English dominates international exchanges and even more so scientific communication. So carrying out research activities – reading and writing an article, attending conferences or presenting their work – can become difficult for researchers who are not native speakers of English.
These disparities linked to the language barrier have not previously been measured. Researchers from the University of Queensland (Australia) and California (USA), its results Published on July 18 in the magazine PLOS BiologyTherefore, the amount of effort required to perform scientific tasks by native English speakers and non-native English speakers was compared. “No matter how good one is at English, native speakers are always one step ahead in research”Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, professor of information and communication sciences at Claude-Bernard-Lyon-I University and specialist in scientific publishing, notes.
To assess these gaps, the study’s authors conducted a survey of 908 environmental science researchers from eight countries (Bangladesh, Bolivia, Nepal, Nigeria, Ukraine, Spain, Japan, and Britain) selected for disparities in economic and English proficiency levels. “We used these two criteria to distinguish the effects of language barriers from economic effects.”Mention the authors.
An increasingly competitive industry
Participants were asked to calculate the effort required to perform their various daily scientific activities. On average, a researcher with a native language other than English spends 46.6% more time reading an article if their English is average, and 90.8% more time if their level is poor. It also takes more time to write. “We can clearly see that we waste a lot of time when we are not born in English.”Vincent Larivière, professor of information science at the University of Montreal, notes.
After all, non-English-speaking researchers are 2.6 times more likely to have their paper rejected by scientific journals for language-related reasons. A serious drawback in this increasingly competitive industry: “We are in a race to launch environmentChérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri explains. So these imbalances can have significant effects on a career. »
Beyond the barrier to publication, lack of proficiency in English can also be a barrier to integrating the scientific community. For this reason, it is very common for non-English speaking researchers to refuse to participate in or lead conferences, especially early in their careers. “If we don’t master English, we miss out on joining the international community, so we work with it”, the researcher notes. These difficulties can prompt young researchers to abandon their careers prematurely.
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