Indexing problems with non Latin scripts
Miran Hladnik <hladnikmiran@gmail.com> čet., 12. dec. 2019, 09:31 Za humanist, willard.mccarty
| Indexing problems with non Latin scripts | |
|---|---|
| Avtor | Miran Hladnik |
| Naslov izvirnika | Indexing problems with non-Latin scripts |
| Jezik | slovenski |
| Subjekt | angleščina |
| Žanr | diskusijski prispevek na forumu Humanist 12. dec. 2019 |
| Klasifikacija | |
The following will hardly spark sympathy among English speaking members of Humanist. But maybe it shoud, concerning that the word humanist indicates also a person respecting human dignity. It is about respecting other scripts and languages.
Some months ago a Russian author in the journal I edit noticed that his paper hadn't been indexed by Elsevier Scopus. Being aware that articles and references in the Cyrillic script cause indexing problems with Scopus, the journal sticks to the instructions from the Scopus officials and transliterates every single Cyrillic entry into the Latin script. In spite of that the references were not indexed. I've intervened with Scopus. After a while I received the astonishing answer from the content account manager: The paper cannot be processed because the references are not in English! The new demand and the argument by Scopus sound like mocking: it would be unacceptable for a resarch paper to list the titles in a non-existing English translation instead of in original languages. Our journal publishes predominantly non-English papers, nevertheless it has been successfully processed by the same institution so far. The problem seems to be burning only regarding the use of the Cyrillic alphabet, which evidently disturbs some Scopus employees and raises suspicion, that someone is after expelling Russian out of the scientific community to maintain the dominance of English.
I would appreciate your indexing experience with other languages and with non-Latin scripts, e. g. Hebrew or Greek. Apart from this, it seems necessary to tell, that in the times when every mobile device is capable of recognizing and translating a text of a deliberate script and language, the terror of English exercised by Elsevier Scopus is discriminating and indecent. -- miran hladnik