Science and Research Committee on Oct. 31st, 2022

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that, Ms. Bailey.

I'll go on to Mr. Gingras now.

You brought up a completely different aspect that I'd never even thought of. On the human and social sciences side of things, you're saying it makes a lot more sense to publish in French, yet, in other sciences, it doesn't. You wanted to dwell a bit more on this. Could you please explain further? I'd love to hear more on this.

[Yves Gingras]

Yes. In practice, when we're talking about science in English, we're talking about the natural sciences.

You just gave the example of grant applications. That's, again, a different question. When you apply to SSHRC, NSERC or CIHR, there are, in fact, statistical data by SSHRC that follow up the rate of success for francophones and anglophones to be sure there is no bias.

They follow that up because that's a real question for a very simple reason. If you apply in French at SSHRC and they want Canadians to evaluate this, in practice, although most francophone university professors are bilingual, you cannot say the same of anglophone university professors, who are not bilingual. In being bilingual, you should again distinguish between reading French and English, speaking French, and writing French or English. I do all three of them, but some can read but don't talk. We have to be precise.

For your question, SSHRC will give you the exact number of the rate of success. The reason it's different, and this is my point of view.... The tendency of the three organizations to think that SSHRC should be with NSERC and the three councils should be all together is very nice, but there is a perverse effect to applying the same criteria to social sciences and humanities because social sciences are what I call in sociology “indexical”. They are local.

When I work on Brother Marie-Victorin about Quebec science, it would be absurd to publish that in English in Australia. First, they wouldn't be interested. Second, the Quebec people won't read about Marie-Victorin. If I talk about galaxies, there are no Quebec galaxies and there are no Canadian galaxies. Galaxies are universal.

The history of the language used in social sciences and humanities is different from the history of the use of language and English. The problem we now have—and I could give examples in French—is that they think that being international in social sciences means writing in English.

I wrote a paper explaining that the statistical analysis is false. For 10 years, they translated the Revue française de sociologie to English. It had no more citations for a simple reason. If you are an American working on France, you already read French. If you don't read French, it's because you're not working on France.

Even if I translate the paper for you, you would not read it. It's not because it's not good; it's because it's not your field. There's a total confusion about all those things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Professor, I'm sorry to interrupt.

[Yves Gingras]

That's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Soroka, thank you for your questions.

We are now going to go to Ms. Bradford for six minutes, please.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being with us tonight. It's fascinating.

I agree with MP Soroka. It's quite fascinating, Ms. Bailey, that you did all your study and everything in English. You were from Manitoba, yet you've made your career in French. That's really quite remarkable and commendable.

Anyway, I was interested in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA. It sets out recommendations to improve the ways in which scientific research is evaluated, including moving away from journal-based metrics as a measure of research quality.

The Fonds de recherche du Québec announced in 2020 that they're signatories of DORA. The committee here has heard testimony to date that an overreliance on journal publications as an indicator of research quality can penalize researchers publishing in French due to the relatively small number of francophone journals and a relatively limited audience in comparison to English.

What has the implementation of DORA principles looked like at Fonds de recherche du Québec?

[Dr. Janice Bailey]

That's a wonderful question.

When we talk about DORA, we tend to talk quite a lot about the impact factor. Professor Gingras mentioned the historical importance of impact factor, particularly to my field in natural sciences, where people will look at different journals and they have different impact factors. We've tended to use that, historically, as a sign of research quality. If you publish a paper in Cell, we tend to say it's a good paper, even if we haven't read it. If you publish it in the journal of growing carrots, we think it can't be that interesting because it's only growing carrots.

That's terrible because the important thing is that it's publicly funded research. It's important to get that information out to the scientific community anyway and I think that impact comes with time.

We signed the declaration of San Francisco in 2020, so it's still a culture change that I am personally trying to help our research community adapt to. The FRQNT is small, but we have a large force. I think we could nudge scientific culture a little bit, along with others.

Forgive me, Ms. Bradford, if I'm not answering your question perfectly well.

Right now I think the important message is that the research is published in peer-reviewed journals and that this information is accessible as widely as possible. That's what's important. It's not necessarily in which journal you publish.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

What impact do you think the implementation of DORA principles will have on the funding and publication of research in French?

[Dr. Janice Bailey]

I think there could be a positive change because, for instance, I still have a couple of students who are hanging around, and I would really like to see and encourage them to publish in French. Sometimes francophone students in francophone universities might be slow to publish in English. It's very daunting for them sometimes to send out that last article in English, but if I could say, “Publish it in French. Write it in French, and you'll have it for your thesis”, then I think that students and their professors might be a lot more open to submitting and publishing in French and sharing their information in French.

I really appreciate what Professor Gingras said about how perhaps just translating everything that's already published in English and French is maybe not useful, but that doesn't mean that a fundamental piece of research that would be published in French wouldn't be useful. I think that would be very interesting. I think especially review articles, which are a phenomenon in natural sciences, are very useful, and I think there's a huge space.

In fact, I would love it if in Quebec we could have journals with review articles that we could write collectively with others around the world. These kinds of journals would be so helpful to francophone nations. I visited Mali. They don't speak English. They don't have access to English literature anyway, so it doesn't matter. They don't have very much access to anything, and I think that if we could have these reviews or journals in French, they would be such a great resource. Those articles are maybe easier for the general public or the highly educated public to read, as opposed to fundamental research papers, which can be very difficult, as Professor Gingras rightly said.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for you, Professor Gingras.

The committee has heard testimony that certain areas of study, including science, engineering and math, are less likely to be offered as francophone post-secondary programs or to have research published in French. Are there certain academic disciplines more represented than others in francophone research publications?

[Yves Gingras]

Of course.

In France there is a physics journal that has been published since the 19th century. It's called Journal de Physique. The title of the journal is in French but essentially none of the papers in it is in French, because the lingua franca in the 17th century was Latin. Newton wrote his book not in English but in Latin. Descartes also wrote some of his work in Latin. We have to be careful about an abstract view of the world versus a practical view. In mathematics there are very few words: “if...then” and then you have equations. Very basic language is used. Papers are generally four pages long instead of 25 pages, as is the case for sociology or industry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Professor Gingras, you have my apologies.

Thank you very much, Ms. Bradford.

We will now go to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to welcome the witnesses who are joining us for the second hour of our meeting.

My questions will be for Professor Gingras.

Thank you for being here, Professor Gingras, and thank you for helping to untangle the question and make the distinction between the social sciences and humanities and the natural sciences.

I want to make sure I have correctly understood the distinction that you say we have to make. On the one hand, there is scientific publishing in English; on the other hand, there are teaching and making knowledge accessible, which have to be done in French, particularly in Quebec, but also in francophone communities outside Quebec.

If I understand your position correctly, systematic translation is not a good solution and is not something that is done in certain natural sciences. Is that accurate?

[Yves Gingras]

Not just that it is not done, but if it were done, as the experiment was tried in France, it would be a failure.

In the case of the natural sciences, we have a natural experiment. In sociology, it is not always possible to experiment, because that is not ethical, but there is experimentation nonetheless.

France spent millions of dollars at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique to translate the entire Revue française de sociologie because they thought it was not international enough. That was false, but it is what they believed. They said that if they translated the entire journal into English, it would become international. That is ridiculous. I measured the citations effects, from a bibliometrics perspective, over ten years, and found that the effect was virtually nil. Why? For the reasons I explained: the work in that journal relates to France.

Similarly, the American Journal of Sociology is not an international journal; it is an American sociology journal. In fact, 90 per cent of its authors are Americans.

The social sciences and humanities field is not the same field as the natural sciences. Why? Because it is indexical. Quebec society relies on Quebec sociology journals like Recherches sociographiques or Sociologie et sociétés. Similarly, there are The British Journal of Sociology, the American Journal of Sociology or the Revue française de sociologie elsewhere.

Are there physics journals specific to each country? No. I am also a physicist and, as such, I am a member of the American Physical Society. Why? Because the work done by Americans in physics is important. When we talk about electrons, for example, we often speak in English.

So the social sciences have to be put in a separate category.

In addition, we have to invest where it is necessary. For example, if the Polity Press asks to have the book I have written in French translated into English, then it is worth subsidizing the translation. However, if it is to be translated simply because it falls within a generalized request for translation, that is absurd, it is money wasted.

What happened in France? In 2017 or 2018, the French stopped translating everything, after finally understanding what I was trying to get them to understand. The empirical data that I collected actually showed it; translating everything is irrational in economic and scientific terms. Deciding to translate everything means conflating what my father is going to read and what the scientific community is going to read; my father is going to read Québec Science, but he will not read an article about artificial intelligence written by Yoshua Bengio, who won the Turing prize. That is absurd.

It is important to separate things properly and invest in the right place.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

If I understand correctly, translation can be more worth considering in the social sciences and humanities, and that is where the focus is more than on the natural sciences.

In addition, you talked about access to manuals in French. I am trying to understand what you are saying. When something is published in English, you then have to be sure you have a translation into French, if you want the teaching to be in French, particularly in Quebec.

What concrete recommendations can you make to the committee for more emphasis to be put on French in research and scientific publication, particularly in social sciences and humanities?

[Yves Gingras]

In the natural sciences, French has an important presence when it comes to teaching. However, a situation may arise in which a francophone university hires someone who has an excellent reputation but is unable to speak a word in French, in the name of international competition.

A few years ago, Le Devoir published a letter from a student enrolled in physics at the Université de Montréal. She had arrived at her master's seminar class and realized that the class was in English, when in fact, as she said, she had not enrolled at McGill University, she had enrolled at the Université de Montréal.

That is why I say that a distinction has to be made between teaching and publishing. If a person enrols in a master's program at the Université de Montréal and the professor does not speak French, they would have done better to enrol at McGill or Concordia University.

The chancellors have to stop saying that they want their universities to be competitive at the international level and at the same time that they offer programs in French. Often, you just can't eat your cake and have it too. So there are priorities other than what gets said. On that point, I'm being a bit blunt, since we have very little time. If we are serious, does international competition necessarily mean hiring a unilingual English-speaking person? Is that person really the best one? Thinking it's better because it's in English is a kind of colonialism; it is often false.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

You have talked about content, but I would now like to talk about the presence of francophones and Quebeckers in research chairs.

In the 1930s, Jacques Rousseau did research on the presence of French Canadians, Quebeckers and francophones in the scientific community. Today, in 2022, do you have any data in that regard? Almost 100 years later, do we need to be concerned about the presence of francophones and opportunities for them to contribute to scientific research in their mother tongue?

[Yves Gingras]

To my mind, no. I have done several studies on this, and there are ways to measure scientific impact at a macro level. The impact of the Quebec scientific community is about 20 per cent above the global average. The global average is 1, while Quebec's is 1.20.

Francophone researchers in the natural sciences are integrated into the global field, whence the title of my old article, "La valeur d'une langue dans un champ scientifique", which is still valid in sociological terms. A scientific field is a community. The Quebec astrophysicists at the Université de Montréal or Université Laval who participate in a conference speak with the other participants, whether they be Chinese, Americans or whatever else, in the lingua franca, which is English. The use of English in the natural sciences is not a problem in any way, in my opinion. We have to let go of this issue in the case of the natural sciences, because it was settled 30 years ago. Instead, we need to focus on the social sciences and humanities.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

So we are going to focus on the social sciences and humanities.

I was looking at the recent data collected by the Canada Research Chairs. Since 1980, scientific publishing in French in the social sciences and humanities has fallen off by 25.6 per cent.

[Yves Gingras]

Yes, and that can be explained by the pressures of evaluation...

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, I'm sorry. That's your six minutes.

We will now go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses. This has been very interesting.

I'll start with Professor Bailey to maybe clarify something that Mr. Soroka mentioned about the success of applications in French.

I flipped back in my notes to Professor Fortin from NSERC, who mentioned that 26% of NSERC applicants are francophones, but only 10% of applications are submitted in French. He also said that the French applications from bilingual universities such as McGill and the University of Ottawa had more success than those submitted in English. It's not as Mr. Soroka was saying, or at least in that case. I couldn't find anything in general, but it seems that the French applications were as successful—or more successful, in those cases.

I'm wondering if you could comment on when you are submitting an application or working in a bilingual environment like the University of Ottawa or McGill and you have that community around you that can help you edit in French and things like that. We've heard this from some....

[Dr. Janice Bailey]

I'm glad that Monsieur Fortin provided those data. I know that, as Professor Gingras said, the tri-councils follow these data very closely. To the best of my knowledge, I've not seen that there's a big discrepancy. The success rates do not seem to be heavily biased by the language of submission. I could be wrong, because this is not something I looked at yesterday.

In terms of the environment, if you're a scientist, you think very carefully about what language you're going to submit your application in. If you are going to try to write it in English and you're francophone, you're going to have someone help you and vice versa. That's what I tend to see.

I have to say that McGill in my experience is much more English. I don't really consider McGill to be bilingual, per se, but I think most people or many of the applicants from McGill are functional in both French and English.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I think we've heard that about McGill here as well.

I'd like to turn to you now, Professor Gingras, on a little detail. I've read a couple of the papers you've written on the subject, and you've mentioned the “Matthew effect”. It seemed important, but I didn't know what it was. Could you maybe explain that and how it relates to this?

[Yves Gingras]

Very simply, it's the fact that once you have acquired a certain visibility, you will be given more quality than in fact you have. I think it's the case for English. I'll be very frank.

We talk about “rent”. You can have rent on petroleum, like Alberta, and you can just sit on the rent. There is a linguistic rent that we never talk about. In Quebec, McGill and Concordia have a linguistic rent. We think they are better in the world classification of universities. I know very well those rankings. I wrote a lot of stuff on them. It's a linguistic rent, because if you are only a francophone in the world they won't see you as much as they will see an anglophone: “Yes, we know very well McGill and Concordia. What is this Université du Québec à Montréal? What is that?”

There is a linguistic rent, and the Matthew effect is the same thing. For example, if I write a paper with my student, he signs his name beside mine. Since I am quite known, to some extent, they will say, “Gingras wrote this paper.” I can tell them, no, I wrote it with my student, but they won't care. I will get the credit for that. That's the Matthew effect.

The Matthew effect also has an effect on the impact factor. That's a very important paper that we did. We were able to prove that the impact factor in itself has a Matthew effect. This is why we should forbid the impact factor at NSERC. I've asked that for many years, but NSERC doesn't want to do that. It should be forbidden on the committee for a member to say, “The impact factor of this journal is higher.” It should be forbidden. That's easy to do. It's a criteria that they should do at CIHR and SSHRC. In fact, SSHRC doesn't use it, but NSERC has this mania in biomedical sciences. Mathematicians don't use it much, because they know it's garbage.