CORRESPONDENCE
06 June 2023

Preserve cultural diversity in author names

Khaled Moustafa

Twitter 
Facebook 
Email

Most scientific publications are in English, which reduces the visibility of valuable research in other languages and can lead to a loss of cultural diversity and heritage. In my view, language diversity in scholarly publications and in author names should be incorporated into journals, databases and bibliographic indexes.

Although Google Scholar and PubMed, for instance, provide global and multidisciplinary bibliographic data, they — in particular PubMed — typically render authors’ names in English or other languages with Latin-rooted alphabets. This can lead to confusion and errors. For example, the name Muhammad in Arabic has multiple forms in English — including Muhamad, Muhamed, Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohammad, Mohamed, Mohammed, Muhamet — whereas in Arabic it has a single, invariable form. My own names, both first and last, can also take different forms in English, but in Arabic they each have only one form. Similar issues might apply to other languages.

Journals and indexers therefore need to reconsider their policies on authorship and indexing, to make them more inclusive. They should allow author names to be written in their original languages (alone or alongside the English version) for clarity. This will preserve cultural diversity as well as increasing the accuracy and reliability of publications so that authors can receive the correct attribution for their work.

Nature 618, 238 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01852-x

COMPETING INTERESTS

The author declares no competing interests.