The journal Emerging Themes in Epidemiology (ETE) has recently published a series of articles aimed at introducing content from epidemiological and public health journals to the global community of epidemiologists in a variety of languages. The series, titled "Beyond English: Accessing the global epidemiological literature", was conceived by Isaac Fung, a PhD student at Imperial College London and a member of the journal's editorial board.
English has long been the international language of the global scientific community. However, it has been observed, epidemiology and public health projects are often context-specific, emphasising the importance of using non-English literature and databases for systematic reviews and meta-analyses in epidemiology and public health research.
Harnessing local knowledge and channeling research output into local populations are seen to be important for empowering the very populations for which epidemiology and public health serves. There are many epidemiology and public health journals published in different languages globally, from Spanish and Portuguese to Chinese and Russian. These serve both as a channel through which local practitioners and experts gather scientific information and as a source of knowledge from which the data for systematic reviews and meta-analyses can be obtained.
Articles in the series examine the current scenarios of publishing science in the major languages of the world, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and also introduce readers to non-English databases.
ETE is an online, open access, peer-reviewed epidemiology journal run by research degree students at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London and other institutions, and hosted by open access publisher BioMed Central.
