Language and Scientific Publication Statistics: a Note

Bo Sandelin and Nikias Sarafoglou ()
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Bo Sandelin: Department of Economics, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Göteborg University, Postal: Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG

No 109, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2003-10-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in Language Problems & Language Planning, 2004, pages 1-10.

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