Canadian publisher opens French-language science collection on Érudit

Canadian Science Publishing has launched Avancées francophones en sciences et en génie, a French-language collection that makes 14 previously published scientific articles freely available on the Érudit platform. The articles originate from eight of the nine journals participating in the initiative, while future submissions will be invited through French-language calls for papers from all nine titles. The collection is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec and is available without charge to both readers and authors under a Diamond Open Access model.

Rather than introducing a single new scientific study, the launch creates a multilingual publishing and dissemination channel for peer-reviewed articles across the participating journals. The collection is presented as an extension of Canadian Science Publishing’s commitment to making scientific knowledge discoverable, understandable and usable. It provides a recognized setting in which researchers can publish in French within established journals and makes the resulting work available through a Canadian scholarly platform.

The release says the initiative is intended to strengthen the creation, dissemination and mobilization of scientific knowledge in French, enhance access to research and contribute to a publishing system more reflective of Canada’s linguistic diversity. These are the stated aims of the program; the announcement does not report measured changes in readership, citations, research participation or knowledge use. Although the collection’s broader publishing program includes all nine journals, not every journal contributed an article to the initial set.

The release identifies forestry, Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity among the subjects represented. It does not provide enough information about the methods, results or limitations of the individual articles to support scientific conclusions about those subjects, so the collection should not be read as a single coordinated study or as evidence for a particular policy, environmental or biological outcome. Among the researchers named in the announcement are Yves Bergeron, Annie Claude Bélisle and Fanie Pelletier.

Pelletier, a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke and chair of the collection, said the project responds to a publishing responsibility that researchers may sometimes overlook when international visibility is a major factor in evaluating research and academic careers in the natural sciences and engineering. She said the collection is intended to show that researchers do not have to choose between scientific excellence and publishing in French. “On the contrary, the two reinforce one another,” Pelletier said.

The statement expresses the collection’s editorial rationale rather than a quantified finding about the relationship between language and scientific quality. Future publications will be developed through French-language calls for papers issued separately by each of the nine participating journals. Manuscripts will undergo the journals’ established peer-review process, and submissions are to be assessed by French-speaking members of each journal’s editorial board.

This arrangement places the collection within the editorial structure of the established journals rather than creating a separate review system. It is intended to retain the credibility, visibility and editorial oversight associated with those journals while allowing French-language research to enter the collection. The announcement does not compare acceptance rates, review times, article quality or other outcomes between French-language submissions and other submissions to the participating titles.

Funding comes from the Fonds de recherche du Québec through grant number 378188, awarded to Pelletier. The support is tied to the operation of the collection and its Diamond Open Access delivery on Érudit. In the arrangement described by Canadian Science Publishing, articles are freely available to readers, and the collection also does not impose charges on authors. Érudit serves as the hosting and dissemination platform for the selected articles, while the participating journals supply their established editorial and peer-review infrastructure.

The release does not provide a cost analysis comparing this model with subscription publishing or other open-access arrangements, nor does it report how many people accessed the collection during its launch period. The initiative enters a Canadian environment in which the creation and dissemination of scientific information in French has received renewed attention. Canadian Science Publishing points to work by the External Advisory Group on the Creation and Dissemination of Scientific Information in French, established under the federal government’s Action Plan for Official Languages 2023–2028, and to evolving government priorities related to linguistic equity.

In this context, the collection is described as part of a broader, longer-term effort to strengthen Canada’s capacity to create and share scientific knowledge in French. The launch notice is a business and publishing announcement rather than an academic evaluation, and it supplies no before-and-after measurements of participation, readership, knowledge mobilization or the volume of French-language scientific publishing. The program’s approach links multilingual communication with public access.

Canadian Science Publishing argues that scientific knowledge can be created, published and mobilized in more than one language, allowing it to reach researchers, decision-makers, professionals, students and communities that rely on it. The specific collection responds to that objective by combining French-language publication, established journal review and free availability on Érudit. Its access model may broaden where the work can be discovered and used, but the release does not establish which communities have accessed the articles, how they have used them or what effects the collection has had.

The documented features are the availability of 14 articles at launch, the participation of nine journals, the planned French-language calls for papers and the use of French-speaking editorial-board members in assessment. Josephine Sciortino, senior director of editorial at Canadian Science Publishing, said the collection extends the publisher’s long-standing commitment to scientific knowledge and broadens the perspectives represented in the scholarly record. “By publishing scientific knowledge in French, we are not only making research more accessible—we are also enriching the diversity of scientific perspectives and strengthening the connections between research and the communities it serves,” Sciortino said.

The statement describes the publisher’s intended contribution through the initiative. The announcement provides no evaluation protocol, control group or assessment design with which to test that proposition, and it offers no data demonstrating a shift in scientific perspectives, community use or the development of French-language research communities. For researchers and readers, the immediate result is a free-to-access collection of previously published articles on Érudit and a defined route for submitting French-language manuscripts through nine established journals.

The initial content covers subjects including forestry, Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity, but its scientific findings remain those of the individual articles rather than a shared conclusion from the collection as a whole. The inaugural collection can be reached through Canadian Science Publishing’s French-language access page, and readers may also register for notices about future calls for papers, new publications and updates related to Avancées francophones en sciences et en génie.

Subject of Research: A French-language Diamond Open Access collection for publishing and disseminating peer-reviewed science in Canada.

Article Title: Canadian Science Publishing launches Avancées francophones en sciences et en génie, a new collection of French-language scientific articles

Article References: Canadian Science Publishing launches Avancées francophones en sciences et en génie, a new collection of French-language scientific articles. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

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Keywords: French-language publishing, open access, Érudit, Canadian Science Publishing, Fonds de recherche du Québec, scholarly communication, scientific publishing, linguistic diversity, peer review, research dissemination, Canadian, Science