English is overshadowing Dutch as a scientific language. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) regret that and advocates bilingual science in an advice to the Education Secretary.
Scientistst should choose their working language on the grounds of the subject and the context in which they operate. That also serves the national interest: when scientists no longer publish in their mother tongue the language becomes impoverished.
A change to the system charting the number of publications for each scientist could be an incentive to (also) publish in Dutch. The present system only records publications in English. The committee feels that a bilingual scientific climate requires a different evaluation, as not only language determines relevance and quality of research.
