The changing role of non-English papers in scholarly communication: Evidence from Web of Science's three journal citation indexes

Non-English languages are widely used, but their roles in scholarly communication are relatively under-explored. By using Web of Science's Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE, 1900–2015), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI, 1900–2015), and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI, 1975–2015), this study probes the patterns and dynamics of non-English papers by year, citation index, and discipline using bibliometric analysis. The analyses show that English is increasingly being used as the dominating language from natural sciences and social sciences to arts and humanities. Around 97% of the papers in SCIE, 95% of the papers in SSCI, and 73% of the papers in A&HCI during the past decade were in English. However, other languages such as German and French were also used as important academic languages in sciences and social sciences during the first half of the 20th century, 1970s, and 1980s. Unlike natural science and social science disciplines, non-English papers have consistently played important role in arts and humanities disciplines from the beginning of 1975. Although the shares of non-English papers in SCIE and SSCI databases have been limited during the past decade, a large number of non-English papers can be found in some applied disciplines of sciences and social sciences.