The linguistic and cultural particularism of entities known as “minorities” in access and exchange of the Scientific and Technical Information (STI) on the world networks gradually takes an important place in the R&D orientations and in the standardization efforts of contents, services and information systems. This is observed through progressive tending of standardization actors and end users of IST to solutions more adapted to their cultural and linguistic profiles. A particular accent is given in this document to the concept of the multilingual semantic networks built on the basis of multilingual and multicultural metadata, terminologies and ontologies. The principal questioning is around the linguistic and cultural alternatives offered, and of the roles of the entities known as “minorities” to benefit from it.
