English is contemporary Latin. Therefore, should we all abandon our mother tongues in order to reach the largest possible audience?
Nobody has to abandon their mother tongue to publish scholarly articles. One would be wise to learn English as a second language and write papers in that language in order to reach the largest possible audience. However, scholarly articles are not widely read outside of small academic circles, and these will in no way result in the extinction of smaller languages. The internet, movies, music, and popular culture, might pose a threat, as might the outbreak of World War III, but academic articles won't.
Albert Einstein's four most famous works, the Annus Mirabilis papers, were all published in German and fundamentally changed the way scientists think about physics. Nonetheless, almost nobody outside of a few Central European countries speaks German, and due to political upheavals in Europe occurring after Einstein's contribution, today even fewer people per capita speak German than they did at the beginning of the 20th Century.
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