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OPERAS signed the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism

OPERAS 2019-08-20

OPERAS supports the Helsinki Initiative on Multilinguism to forward multilinguism in scholarly communication in the social sciences and humanities. OPERAS wants to point to the relevance of research and scholarly communication in local languages.

The Helsinki Initiative was founded by five signatories Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV), Committee for Public Information (TJNK), Finnish Association for Scholarly Publishing, European Network for Research Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (ENRESSH), and the Universities Norway (UHR). They initiated the movement to promote multilingualism in scholarly communication. It aims to reach policy-makers, leaders, universities, research institutions, research funders, libraries, and researchers.

Helsinki Initiative Logo

As a signatory OPERAS supports the following recommendations of the initiative:

  1. Supports dissemination of research results for the full benefit of the society.
    •  Make sure researchers are merited for disseminating research results beyond academia and for interacting with heritage, culture, and society.
    • Make sure equal access to researched knowledge is provided in a variety of languages.
  1. Protect national infrastructures for publishing locally relevant research.
    • Make sure not-for-profit journals and book publishers have both sufficient resources and the support needed to maintain high standards of quality control and research integrity.
    • Make sure national journals and book publishers are safeguarded in their transition to open access.
  1. Promote language diversity in research assessment, evaluation, and funding systems.
    • Make sure that in the process of expert-based evaluation, high quality research is valued regardless of the publishing language or publication channel.
    • Make sure that when metrics-based systems are utilized, journal and book publications in all languages are adequately taken into account.

Find out more about the initiative and the signatories here.