Multilingualism in digital humanities scholarship: a bibliometric review

This study addresses linguistic diversity in Digital Humanities (DH), specifically within its scientific publication. Its core objective is to contribute to the development of DH’s self-knowledge—particularly its multilingual nature—through the characterization of scientific publication in the field. A bibliometric analysis of DH scientific publication indexed in Web of Science and Scopus between 2012 and 2021 is conducted. The following parameters are examined: distribution by year of publication, by country of author(s), by journal (considering the language in which each journal is published), by document language, and by DH subfields (Web of Science Categories). Bibliometric network visualizations of country co-authorship and bibliographic source co-citation analyses are also conducted using the software VOSviewer. The number of multilingual publications has been increasing, with a total of 29 distinct languages identified. Setting aside the expected and pronounced supremacy of English, Spanish and German are the most prominent languages. Spain and Germany are the most productive countries, and Spain has collaborated most extensively in multilingual scientific publication. The hegemony of the West and of Western languages is conspicuous, hence the underrepresentation of languages using non-Latin scripts. Literature and History predominate in multilingual DH, whereas Philosophy, Religion, Classics, and the Arts lag behind. Whereas discussion of linguistic diversity in DH has remained largely theoretical, this research offers an empirical examination of DH’s multilingualism. The study’s main contribution lies in deepening DH’s self-knowledge as a discipline, with practical implications at the level of conferences, journals, and project funding.