Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm sorry about the problems with the sound.
Today, my remarks will focus on an aspect that I consider to be important for francophone scientific publishing.
I was talking about the privileged position Canada holds within the Francophonie and I think it is important to continue my remarks on that subject.
I believe that in the interests of the diversity of knowledge, science cannot deprive itself of French. Apart from being the tool of communication, however, it is how ideas are organized and structured that demands pluralism in languages and linguistic diversity.
In a world where current issues are crucial and complex, we cannot deprive ourselves of diversity. I am aware of this as an environmental sociologist. The organization of science demands that criticism and feedback be shared for all research and analyses at the international level. It is not a matter of publishing articles to pad a curriculum vitae or puff up a career—and we could come back to the upsurge in bibliometrics; rather, it is to circulate ideas and knowledge. This is central to the scientific method and it is what is important and dear to me as a scientist.
Today, we have to acknowledge the massive anglicization of science. One could hold forth at length about the causes, but that will not be the angle I take in my brief remarks. In fact, I want to stress the importance of the circulation of scientific ideas. Accordingly, as science is organized at the international level at present, that circulation takes place through scientific publishing, and that circulation must necessarily be international. Ideas have to mingle.
The work done in recent years around the language of science shows that English is the most used as the language of international scientific communication, and this reduces and impoverishes the essential scientific diversity I referred to earlier.
French, like others of what are called national languages, would be reduced to national dissemination. Here, I am not even referring to the dissemination of French in Canada. It poses a real scientific and epistemological problem in the connection between theory and practice. It deprives us, collectively, of what is cruelly missing for us to grasp today's complex issues: the mingling of multiple ideas across sectors and disciplines, and the essential, and today even vital, scientific imagination.
In Europe, it is interesting to look at what has been achieved by the cOAlition S and the leadership exercised by numerous researchers who have worked on the status of the language in science and publishing. On this point, Canada has a major responsibility to science and the Francophonie and to Canadians. It could occupy an enviable position in this regard.
Scientific publishing takes place in large part through scientific journals, that is, peer-reviewed journals, reviewed by other scientists who are experts in the same fields. We could come back to this aspect. Scientific publishing is the dominant tool or vehicle, which we will call it even if though is more complex, that allows scientific advances not only to be disseminated, but to be also circulated and debated and discussed. That publishing must reflect the importance of French in an equal position as a scientific language. That is no longer the case today, as we have briefly discussed.
The current model of scientific dissemination requires that researchers publish and be visible—which is coherent, so far—and, whether or not they join, promote certain scientific journals over others. I cannot unpack the fine points of the traps of bibliometrics in these remarks, but that aspect is quite important and well documented. This way of building reputations does not affect just francophone scientific publishing, obviously, but it nonetheless throws up more obstacles.
Apart from this rankings race engaged in by the journals, we come back to the initial idea: the importance of international dissemination and the diversity of that dissemination, the aim of which is to circulate ideas, discoveries and research.
Let us come back to the preponderant position and the domination by journals most often associated with Anglo-Saxon commercial publishers. Today, we are witnessing a push toward uniformity in ways of thinking, and it is that phenomenon that it is important to revisit. We have to diversify our ways of thinking, writing and discussing.
And so a new approach, an exceptional redressing, special assistance to francophone publishing, which is regressing, must be given serious thought. This kind of differentiated assistance might seem unfair to some, because it is not egalitarian, but I will quote what has been said by sociologist François Dubé...