The world of science is meant to be global, but in practice, it speaks with a heavy English accent.
This new paper by Hannah et al. (2025) caught my eye because it examines a phenomenon that I imagine is often overlooked in the world of science: the invisible walls built by language.
The researchers asked a deceptively simple question: Are studies published in non-English languages getting cited by English-language research? The answer? Not really.
Why it matters
In academia, a citation is like a professional endorsement- it means someone found your work useful enough to refer to it in their own research. The more often a study is cited, the more influence it has on future research, funding decisions, & even policy. So, when studies aren’t cited- not because they lack quality, but because of language- valuable knowledge can be overlooked entirely.
The Study
The researchers examined 329 conservation articles published in 15 non-English languages (including Hungarian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish & Russian) & compared their citation rates with 171 English-language articles. All studies were evidence-based evaluations of interventions to protect birds, mammals & amphibians.
Articles were manually tracked on Google Scholar between June & August 2023, & citations were checked for both quantity & the language of the citing work. The researchers also considered factors like:
- Whether the article had an English abstract,
- Study design complexity,
- Conservation status of the species studied,
- Linguistic distance from English (using eLinguistics.net).
The Results
Non-English articles were undercited in English-language publications- even when their methodology was sound or their findings were globally relevant. For example, Russian-language articles had a median of zero English-language citations, even though Russia hosts significant biodiversity.
In fact, 28% of non-English articles had no cross-language citations at all.
Interestingly, however, non-English articles that included English abstracts were significantly more likely to be cited in English. In contrast, neither study complexity nor species threat level made a difference to citation counts.
Access –not academic rigour– was the key predictor of visibility.
Curious side note
linguistically distant languages like Japanese & Chinese actually received more English citations than languages closer to English (like Polish or Hungarian). Possibly because their output is seen as more “international” or perhaps better indexed.
So What?
This isn’t just a problem in conservation science. In second language acquisition (SLA) & ELT research, much of the world’s knowledge is similarly siloed by language. Valuable insights from Brazil, Korea, Turkey or France might remain under the radar simply because they aren’t written in English- or aren’t cited by those who publish in it.
It also cuts both ways. Echo chambers can form when researchers only cite others writing in their language, leading to duplicated studies, missed insights & less inclusive global understanding (Buxton et al., 2020; Konno et al., 2020).
Teacher Takeaways?
- Broaden your references. Look beyond the ‘big names’ & English-language journals. Tools like DeepL & Google Translate can help you access abstracts & even full texts in other languages.
- Encourage students to do the same. In multilingual classrooms, empower learners to bring knowledge from their own languages into (academic) discussions.
Do you ever encourage students -or colleagues- to explore research/ideas/information in other languages?
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