Disadvantages of writing, reading, publishing and presenting scientific papers caused by the dominance of the English language in science: The case of Colombian PhD in biological sciences

Abstract

The success of a scientist depends on their production of scientific papers and the impact factor of the journal in which they publish. Because most major scientific journals are published in English, success is related to publishing in this language. Currently, 98% of publications in science are written in English, including researchers from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) countries. Colombia is among the countries with the lowest English proficiency in the world. Thus, understanding the disadvantages that Colombians face in publishing is crucial to reducing global inequality in science. This paper quantifies the disadvantages that result from the language hegemony in scientific publishing by examining the additional costs that communicating in English creates in the production of articles. It was identified that more than 90% of the scientific articles published by Colombian researchers are in English, and that publishing in a second language creates additional financial costs to Colombian doctoral students and results in problems with reading comprehension, writing ease and time, and anxiety. Rejection or revision of their articles because of the English grammar was reported by 43.5% of the doctoral students, and 33% elected not to attend international conferences and meetings due to the mandatory use of English in oral presentations. Finally, among the translation/editing services reviewed, the cost per article is between one-quarter and one-half of a doctoral monthly salary in Colombia. Of particular note, we identified a positive correlation between English proficiency and higher socioeconomic origin of the researcher. Overall, this study exhibits the negative consequences of hegemony of English that preserves the global gap in science. Although having a common language is important for science communication, generating multilinguistic alternatives would promote diversity while conserving a communication channel. Such an effort should come from different actors and should not fall solely on EFL researchers.

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“…LILACS and MEDLINE are North and Latin America based systems, and it may result in a narrow assessment of literature, here represented by a US publication bias, even using five languages Thesaurus operators in the search string. Another possibility for the here presented US bias is the supposed problem for non native English speakers to be accepted by international journals, and publishing restriction for scientific developments made by non-English speaking researchers, limits them to local journals, not included in that databases [76,77]. US have also been the cradle both of HTI and computer development, and only recently (in a historical perspective) software industry became relevant in other countries.…”

How international doctoral students’ fields of study, proficiency in English and gender interact with their sense of making progress in English academic writing abilities

“…An additional finding underscores that higher proficiency in the target language (RQ 5) correlates positively with an increased sense of confidence in the students' capacity to compose academic texts in English. Notably, English language proficiency emerged as a pivotal factor that consistently underpins doctoral students' academic achievement in numerous prior studies, particularly in instances where English serves as the medium in international scholarly communication [98][99][100][101][102][103].…”

Culturally diverse expert teams have yet to bring comprehensive linguistic diversity to intergovernmental ecosystem assessments

“…28 Furthermore, scientific discovery and its application can be slowed for non-Anglophones due to the linguistic burden of publishing in English. [29][30][31] People in countries where English is not widely spoken are less likely to read and publish ecological research in English-language journals, 32,33 which in turn can deepen global-level inequities around the access to science and implementation of sustainability actions.…”