Paul
I couldn't resist being provocative, but whilst I can sympathise with
your position you need to construct a more compelling argument.
Referring to your other missive to David Wood also, you need to
persuade others to share your political objective. If they cannot be
convinced then you will not get anywhere. It is true that journals
could accept multilingual content, but it is not true that no extra
funding is required. Journals are edited and proofed, and need to
have access to staff that can use the languages in which material is
submitted. Also I would anticipate that many English language
journals would see declining sales if they had say 50 per cent
non-English content. This would hurt publishers. Plus many journals
are published by nationally based societies and have only become
international through demand from foreign readers.
The points on the EU are rather naive. The EU cannot insist that
projects publish in more than one language, only that they publish in
a community language, of which English is one. Indeed I have recently
been involved in a EU funded network, and whilst meetings were
held in English etc, some partners have published their results in
their own languages. What is needed is more incentives for academics
to publish in other languages, and perhaps that could be best
achieved by national policies for research assessment in which
publication in their own language is emphasised. Your suggestion that
restricting access of publishers to EU funds could kill monolingual
journals in 3 years is not credible. I think the Commission has other
priorities.
David Charles
> Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 15:39:58 +0200 (MET DST)
> From: "Paul.Treanor" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: David Charles <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Languages and academia
>
>
> On Thu, 18 Jun 1998, David Charles wrote:
>
> > Indeed I would suggest further that as the EU is keen for projects to
> > be successful in research terms the use of a common language for
> > communication between partners could be considered 'best practice'.
>
> If multilingual research means worse research, then worse research. The
> ultimate ethical grounding here is that the value of knowledge has
> priority over a political goal (enforced multilingualism). That sounds as
> good, and is just as bogus, as all other fundamental ethical principles.
> In other words its all just bluff: if you let the research teams get away
> with it, they will indeed take the easiest path, and publish in English.
> The EU should refuse to accept that.
>
> pt
>
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Dr David R. Charles
Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies
University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
tel +44 191 222 7692
fax +44 191 232 9259
www http://www.ncl.ac.uk/~ncurds/
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