International collaboration and multilingualism in agricultural science – a scholarly journal example

Abstract

The social changes that took place in Central Europe at the end of the last century led to major changes in agriculture. The beginning of the new millennium and the spread of new electronic technologies created new fields in research publishing and facilitated access to knowledge from remote places. In addition, there is a need to share problems and solutions with neighbouring countries, but it is also important to preserve and develop national languages and identities. Material and methods: The Journal of Central European Agriculture (JCEA) was founded in 1999 by three universities from Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia. In addition to sharing problems and solutions in the region, the idea behind the JCEA was to preserve and develop national languages in agriculture as a profession, as a part of soft skills competencies. Results: The Editorial Board has grown over the years and now includes 9 member countries, i.e. universities and institutes from Central European, countries with a similar socio-economic history. To avoid the obsolescence of agricultural vocabulary and to keep the native languages alive, authors from member countries can publish in their national language or English. Each member country organises a National Editorial Board, which is responsible for reviewing articles in its national language and the organisation of peer review of other papers. Due to the similarity of the languages of some member countries, articles written in one of the national languages can also be reviewed internationally. Conclusion: The Editorial Board, which is made up of representatives from all 9 institutions, enables JCEA to have a broad base of reviewers. The multilingual strategy reflects the global intention to preserve and promote the use of national languages in sciences. The inclusion of JCEA in bibliographic databases (WoS, Scopus, etc.) gives authors international visibility and the opportunity to further disseminate their research results.