endorse it! It is vital to interact with society and share knowledge beyond academia. Promote it! Infrastructure of scholarly communication in national languages is fragile. Don't lose it

The signatories of the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication support the following recommendations to be adopted by policy-makers, leaders, universities, research institutions, research funders, libraries, and researchers:

1. Support dissemination of research results for the full benefit of the society.

• Make sure researchers are merited for disseminating research results beyond academia and for interacting with heritage, culture, and society.
• Make sure equal access to researched knowledge is provided in a variety of languages.

2. Protect national infrastructures for publishing locally relevant research.

• Make sure not-for-profit journals and book publishers have both sufficient resources and the support needed to maintain high standards of quality control and research integrity.
• Make sure national journals and book publishers are safeguarded in their transition to open access.

3. Promote language diversity in research assessment, evaluation, and funding systems.

• Make sure that in the process of expert-based evaluation, high quality research is valued regardless of the publishing language or publication channel.
• Make sure that when metrics-based systems are utilized, journal and book publications in all languages are adequately taken into account.

Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication has been prepared by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV), the Committee for Public Information (TJNK), the Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing, Universities Norway (UHR) and the COST Action "European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities" (ENRESSH).

"In all languages" campaign is a wake-up call for policy-makers, leaders, universities, research institutions, research funders, libraries, and researchers to promote multilingualism in scholarly communication. Participate by posting in Twitter or Facebook a statement or video of your or your colleagues’ support for multilingualism in scholarly communication, of course #InAllLanguages.