FRIAS Reflections - Patricia Faraldo Cabana

Research Excellence and Anglophone Dominance

Having English as a global language that is used in international relations, for global communications and as the major media language represents an enormous advantage. Notwithstanding this, I argue that there is a dramatic and hitherto largely underestimated language effect in the bibliometric, citation-based measurements of research performance in social sciences, and a widely overlooked impact on the contents elaborated in the global North. I explore the idea that English as a global language not only contributes to the advancement of science but also hampers its progress by disregarding the cognitive potential of other languages. English as the language of science creates a hierarchy of knowledge that favours the one produced in Anglophone countries and promotes the scientific success of native English-speaking scholars.