Seek, and ye shall find: Accessing the global epidemiological literature in different languages

In 1976, Eugene Garfield, the founder-president of the Institute for Scientific Information (now Thomson Scientific [1]) sparked controversy in France with his article 'Is French Science too Provincial?' published in the leading French journal La Recherche [2]. By suggesting that 'French scientists must recognize that French is no longer the international language, and the adoption of English as the world language of science should be encouraged' (italics original) [3], Garfield drew strong and robust responses from French politicians and scientists [4]. In the ensuing years, the proportion of scientific articles indexed in international databases such as Medline [5,6] and the Science Citation Index [7] that is published in languages other than English has decreased. Medical journals published in French or German have declined in ranking based on impact factors [8]. By the late 1980s, Garfield noted that the 'French scientists seem to have implicitly acknowledged that English is, in fact, now the international language of science, if not in other areas of international activity' [9]. However, in a 2006 debate in the journal PLoS Medicine, Gerd Antes commented that in countries like Germany, most physicians and other health-care professionals are still unable or unwilling to read English in their daily routine [10].Given that English has become the global language of science, non-English-speaking countries are at a disadvantage with respect to global scientific communication, and much is needed to remedy this situation. As highlighted in a recent comment in New Scientist, many local journals in the developing world are failing and yet their very existence is vital as a channel through which local research is publicised [11]. Unless non-English-speaking societies become genuinely bilingual, the 'overdominance' of the English language may impact adversely the work of epidemiologists and public health practitioners in non-English-speaking countries and, subsequently, th