The Double Periphery: Breaking Down Silos in Canadian Science Across Language and Territory

It still happens that a research team from Chicoutimi and a team from Halifax discover, at a conference held abroad, that they have been working for years on the same subject, using complementary methods, without ever having read each other’s work. The anecdote circulates at conferences everywhere. It should not be amusing. It indicates that the Canadian scientific system was not designed to bring these two teams together, but to evaluate them separately.

The diagnosis is well known because it encompasses disciplinary silos, regional disparities, and linguistic compartmentalization. What is less recognized is that these obstacles do not simply add up; they compound one another. Francophone researchers based outside major urban centres face two disadvantages that reinforce each other—a situation that can be called a double periphery. It is precisely from this position, that of a regional university in Quebec, that the levers for breaking down these silos become most apparent.

A Structural, Not Cultural, Asymmetry

The language barrier is not a matter of goodwill. English has become the language of international scientific exchange, and Francophone researchers adapt to it by publishing, presenting, and reviewing in English, at the cost of an additional effort that their Anglophone colleagues do not have to make. The reverse, however, is less common (see Figure 1).

The data are unambiguous. Since the 1960s, French-language journals have represented only about one-tenth of the scientific periodicals created in Canada, and the proportion of articles published in English now exceeds 90% across all fields. At the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the share of funding applications written in French ranges from 5% to 10%. Even more revealing, the success rate of applications submitted to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research reaches 38.5% in English versus 29.2% in French (Acfas, 2021). The gap has less to do with project quality than with an evaluation system insufficiently equipped to assess proposals in French.

Figure 1: An Asymmetric Circulation of Knowledge

This results in a one-way flow because scientific production in French, substantial in the social sciences, health, education, law, and management, remains largely invisible to the Anglophone community. It is neither read, cited, nor incorporated into knowledge syntheses that inform public policy. Francophone communities in minority situations, found in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba, experience the most acute version of this problem because they do not even have a regional ecosystem capable of buffering this erasure.

The territorial dimension follows the same logic because research capacity is concentrated in a handful of metropolitan hubs, where major infrastructure, critical mass, and opportunities for informal networking are located. The effects of this concentration are tangible: in small universities, nearly two-thirds of researchers report having no access to a research assistant, compared with half at large institutions (Acfas, 2021). Yet regional universities produce knowledge grounded in the territories where transitions actually unfold, whether involving resource conservation, remote communities, aging infrastructure, partnerships with First Nations, or small and medium-sized enterprises that form the country’s real economic fabric. This knowledge is not a diminished version of metropolitan science; it is an irreplaceable empirical foundation.

Figure 2: The Double Periphery

Four Operational Levers

To avoid this situation of double periphery, talented researchers understand the importance of positioning themselves in the reference position, increasingly avoiding institutions that combine geographic remoteness with linguistic minority status. This situation therefore produces a vicious circle in which advantaged hubs become even stronger at the expense of others. Such a dynamic is difficult to reverse, and it also responds to performance pressures that are pervasive in the highly competitive, internationally oriented post-secondary environment. Several levers are therefore proposed to limit the disadvantages of being in a double periphery.

Treat Translation as Research Infrastructure

Scientific translation and interpretation are currently treated as a residual expense, absorbed by research teams themselves or simply abandoned. They should be an eligible, standardized budget item in the programs of the three federal granting agencies. Acfas has, since 2021, recommended the creation of a French-language research support service and the provision of simultaneous interpretation within evaluation committees. These proposals are still awaiting a budgetary mechanism. Neural machine translation tools substantially lower the cost of the operation, but they do not eliminate the need for terminology validation by subject-matter specialists (Ertz, 2025). Automating without expert oversight would produce approximate French and establish English as the sole pivot language.

Make Networking an Eligibility Requirement Rather Than a Wish

Calls for proposals can require, for certain funding envelopes, team compositions covering at least two provinces and two linguistic communities. Cross-team research residencies lasting several weeks would allow teams to get to know one another in ways other than videoconferencing. The Quebec Circular Economy Research Network (RRECQ) of the Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) illustrates what a network organized around a mission rather than a discipline, while promoting the inclusion of regional institutions, can bring together at the provincial scale in terms of knowledge, engagement, and participation. A pan-Canadian version structured around major societal challenges (e.g., sustainable health, energy transition, responsible digital technology, food security) is therefore a feasible option.

Make Visible What We Want to See Grow

Canada does not systematically measure its interprovincial and interlinguistic co-publication rates. A public indicator, released annually and broken down by province, discipline, and language of publication, would provide granting agencies and institutions with a baseline. Correspondingly, evaluation frameworks should stop implicitly penalizing publication in French and knowledge mobilization among Francophone communities, in accordance with the principles Canada itself has endorsed for research assessment (DORA, 2013).

Start with the Next Generation

Cross-linguistic doctoral co-supervision, structured mobility for graduate students, and bilingual summer schools are the least costly and most sustainable lever. A doctoral student who has co-authored an article with a team from another province and another linguistic community is likely to do so again for decades. Collaboration habits are formed early—or not at all.

Figure 3: From Four Levers to Expected Results

Bridges, Not Declarations

A bridge is a complete infrastructure that requires budget lines, eligibility criteria, and monitoring indicators, beyond statements of intent. Canada nevertheless has all the elements required to do this: two scientifically productive linguistic communities, a university network distributed across the country, coordinated granting agencies, and a proven track record of research networks working on targeted themes. What is missing is neither talent nor willingness, but the institutional engineering needed to turn intentions into practices.

The initiative of the Canadian Science Policy Centre to open an editorial series in French is already one of these bridges. The remaining step is to make it a habit, and then a norm.

References

Acfas. (2021). Portrait et challenges of research in French in minority contexts in Canada: Summary report. Association francophone pour le savoir. https://www.acfas.ca/sites/default/files/documents_utiles/rapport_francophonie_sommaire_final_0.pdf

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). (2013). San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. https://sfdora.org

Ertz, M. (2025). Artificial intelligence and machine translation software for scientific publications: Toward greater visibility for French in research? Editorials, French Editorial Series Vol. 1 / Éditoriaux, Série d’éditoriaux en français Vol. 1, CPSC Magazine. https://sciencepolicy.ca/fr/posts/category/editorials/2024-canadas-innovation-strategy/

Fonds de recherche du Québec. (2023). Support from Quebec’s Chief Scientist for the Canadian Science Policy Centre. Government of Quebec.

Keywords: Pan-Canadian scientific collaboration; scientific Francophonie; regional disparities; interdisciplinarity; science policy; research mobility

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