2023-08-16 03:30:11
THE WORLD
English dominates international exchanges and a fortiori scientific communication. As a result, conducting research activities – reading and writing an article, attending conferences or even presenting one’s work – can become difficult for researchers who do not have English as their mother tongue.
These inequalities linked to the language barrier were not previously quantified. Researchers from the University of Queensland (Australia) and California (United States), whose results were published on July 18 in the journal PLOS Biologythus compared the amount of effort required to carry out scientific activities of native English speakers and those of others. “As good as one can be in English, those whose mother tongue it is will always be one step ahead in research”observes Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, professor of information and communication sciences at the University Claude-Bernard-Lyon-I and specialist in scientific publication.
To assess these disadvantages, the study authors conducted a survey of 908 environmental science researchers of eight nationalities (Bangladeshi, Bolivian, Nepalese, Nigerian, Ukrainian, Spanish, Japanese and British), chosen for their disparities economic and English proficiency levels. “We used these two criteria to distinguish the effects of language barriers from economic effects”say the authors.
An increasingly competitive sector
Participants had to quantify the effort required to carry out their various daily scientific activities. On average, a researcher with a mother tongue other than English spends 46.6% more time reading an article if his level of English is average, and 90.8% if his level is low. Writing also takes more time. “We can see that we waste a lot of time when we are not born English-speaking”points out Vincent Larivière, professor of information sciences at the University of Montreal.
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Above all, non-English-speaking researchers are 2.6 times more likely to have their article rejected by scientific journals for language-related reasons. A serious disadvantage in this increasingly competitive sector: “We are in a context of a race for publicationexplains Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri. So these inequalities can have significant consequences on a career. »
Beyond the barrier to publication, the lack of command of English can also be an obstacle to integrating the scientific community. Renouncing for this reason to participate in conferences or to animate them is quite common for non-English-speaking researchers, particularly at the start of their career. “If you don’t speak English, you give up joining the international community, and therefore working with it”, says the researcher. These difficulties can push young researchers to abandon their careers early.
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