Aim <p>This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of scientific publications addressing the study of zoonoses in languages other than English worldwide.</p> Subject and methods <p>A systematic review was conducted in the Web of Science (WoS) database using a combination of terms (“zoonos* OR zoonotic”) in the title, abstract, and keywords, as well as the filters provided by WoS (document type, publication year, and language).</p> Results <p>Our results evidenced a relevant proportion of articles (9.5%; 8299/87,560) evaluating zoonoses in non-English languages, most of them distributed in Europe (44.6%), America (36.0%), and Asia (11.4%), and in 131 research areas, mainly “infectious diseases” (14.6%) and “veterinary sciences” (12.4%). Regarding the organisms evaluated in each publication, many of them were metazoan animals (86.8%), followed by protozoa (12.5%) and microsporidian fungi (0.7%). Most publications were published in non-JCR (Journal Citation Reports)-indexed journals (54.6%), which generally had low impact factors (mean: 0.87).</p> Conclusion <p>This systematic review highlights the vast proportion of articles evaluating the study of zoonoses in non-English languages for decades. Our findings suggest a restricted impact of the evaluated articles in the scientific community. Limiting the international diffusion of scientific knowledge could have an unpredictable impact on the prevention, monitoring, and control of zoonoses at a large scale, particularly considering that zoonosis hotspots are usually located in non-English speaking regions.</p>