The choice of which language to publish in is always challenging. Although I have been forced by circumstance to publish rather much in English, I feel that many political and cultural problems are linked to the use of English as a language of science, and it increases inequality within the international academic community. This is also evident in the fact that all the so-called top universities operate in Anglo-Saxon countries – as if science were at a higher level there. Moreover, today academic journals maintained by international publishers are almost exclusively in English, which dramatically narrows their scientific outlook.

In the humanities, in particular, it is necessary to master and publish in many other languages than English. I personally support the reintroduction of Latin as Europe’s language of culture and learning, but for practical reasons, Latin could be replaced by Interlingua, an international modern romance language based on Latin. I am currently writing my first academic article in Interlingua. In order to reach different audiences, I have nevertheless also published in German, French, Russian, Hungarian and Japanese, and naturally in Finland’s domestic languages – and one non-specialist article in Sami too.

It is important to develop academic assessment methods that can take account of a researcher’s activities in different languages. The assessment should always be based on the quality of the work not the language in which it was written. In many ways, those in the humanities have fallen between the cracks, when the performance indicators for publication activity were created they were quite evidently not created by those in the humanities. The University of Helsinki has nevertheless avoided the worst pitfalls. For example, it accepts in the TUHAT system, and thus in its ‘results,’ publications other than those written in English that have been through international peer review. Although the TUHAT system has its faults, it also serves those working in the humanities relatively well.