ManyLanguages

ManyLanguages

@manylanguagesc.bsky.social

ManyLanguages is a globally distributed network of language science laboratories that coordinates data collection for democratically selected studies. http://many-languages.com account managed by @congzhang.bsky.social and @timoroettger.bsky.social

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ManyLanguages reposted

#ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth Citation practices suffer from systemic biases that can distort the academic record. Researchers often rely on a narrow canon of highly cited publications as cognitive shortcuts for identifying authoritative work, a phenomenon related to the Matthew Effect.

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- How can researchers identify relevant work beyond the most highly cited papers? - What practical steps can we take to encourage more inclusive and representative citation practices?

#ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth Citation practices suffer from systemic biases that can distort the academic record. Researchers often rely on a narrow canon of highly cited publications as cognitive shortcuts for identifying authoritative work, a phenomenon related to the Matthew Effect.

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As a consequence, important work by women, early-career researchers, scholars from the Global South, and other underrepresented groups may receive less visibility than it deserves.

#ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth Citation practices suffer from systemic biases that can distort the academic record. Researchers often rely on a narrow canon of highly cited publications as cognitive shortcuts for identifying authoritative work, a phenomenon related to the Matthew Effect.

For this month’s #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth, we’re turning our attention to the big picture: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲? We’d love to hear what you see as the most pressing or exciting open questions in the field.

ManyLanguages reposted

Daniel's useful take on alternatives to the OSF for data storage. We at @manylanguagesc.bsky.social will also pivot to a combination of Github and Zenodo.

Daniel Lakens@lakens.bsky.social

New Blog post: Which Data Repository Should you Use? In light of OSF closing down, I compare Zenodo, Dataverse, ResearchBox, PsychArchive, and local repositories on six important dimensions. If you want to know which to pick: It depends! daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/08/whic...

- What is the ethics approval process like in your country - Do you have an ethics board at university level, faculty level, national level, or something else - How long does it usually take to obtain approval for studies involving human participants - Are there particular challenges or bottlenecks

- What is the biggest challenge in your experience when it comes to managing a project in academia - If you’re not in academia, have you worked with academics - How do you think about their management styles - What strategies have you seen that actually work #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth#

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Whether you’re running online experiments, lab‑based studies, or fieldwork, recruitment patterns often shift dramatically during long breaks. For some teams, summer holidays mean fewer students on campus; for others, winter holidays mean participants are travelling, busy, or simply less available.

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We also wonder abt potential disadvantages: -Are there cultural concerns or cross‑community differences in how gamified tasks are perceived -Are some gamified elements more acceptable than others -How do we ensure that gamification enhances, rather than distracts from, the scientific goals

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The gamification methods can include, but are not limited to:  -multi‑platform interface for inclusive and easy access -more engaging user interfaces -interactive task elements -clear progress indicators -point systems and leaderboards -rewards or achievement structures

ManyLanguages reposted

representativeness is a big issue for BTS. our argument is backed by a new study, from Cindel White & @michael.muthukrishna.com: "more highly educated ppl are significantly more culturally similar to WEIRD countries, such as the Anglosphere and Western Europe." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comHigher education predicts global cultural similarity to WEIRD countries - Nature CommunicationsPsychology studies are becoming more global, yet often rely on highly educated participants. The authors find, across 95 countries, that higher education predicts cultural similarity to WEIRD societie...
Sakshi Ghai@sakshighai.bsky.social

Do big team science studies guarantee the global generalizability of findings? At the risk of not overgeneralizing ourselves, we reanalysed one big team science study on temporal discounting. Together with peerless @psforscher.bsky.social & @hcp4715.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

2️⃣ Scaling Projects Without Direct Access to Target Populations thread #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth

ManyLanguages@manylanguagesc.bsky.social

2️⃣ Scaling Projects Without Direct Access to Target Populations: ManyLanguages, like other Big Team Science initiatives, aims to collect data from a wide range of populations to build findings that genuinely reflect human diversity.

1️⃣ Recruiting and Incentivising Adult Participants Across Contexts thread #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth

ManyLanguages@manylanguagesc.bsky.social

1️⃣ Recruiting and Incentivising Adult Participants Across Contexts: The CLAPS team has been reflecting on how researchers around the world recruit and incentivise adult participants for longer studies.

This month, we’re highlighting two interconnected #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth challenges that sit at the heart of scaling ManyLanguages projects across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

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This raises important questions: - How do we meaningfully reach colleagues and communities in the Global South? - What strategies have worked for building collaborations where institutional access is limited?

- How can we incentivise participation fairly and uniformly across populations with different resources and constraints? - Are there models of partnership, training, or resource‑sharing that could help level the playing field?

This month, we’re highlighting two interconnected #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth challenges that sit at the heart of scaling ManyLanguages projects across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

2️⃣ Scaling Projects Without Direct Access to Target Populations: ManyLanguages, like other Big Team Science initiatives, aims to collect data from a wide range of populations to build findings that genuinely reflect human diversity.

This month, we’re highlighting two interconnected #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth challenges that sit at the heart of scaling ManyLanguages projects across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

View full thread

- Is a 40‑minute study simply too long to ask volunteers to complete as a favour? - If we split the study into two counterbalanced 20‑minute halves, would volunteers be more willing to participate without compensation?

This month, we’re highlighting two interconnected #ManyLanguagesChallengeOfTheMonth challenges that sit at the heart of scaling ManyLanguages projects across diverse linguistic and cultural contexts.

1️⃣ Recruiting and Incentivising Adult Participants Across Contexts: The CLAPS team has been reflecting on how researchers around the world recruit and incentivise adult participants for longer studies.

Our current study takes around 40 minutes, for which we have been paying participants approximately $10, and in some cases offering course credit. But we recognise that these options may not be feasible for all language teams globally.

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Analysis: the latter really requires ordinal models, which can be computationally intensive. Theory: is the notion of grammatical acceptability really continuous (can one sentence be “twice as grammatical” as another?) or is it really underlyingly ordinal (are we implicitly “ranking” sentences?)

We’d love to hear your experiences: - What scales have you used in your own projects? - Did the choice affect data quality, participant behaviour, or analysis pipelines? - Have you found clever ways to balance theoretical nuance with practical constraints?

A recurring question in large-scale syntax projects is whether to use a continuous scale or a 7‑point Likert scale and what that means for both the statistical analysis and the underlying theory.