OASIS (Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies)

OASIS makes research into language related topics openly available and easily accessible to anyone who might be interested, because 1) research shows these findings do not reach stakeholders easily; and 2) research shows that academic publications are increasingly more difficult to read and understand for people outside the field. By establishing a culture of systematic production and dissemination of non-technical, open summaries, research is made available and accessible not only physically, but also conceptually to people outside academia.

OASIS hosts summaries on a wide range of areas such as language learning, language teaching, multilingualism, language policy, language and social justice, as well all branches of linguistics. The summaries provide information about the study’s goals, how it was conducted, and what was found, and are written in non-technical language. Where relevant, they may highlight findings that could be of interest to practitioners or policy-makers. There are also many summaries of research that is purely theoretical /fundamental.
The summaries are usually written by the author(s) of the original journal article. A number of others are written by others and then the author(s) of the original article edit and approve them.

All summaries are of articles that have been published in peer-reviewed journals that are listed—at the time the summary is uploaded to OASIS—on an internationally recognised citation index, including the Social Science Citation Index, the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, or the Science Citation Index Expanded.

Project activities include coordinating this international community effort, revising the metadata to ensure it reflects the areas of research and the participants, and providing an intuitive and highly searchable interface for uploading and finding summaries.