Measuring Research Progress and Linguistic Inclusion in Low-Resource Languages
arXiv:2610.30296v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) have accelerated research on low-resource and multilingual NLP, but their effectiveness in creating an equitable landscape remains unmapped. We analyze 1,158 peer-reviewed open-access papers published between 2020 and 2025, examining research attention to low-resource languages (LRLs) and representation across language and speaker populations. To assess linguistic inclusion beyond publication counts, we introduce the Linguistic Inclusion Framework (LIF), a multidimensional framework that measures linguistic inclusion in four dimensions: research growth, representation expansion, representation continuity, and distributional equity. While annual publications grew from 52 to 415, a 5.4X increase in their ACL Antholo
