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1. Working Paper2026Open Access

   English dominance in scholarly communication: Historical roots and bibliometric evidence(opens in a new tab)

   

   Brasil, André

   English functions as the principal shared language of international scholarly communication, but its dominance also creates inequalities in the production, dissemination, visibility, and assessment of research. Developed as a complementary output of the CoARA Working Group on Multilingualism and Language Biases in Research Assessment, this report examines the historical development of English dominance and the contemporary mechanisms through which it is reproduced. It combines evidence from the literature with descriptive bibliometric analyses based on Web of Science, Scopus, OpenAlex, and CWTS Journal Indicators. The findings show that English is especially dominant in journals with high field normalised citation impact and in the selective segments of scholarly communication most frequently used in research evaluation. However, the extent of this dominance varies considerably across disciplines and countries, and publication in national languages remains important in the social sciences, humanities, and fields directed toward local professional and societal audiences. The report also demonstrates how database selection, metadata quality, and analytical choices affect the visibility of multilingual scholarship. Web of Science and Scopus predominantly represent English language journal literature, whereas OpenAlex reveals a much broader body of multilingual research, although incomplete language, authorship, and institutional metadata remain important limitations. The report further examines the financial, linguistic, and time burdens associated with English language publication and considers how publishing infrastructures, bibliometric indicators, rankings, and assessment practices influence which research becomes visible and valued. This report contributes to the landscape analysis conducted by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) Working Group (WG) on Multilingualism and language biases in research assessment and it complements the Implementation proposal for language-aware assessments (Annex II.3).

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17913690Research assessmentScholarly communicationOpenAlexMultilingualismMetadata
2. Working Paper2026Open Access

   Different operationalizations of local research and their associated citation patterns: A study of African publications(opens in a new tab)

   

   Alonso-Álvarez, Patricia; Boshoff, Nelius

   Local research has gained increasing attention in recent years, with a growing body of literature emphasizing its significance—especially for peripheral communities underrepresented in mainstream scientific discourse. However, despite this growing interest, there remains no clear consensus on how to define local research. Conceptual clarity is essential for conducting consistent and replicable analyses that capture the specific characteristics, contexts, and societal relevance of local research. This need is particularly acute in the Global South, where structural inequalities in visibility and recognition often marginalize regionally focused scholarship. In Africa, for instance, a substantial share of research is published in local or regional journals that are poorly represented in global indexing databases. As bibliometric analyses typically rely on these databases, this exclusion diminishes their perceived relevance. To address this gap, the present study incorporates data from regional and open-access sources to examine citation patterns associated with African local research. It uses multiple conceptualizations of local research to classify publications as either local or non-local depending on the definition used. These classifications are correlated with three citation-based indicators: average citations per publication, time to first citation, and the proportion of uncited publications. Additionally, the study explores the characteristics of citing publications, distinguishing between local and non-local sources as well as domestic and international citations. The findings reveal that citation patterns differ significantly across locality definitions, underscoring the importance of adopting nuanced, context-sensitive approaches to assess and support local research.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17865910local researchafrican researchcitation patternsajolopenalex
3. Working Paper2025Open Access

   Exploring Interoperability Between Local and Global Databases in Scientometrics: Lattes, Capes, and OpenAlex(opens in a new tab)

   

   Mazoni, Alysson Fernandes; Borges, Luís Fabiano Farias; Macedo, Estevao Fernandes; Tuesta, Esteban Fernandez

   Numerous initiatives are currently underway to disambiguate databases worldwide. In this paper, we propose a methodology for disambiguating research entities using big data techniques, adopting an approach that goes from local to global databases. Our objective is to enhance the quality of data in the OpenAlex database by leveraging information from Brazilian databases, particularly data from the Lattes Platform and the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education. We compare similar names of authors and institutions, employing Digital Object Identifiers to link entities, along with an adaptation of the Levenshtein distance algorithm. The proposed method is straightforward to implement in tabular databases and facilitates disambiguation, thereby contributing to open science practices and providing an effective solution for research information systems. The findings indicate the potential for integrating local and global databases to address issues related to ambiguous names and incomplete metadata.

   DOI: 10.1590/SciELOPreprints.12668Bibliographic coverageLattes CVScientometrics