ManyLanguages Platform Documentation
Erin M. Buchanan 
1 Preface
The ManyLanguages Platform was developed as part of a large-scale, grant-funded initiative to support multilingual semantic research across diverse linguistic and cultural communities. The core goal of the project is to enable transparent, reproducible, and scalable data collection across many languages, while preserving methodological consistency and local flexibility.
At its heart, the grant supports the development of infrastructure for:
- Coordinating cross-linguistic data collection
- Managing multilingual stimulus sets and study versions
- Supporting researcher and participant workflows
- Delivering participant feedback
- Harmonizing data across sites and languages
- Integrating computational models with human data
To accomplish this, we built a modular experiment management architecture that integrates a study backend (JATOS), a researcher dashboard, participant-facing interfaces, and structured data workflows.
While this platform was initially designed to support multilingual lexical-semantic research, the architecture is intentionally generalizable. The system can be used for:
- Behavioral experiments
- Survey-based research
- Norming studies
- Longitudinal tracking
- Cognitive tasks
- Multi-site collaborations
- Educational or intervention studies
In other words, the ManyLanguages Platform is not limited to a single scientific domain. It is a flexible experiment management infrastructure that can support a wide range of research programs requiring coordinated study deployment, participant management, and reproducible data pipelines.
This documentation site provides technical guidance for researchers who wish to:
- Develop studies using JATOS
- Deploy studies through the platform
- Manage participants and researcher accounts
- Structure and harmonize data
- Contribute to ongoing platform development
Our broader commitment is to open science: transparency, reproducibility, cross-cultural collaboration, and infrastructure that lowers barriers to participation in global research.
We hope this platform serves not only the goals of the original grant, but also the broader scientific community.