Impact of articles written in non-alphabet languages

Nowadays, English is the lingua franca of science, and the reference lists in most English articles are dominated by other English articles. Publications in languages other than English are most often in French, Italian, Spanish, or German. The minority written languages, that is, non-alphabet languages, have often not been included in reference lists in the scientific literature. However, to accord with the "diversity, equity, and inclusion" concept, non-alphabet languages should be included and discussed. Failure to cite articles in non-alphabet or non-standard languages ignores knowledge that could be useful to both the author and the reader. We hope the present article will promote more discussion of this often-overlooked topic.