The linguistic elephant in scientific publishing

Abstract

Scientific publishing is dominated by English-language journals. Whether the dominance of English in academia reflects inequity—unfairness, bias, discrimination, or injustice—has long been debated. This debate, however, conflates two interrelated yet distinct notions: linguistic inequality and linguistic injustice. Whereas linguistic inequality concerns the unequal distribution of linguistic capital between native (L1) and non-native (non-L1) researchers, linguistic injustice involves the systematic marginalization of non-English research and researchers. Evidence for one does not necessarily imply evidence for the other. Under this framework, we synthesize diverse evidence from multiple disciplines, revealing not only ingrained linguistic inequality but also widespread linguistic injustice, each with distinct manifestations. Addressing linguistic inequity thus requires a targeted, two-pronged approach: reducing linguistic inequality by empowering researchers; and dismantling linguistic injustice through multi-level efforts.