English-only publishing is a form of brain drain for non-English speaking countries

By relying solely on English as science’s lingua franca, researchers are disconnecting them-selves from local knowledge systems, thereby diminishing their research impact on their societies and denying their local language the opportunity to grow its scientific lexicon. Over time, this ‘linguistic brain drain’ weakens local journals, marginalizes locally relevant research agendas, and deepens dependence on English-language publishers and indexers that privilege international visibility over local impact. Mitigation requires making modern science more inclusive. Specifically, promoting multilingual scholarly communication must be treated as development policy. Governments, universities, and funders should invest in local publishing infrastructures, reward multilingual outputs, support research addressing local priorities, and reform evaluation systems that undervalue non-English scholarship. Publishers and indexers should implement the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science and the Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication. Generative AI, through the use of AI translators, can support multilingual scholarly communication. Challenges and their mitigations are further discussed.