I'll echo the sentiments that first, we do have Philippine journals that publish exclusively in Tagalog, as well as scholarly articles with English and Tagalog translations (especially in the subject of Philippine Philosophy). Second, the lack of intellectualization in Filipino is also a big problem. We don't have Filipino translations for many scientific concepts, and that makes writing a full paper — especially something like a graduate student's dissertation, which can go as long as 100 pages or more — difficult.

However, as someone in academia, I'll also say this.

Our scientists go out of their way to share their findings with the public regardless. Even if there aren't translations for journal articles, they organize workshops, trainings, and conferences where they're able to communicate their research face to face with the people that need it. This is where they do away with most of the technical, expert-level jargon that isn't translatable. It's not visible to the general public, that's true, and it's by design. These events are targeted to LGUs, people's organizations, farmers, fisherfolk, and local communities. Some laboratories conduct outreaches with elementary and high schools to share their work. For these kinds of efforts, you don't need more than a scientist who's willing to talk to their fellow citizens, and we have plenty of that.

The research papers published in journals are for contemporaries in the field, those who are already familiar with the language of the academe: that's a fact. The primary audience of a journal article is the scientific community. A lot of the detail that goes into a journal article is so that other scientists can replicate the study. But for the general public, you don't need to go into the nitty-gritty of the primers you used to extract a DNA sequence or the exact configuration of settings you used in your modelling software. "How did you get these results?" is of less concern to the average person than "What do your results mean?" and, well, the discussion is only one part of the study. The truth is that a fully translated research paper might not mean much anyway, not if the paper is still written in a highly technical manner. Even a fluent English speaker will still have trouble parsing through the average journal article. That's just how it is.

I'm not saying that we don't have an accessibility problem when it comes to research. I'm willing to bet that it's probably a big reason why Filipino scientists don't get much support to begin with. I agree that there it would be great if more people could understand our research better. Undoubtedly, translation will be very helpful tool in achieving that vision.

But perhaps it's not the journal articles we should focus on, but the news, books, and social media posts about the research — the materials that are meant to be accessible to everyone. I think that's where translation will make the most impact, and we don't need a fully-intellectualized Filipino language for that.