Recently, some colleagues of mine discussed the preconditions of academic publishing in Finnish in the programme Apinalaatikko at the local radio station Moreeni. This has been a topical issue to me lately too, as I have been monitoring the Finnish-speaking media and journalism research for the information centre Nordicom.

As the financing of the universities is tied to peer-reviewed international journal articles, publishing in Finnish more and more appears to be a second alternative. English also helps a researcher to get connected with the international research community. Publishing in the global lingua franca makes the dissemination of information and networking easier and thus cooperation more flexible. If a researcher does not publish in international journals, it becomes much more difficult to get international references and start international cooperation – which, again, is also strongly encouraged in the Academy.

In my role as a visiting lecturer in Latvia I have noticed the importance of publishing in the global language in a very concrete way. Much of the research done in the Baltic countries is not simply available to me as I cannot fully follow Latvian or Lithuanian.

In my work at Nordicom I have become very aware of the language limit between Finland and the other Nordic countries. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish colleagues have no problems in following each others’ work and discussing with each other in their mother tongue or in the applied Nordic dialectics skandinaviska. In contrast, you cannot understand Finnish by mastering a Nordic language. (The same, however, applies to Icelandic and the Greenlandic language.) Official reports written in Finnish (should) have a Swedish and English summary, but still many research reports are nowadays written even completely without a translated abstract. Besides, a summary is not usually enough for an academic researcher to make use of a report. If Finnish scholars would not give out publications in English, a great deal of the research done in the country would be dismissed.

It is not easy to find a satisfactory balance between Finnish and English publishing. The issue encompasses macro- and micro-structural aspects that are not easy to settle with each other and place researchers to a very controversial and unequal positions. In general, in particular in the social sciences, it is important that scientific ideas and concepts reach decision-makers and are accommodated to the Finnish language so that they can be adopted in the local context and utilised for developing society. The best impact of this kind is not necessarily reached by publishing in English. Original research is not either intended to a general audience, and research reports have a functional purpose primary to an aesthetic or a sociocultural one: research reports are supposed to deliver findings of academic studies to the academic community which can then recognise or dismiss their value and build upon them.

Furthermore, the mechanisms of financing remain ignorant of the nature of the research topic. Not all aspects of Finnish langue, culture and society are relevant or even understandable to an international audience. Researchers in different (sub)disciplines and research designs do not have an equal number of international platforms at their disposal. Besides, many of the most prestigious international peer-reviewed journals are non-open-access journals, which makes them a less attractive alternative to those who want to promote a culture of openness within the Academy.

Instead of just juxtaposing publishing in two different languages and asking English or Finnish, it should be more discussed how the two publication platforms, the national and the international, distinguish from each other. It should perhaps be more carefully considered what and how to publish in different languages: they should not have to present the same kind of material. Reporting about research as such should not be a value, but as in all communication, it should have a target group and a general purpose. What do we intend to reach by communicating in English and Finnish?

You can listen the whole programme Finnish as the language of science – in Finnish only – at SoundCloud: