Prestigious journals make it hard for scientists who don’t speak English to get published. And we all lose out

Fri, 19 Apr 2024 19:17:36 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/prestigious-journals-make-it-hard-for-scientists-who-dont-speak-english-to-get-published-and-we-all-lose-out-226225>

"For the first time in history, a single language dominates global scientific
communication. But the actual production of knowledge continues to be a
multilingual enterprise.

The use of English as the norm poses challenges for scholars from regions where
English is not widely spoken. They must decide whether to publish in English
for global visibility, or publish in their native language to make their work
accessible to local communities. And when they work in English, they end up
expending more time and effort writing and revising papers than their native
English-speaking peers.

As gatekeepers of scientific knowledge, academic publishers play a key role in
helping or hindering the participation of a multilingual scientific community.
So how are they doing?

We reviewed the policies of 736 journals in the biological sciences and
discovered the great majority are making only minimal efforts to overcome
language barriers in academic publishing. Our research is published in
Proceedings of the Royal Society B."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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