At rOpenSci we work to transform science through open data, software and reproducibility. We provides community support, standards, and infrastructure for scientists and research software engineers working in R to develop, maintain, and publish high-quality open-source scientific software. In addition, we develop and maintain high-quality documentation and resources to support these activities.
+We also believe that science and the research software we create to support it, should serve everyone in our communities, which means it needs to be sustainable, open, and built by and for all groups Currently, however, there is a dismaying lack of diversity in scientific and open source communities in general. That disappointing lack of diversity is potentially detrimental to the sustainability, utility and productivity of projects.
+rOpenSci is carrying out a series of activities and projects to transform science to ensure that serves everyone in our communities which include our multilingual publishing project.
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+ Language barrier
+English is the lingua franca for science creating a significant barrier for non-English speaker waiting to join the field. It is also the predominant language of open source in code, content, and community interactions making language access one of the environmental barriers to equity in open source. .
+The UNESCO’s recommendation on open science highlights the need to overcome language barriers in order to achieve the open science core values and guiding principles of Equity and fairness, Diversity and inclusiveness, Equality of opportunities, and Collaboration, participation and inclusion.
+A recent study quantified the consequences of language barriers on the career development of researchers. The authors found that Non-native English researchers need:
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+up to 91% more time to read English papers,
up to 51% more time to write papers and their papers will be rejected 2.6 times more often. If accepted, they’ll have to revise it 12.5 more times
When they present in English need up to 94% more time to prepare their presentations. They will often avoid English speaking conferences and oral presentations.
+Furthermore, the Linux Foundation report states, “English proficiency is a metric by which performance and personality can be judged”.
+These studies also higligh that “the magnitude of the disadvantage seems far beyond the level that can be overcome with individuals’ efforts.”
+By developing the technical and social infrastructure to publishing multilingual resources and publish our own resources in several languages, we can lower these barriers by increasing access to knowledge and democratize access to quality resources, thereby increasing the potential for individuals to contribute to software and open science projects.
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+ Community driven localizations and translations
+Community-driven translations and localizations are efforts by community members to have a resource in a language of their choice. The community organized and agreed on different aspects of the localization project.
+The Spanish-speaking R community has been very active and growing in recent years and has undertaken various translation activities for technical materials such as books, cheat sheets, guides, and datasets.
+In 2017, several Latin American R-Ladies began translating the R-Ladies’ Code of Conduct and their Rules and Guidelines into Spanish.
+In 2018, the R community in Latin America collectively translated the R for Data Science book into Spanish. This included the translation of all the data sets used in the book, which were compiled in the datos package, making it an excellent tool for teaching.
+The community continued with the translation of Teaching Tech Together and contributed to the translations into Spanish of the Posit Cheatsheets, The Carpentries’ and The Programming Historian lessons.
+Driven by this active and growing Spanish-speaking community, rOpenSci successfully piloted our first Spanish-language peer review, where the submission, reviews, and editorial responses were in Spanish.
+These works and previous community experiences created the conditions for us to start our multilingual publishing in Spanish. Spanish is the second most-spoken native language in the world and is one of the most geographically widespread languages, being an official language in many countries.
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