Working Papers in Economics
No 109:
Language and Scientific Publication Statistics: a Note
Bo Sandelin and Nikias Sarafoglou ()
Abstract: The number of contributions to scientific journals by
authors from various OECD countries in 1998-2000 according to the commonly
used ISI databases SSCI, A&HCI, and SCI Expanded is in focus. The number of
contributions per million inhabitants is related to the main language of
the country, the gross domestic product per capita and whether a country is
a former socialist country or not. The social sciences, the arts and
humanities, and the natural sciences are studied separately. It turns out
that there is a tendency for a higher publication rate for English-language
countries, slightly lower for countries with small languages, and even
smaller for countries with large non-English languages. This is consistent
with the hypotheses that there is a bias in the data bases from the ISI
such that English-language journals tend to be overrepresented, that
scholars from English-language countries write almost exclusively in
English, and that scholars from other countries tend to publish less in
English and more in their domestic language the larger is their domestic
language. This calls for caution in using these databases for international
comparisons of research activity.
Keywords: language; scientific publication; ISI; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: Z00; (follow links to similar papers)
9 pages, October 9, 2003
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Sandelin, Bo and Nikias Sarafoglou, (2004), 'Language and Scientific Publication Statistics', Language Problems & Language Planning, Vol. 28, Spring, No. 1, pages 1-10
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