Promoting research in French: A Driver for Scientific Collaboration in Canada

Every young Francophone researcher in Canada knows the trade-off that shapes their career. Publishing in French means speaking directly to their community. Publishing in English means giving their work a better chance of being recognized. This choice takes place within a citation system that is almost entirely English-language. A study published in 2026, based on nearly 88 million publications and 1.48 billion cited references, reveals that 98.89% of these references point to works in English. The share of publications in French, meanwhile, fell from 2.14% in 1990 to just 1.06% in 2023. Yet citations carry significant weight in career advancement and the allocation of research funding.

This individual trade-off, repeated thousands of times across the country, produces a well-documented collective outcome. Vincent Larivière and Amanda Riddles of the Université de Montréal have shown that in Canada, the proportion of articles published in English increased sharply between 1980 and 2019, reaching 97% in the social sciences and 90% in the arts and humanities among articles indexed in Web of Science (a database that, although it indexes few journals published through Érudit and therefore underestimates the presence of French, does not contradict the overall trend), even though some research subjects in these fields are inseparable from their linguistic context. Furthermore, in 2021, an Acfas study described research in French within minority Francophone communities as a genuine obstacle course: a lack of institutional support, a disproportionate administrative burden, and difficulty organizing scientific activities in French.

The trends described above are partly the result of how research impact is measured and rewarded. Evaluation mechanisms place significant emphasis on citations, international reach, and disciplinary contributions, while the transfer of knowledge to communities and local partners is less visible. Publishing in English is essential to the international visibility of Canadian research and should remain so. However, using French in scientific exchanges serves a different, but equally important, purpose: enabling Francophone communities to participate in projects that affect them and benefit from them, which could help extend the reach of research across the country. This asymmetry is also reflected in the circulation of research within Canada. In political science, François Rocher observed as early as 2007 that Francophone political scientists cited the work of their Anglophone colleagues extensively, whereas the reverse occurred much less frequently. A study published in 2024 still finds that Francophone researchers are cited less often than their Anglophone colleagues despite generally higher productivity.

In 2023, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research made seventeen recommendations to give new momentum to scientific research and publication in French in Canada. Ottawa has since taken several measures. An external advisory group on scientific information in French was established in October 2024; in November 2025, $900,000 over three years was awarded to Acfas’s French-language Research Support Service; and in April 2026, one million dollars was distributed among NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC to support research in French across the country. This funding is part of a broader federal investment of $8.5 million over five years. Beginning in 2024, the Fonds de recherche du Québec, for its part, committed ten million dollars over five years to a network designed to support scientific publication in French. These investments address genuine needs by strengthening support services and French-language publishing infrastructure. However, on their own, they do not change the criteria that determine professional recognition and access to funding. The public response therefore remains incomplete as long as knowledge mobilization and collaboration with Francophone communities continue to receive less recognition in research evaluation.

Funding must be accompanied by an evolution in federal research evaluation practices. NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC should specify, when evaluating applications, that knowledge mobilization in French—including co-construction of projects with communities, knowledge transfer to local and industry partners, and dissemination to Francophone audiences—constitutes a full-fledged research contribution. The three agencies already have a framework for doing so. Signatories since 2019 to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, they are progressively implementing a new narrative CV designed to recognize a broad range of contributions and reduce excessive reliance on quantitative indicators. This approach should make contributions carried out in French explicitly visible. Support must also be sustained over the long term. Acfas’s French-language Research Support Service should receive stable funding beyond its current cycle, while partnership-based research programs should provide greater support to teams bringing together Quebec institutions, Francophone or bilingual institutions elsewhere in Canada, and non-academic partners.

Canada does not have to choose between the international visibility of its research and its ability to serve Francophone communities. By combining sustained support for research in French with explicit recognition of knowledge mobilization and partnerships conducted in that language, Canada could preserve the international recognition of its research while strengthening its relevance at the national level. This approach is not, after all, unprecedented: the External Advisory Group itself recommends recognizing knowledge mobilization in French in the evaluation of grant applications. The ongoing redesign of the three agencies’ CV demonstrates that these criteria can evolve. The question, therefore, is what Canada will choose to recognize—and, for the generation taking its first steps into the research world today, whether publishing in French will remain a compromise or become a choice.