The Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences prepares an encyclopedic multi-volume publication LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD 
(original Russian title: "Jazyki mira/Языки мира").
Each volume is devoted to a particular genetic or areal group of languages. The books are published in Russian, among the authors are the leading authorities in respective languages from Russia and some other countries.
The articles in all volumes of LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD follow a standard  typologically oriented template which was specially designed for this publication. This ensures the comparability of all language descriptions throughout the encyclopedia. The description of each particular language includes:

• sociolinguistic characterization
• phonology and phonetics
• detailed, semantically based morphosyntactic characterization
• account of the peculiarities of the lexicon
• the dialect system
• relevant bibliography

The books of the series provide an in-depth linguistic description but can also be used as reference sources by historians, ethnographers, sociologists, and everyone interested in languages and language studies. Each volume contains descriptions of all ancient and modern languages of the group known to science, as well as a general article on the group as a whole. All volumes are hard-bound, except the one on Dardic and Nuristani languages. Newer volumes (those published in 1999 and later) are supplied with language maps.