An increasingly smaller proportion of scientific publications written by Norwegian researchers are published in Norwegian. In this essay, the authors argue that this is a problem – both for the Norwegian language and for research itself. They also claim that using, developing, and thereby preserving Norwegian as a research language has an intrinsic value that far outweighs the potential benefit of reaching a larger audience through English-language publishing. The argument rests on the idea that research and dissemination are two sides of the same coin, and that language and thought are inseparable: Without a language the researcher masters well, thought becomes hesitant and imprecise. According to the authors, both the subject matter and the context are decisive for which language is most suitable and for the text’s ability to reach interested and critical readers. The premise that English-language publications always reach a larger international audience is not taken for granted. When research addresses welfare arrangements that are locally rooted and politically enacted, the opposite may be true. The value of scientific texts having literary qualities is an additional argument for why researchers, whose mother tongue is Norwegian should publish research in Norwegian – not only in English.
Østrem et al. (Fri,) studied this question.