Scientific periodicals in the languages of Russia’s peoples: history, present state, and development outlook

The use of language as a means of producing scientific knowledge is a key issue in the journal’s editorial policy. It determines the publication’s readership, the range of authors, its scientometric indicators, and its overall success and authority in the scientific community. In Russia, this issue is perceived through the prism of English and Russian. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation is a multilingual country. Whether the languages of the country’s peoples are the languages of science, including in scientific periodicals, is an issue that has not yet been the subject of a dedicated analysis. The author of this article seeks to describe the state of scientific periodicals in the languages of the peoples of Russia and the challenges to its development. A survey of the Scientific Electronic Library platform (eLIBRARY.RU) revealed 19 Russian journals that actually use national languages in publishing articles. They specialize in philology, pedagogy, and history. In the Russian Federation, there are laws addressing the use of national languages in scientif- ic editorial work. The article concludes with evidence supporting the use of the languages of the peoples of Russia in Russian scientific periodicals. Such niche, thematic publications enrich scholarly knowledge with unique research areas on the country’s history and its peoples. Non-Russian languages often become the only means for presenting research results in the form of scholarly articles. This is because it is often more logical to describe sources written in non-Russian languages in the original language of the source material, especially since translation can be quite difficult due to the lack of adequate vocabulary in Rus - sian. National scientific periodicals fulfill a special mission in expanding the readership of Russian science in countries whose populations share a common language family. They contribute to the preservation of Russia’s linguistic and cultural heritage.