This survey is targeted primarily at member organisations of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). However, also otherorganisations that are not CoARA members are welcome to answer the survey.

The survey is conducted as part of the action plan of the CoARA working group on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment and the action plan of the CoARA working group TIER, Towards an Inclusive Evaluation of Research. The main goal of the survey is to map how CoARA members are currently dealing with multilingualism and language and other biases in view of reforming research assessment. The data gathered will also contribute to the development of policy advice, guidelines and good practices. 

The survey is open from 16th of September to 14th of October 2024.

This survey is anonymous and follows the structure of the commitments included in the CoARA agreement on reforming research assessment. The survey is to be answered by the institutional CoARA contact person(s), and the completion is estimated to require a maximum of 10 minutes. Please submit one answer per organisation, and answer all questions based on your own knowledge of the situation and actions at your organization.

In terms of terminology, the WG on Multilingualism agreed on the following:

• Multilingualism: The situation where multiple languages co-exist in a given individual, publication, institution or society.
• Language bias: A preference for using one language over others in various areas of scholarly communication, such as for publishing or conferences, for indexing content in one language (e.g. in bibliographic databases), or for including studies published in one language (e.g. in systematic reviews)
• Linguistic disadvantage: The position that non-native speakers of a language (e.g. English) face substantial challenges relative to native speakers (e.g. in the dissemination of scholarly work).
• Intersectionality: individuals' various social and political identities (e.g. gender, race, disability, language) result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege (e.g. in scholarly publishing, non-Anglophones are cited less often, women are cited less often, and scholars from the Global South are cited less often, so a non-Anglophone woman from the Global South could face intersectional discrimination)

If you want to take a look at the survey questions or consult colleagues before answering the survey, you can find the questionnaire in Google Doc format in here.

The survey is carried out by the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies in collaboration with WG partners, with the lead of dr. Tim Engels from the University of Antwerp.

For more information or questions about the survey, please contact Tim Engels (tim.engels@uantwerpen.be) or Janne Pölönen (janne.polonen@tsv.fi).