6th Helsinki Initiative Webinar on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication

Helsinki Initiative organizes a webinar series on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication with speakers representing different expert communities and strands of work. This event includes three presentations on global patterns of multilingualism in scholarly communication, language diversity of books collection of the Library of Congress, and visibility of Japanese language SSH outputs in OpenAlex. The event is free and open for everyone to participate. Recording and presentations will be made available after the event to registered participants.  

Registration: here (registered participants receive link to Teams meeting)

Date & time: 27 May 2026 15:00-16:30 CET

Programme

• Carolina Pradier (University of Montreal): How multilingual is scholarly communication?

This presentation explores, based on recently published article, how language shapes inequality in science through a global analysis of multilingual publishing and citation patterns from 1990 to 2023. Drawing on OpenAlex and Dimensions data, it highlights the growth of Indonesian, Portuguese, and Spanish scholarship, same-language citation preferences, and the role of bibliodiversity, and discusses how language policies influence global scholarly communication and equity. 

• Kai Li (University of Tennessee): Geographic and Language Representation in the Library of Congress Book Collection

This presentation examines, based on a recently published paper, how library metadata can reveal long-term shifts in global knowledge representation. Using over six million Library of Congress records, it traces changes in subjects, publication places, and languages since the 1970s. The talk highlights growing diversity beyond Western and English-language materials, showing how libraries actively shape cultural visibility, scholarly communication, and the geography of knowledge.

• Honami Numajiri (Kyoto University Library): visibility of Japanese language SSH outputs in OpenAlex

Honami Numajiri's presentation examines, based on a recent study, the visibility of Japanese-language social sciences and humanities (SSH) publications in OpenAlex as an open research information infrastructure. Using OpenAlex data from 2000 to 2024, it analyzes the temporal stability, document-type composition, and thematic coverage of Japanese-language publications. It also discusses the challenges of representing multilingual and book-centered SSH outputs in open scholarly databases, as well as the implications for research assessment, bibliodiversity, and the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information.

The event is hosted by Henriikka Mustajoki and Janne Pölönen.

For further information email helsinki-initiative@tsv.fi.

Speakers:

 Carolina Pradier

Carolina Pradier is a PhD Candidate at the École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’Information (Université de Montréal), researching gender inequalities in science through bibliometrics. She holds a degree in Economics and an MSc in Labour Studies from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

 Kai Li

Kai Li is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information Science, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is an experienced information scientist and scholar who has worked for libraries and companies worldwide, in addition to higher education institutions. Li obtained a bachelor’s degree in history from Beijing Normal University, a master’s degree in information science from Syracuse University, and a PhD from Drexel University.

Honami Numajiri

Honami Numajiri is an Assistant Professor at the Research and Development Laboratory of the Kyoto University Library. Her research examines the impact of Open Science on research activities, particularly through the perspectives of bibliometrics and research policy. She received her PhD from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan.