Rafael - I am English. If I reviewed a submission from Tiia, from what I know of her work and response on RG,I would not be critical of her manuscript from an English-language perspective alone. I would expect the copy-editors to sort out any corrections - as I would with an English as a first language submission. Ive seen plenty of those that require more editing than those where English in not the native language. If anything, I might perhaps give 'extra credit' to someone who has tried hard to express themselves as best they can, but not in their native to tongue. I know that might sound a little subjective - but that's how I work. At the end of the day, it's the quality of the research itself that is important to me - as Rafael suggests. Slightly opposed to Tiia's experiences, if the researcher stresses the national importance of their research (especially if it is an 'emerging' research nation), then I am more inclined to favor it for its more unique perspective.

I have spent years on working on my English (I am an Estonian, and I started learning English at the age of 10; I have never lived in an English-speaking country), and now I usually do not get comments from reviewers that I should improve the language of my papers although I have not sent them to language editors before submission. So, I do not feel discriminated because of not being a native English speaker. In some cases, I have felt discrimination because of writing about my country (as it is not as 'hot' as e.g. China) or using the case study method, but that's another story.

Rafael - I am English. If I reviewed a submission from Tiia, from what I know of her work and response on RG,I would not be critical of her manuscript from an English-language perspective alone. I would expect the copy-editors to sort out any corrections - as I would with an English as a first language submission. Ive seen plenty of those that require more editing than those where English in not the native language. If anything, I might perhaps give 'extra credit' to someone who has tried hard to express themselves as best they can, but not in their native to tongue. I know that might sound a little subjective - but that's how I work. At the end of the day, it's the quality of the research itself that is important to me - as Rafael suggests. Slightly opposed to Tiia's experiences, if the researcher stresses the national importance of their research (especially if it is an 'emerging' research nation), then I am more inclined to favor it for its more unique perspective.

Actually, I had a bad experience. One of my papers had been refused and english was criticized also. Funny, because it was corrected by an English editor company before... I am not telling, that it was a discrimination, but I still find it very strange. In my opinion, the judgement on language usage could be only a matter of taste in some cases.

Academic publications have the right to define their rules of approval, no doubt; but in some cases they forget that foreign people speaks, interprets and thinks english different to them. In any case, it is more important to communicate well in our native languages first than to have a high level in handling the academic language of the dominant powers of the world that may be temporal. So tolerance and help is welcome in reviewing foreigners contributions. There are many multilingual nations in all continents and they have a similar problem inside at the regional level. I just imagine the huge problem that this represented to the empires of the pastl. This is a field quite prone to prejudism but also to mutual help to overcome those attitudes.Perhaps it would help if academic publications requested contributions in english plus a version in the original language of author, to solve any important doubt or simply as a back-file to be consulted by others in the future.

Interesting idea Emilio - on submitting two versions of the manuscript. The future consultation would be a useful exercise - particularly with some of the more universal languages i.e. Spanish. Not much use to the reviewers though - who are most likely to only understand the English version.

I think that is very difficult to publish in english jounals. For spanish people it is so difficult because we have to try to put all our ideas in a language that is not our native language. And of course, when we translate all our ideas into english they lose some sense. Spanish is a language which is spoken by more people than english,

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers)

so it is not fair to judge non-native english scientists as the native ones.

The most important thing is that we have to spend a lot of time translating all our papers into english, while the english native scientist do not have this problem, they think and write directly in english.

Otherwise, I think that some editors know these problems and of course they try to resolve it as best as they can.

Correct Fabian - what you suggest is often the case. However, at the end of the day, it is what it is and is likely to remain that way for some time to come. As an academic, I can only think myself lucky that English is my native language - and that England is my native homeland which seems a double bonus as there is a lo of focus in English schools on grammatical construction etc.

It seems, the matter is not actually related to one's being an Englishman. If an article contains linguistic errors, it must be corrected with reference to that, and for that one has to take help of others if necessary. The referee can not be blamed if the author concerned writes wrong English.

Correct Hemanta - obviously one does not have to be English to write English well - and not all English people are 'born equally'. I'm just relating it to my personal experience (lucky enough to have been schooled well) - and that it has certainly assisted me. I fully agree with the 'seeking help'. However, I have reviewed manuscripts whereby the author/s have clearly not sought help - probably because they think that their English language capability is much better than it really is.

Though it is difficult to publish in English journals, the reviewers usually tries to convert the manuscript into a sophisticated literature and there comes the actual problem of being fair and unfair.

I think authors should seek help because ''when the language is incorrect, what is said is not what is meant''. But many of us from non-English speaking countries may not have these helps easily available or the resources to seek such helps from external professional bodies. Reviewers should consider this too.

I find this topic very interesting for a number of reasons. I am a native English speaker and only work in English. I enjoy writing and I am currently studying writing so that I can better improve my writing. I need to do this to ensure that everything I write is understood by my audience in the context that I intended. What I have found with a number of my colleagues (all English speaking) is that firstly they don't enjoy or understand the writing process, secondly they struggle to express themselves, often using unnecessary over complicated and flowery language to explain concepts, and finally many don't see any importance in improving their skills in this area. If we want to publish we must ensure that what we publish is clear and easily understood by our contemporaries. To do this we all need to work on our English language skills. I really feel sorry for non-English speaking researchers trying to read and access information in English language journals. Some the language that is used is so complicated and over the top that I wonder that anyone can understand it. As for discrimination by journals - I can't answer that. What I can do is help anyone that wants help. If you would like assistance with editing before submission I will be interested in reading your work.

I agree to some extent with Rafael.

Language is an important part of expressing you ideas. Non-natives have a lot of difficulties and from the journals perspective, it is difficult to get peer review done if there is a language issue.

I suggest that similar to the editors' decision to send the manuscript for peer review, there should be a decision from the editors' end about 'free' language assistance if he/ she finds merit in research. Presently, the language assistance services are quite costly and most of us are reluctant to resort to them.

There is also an issue of authenticity if one seeks service from some vendor who is not related to a journal

@Rafael, I think it depends on the editors/editorial board of the journal. Some of those journals' editors/editorial boards are very helpful and dealing nicely with such issue, but some others will not accept your manuscript for several reasons, not only language. For example, if you are from certain countries, there are some editors who will not accept your article because of where you are from, and there reason for sure is your language because it is illegal for any editor to say "I don't trust this work just because it is from this country". We have faced this problem once. Several years ago, my colleague had a manuscript that he submitted to a European-English journal. They rejected it initially because of the language issue. Then, he send it to at least 5 professors who graduated and worked in the US for several years. They revised it and reworded some parts and put some corrections. We all agreed that the English of the manuscript is good enough to be accepted. He sent it again to the journal and received the editorial board's decision on the following day, and it was "POOR ENGLISH". For me, it seemed like they want to reject it anyway, not because of English, indeed, because he could publish the same paper in other English journal from other European country with no problem.

Anyway, my idea is your problem is not your English some times, but it is where you are from.

Cheers,

Mustafa

Adding to this conversion i would like to state that publishers might want to push non-native English scientists towards their rather expensive language editing services.

I agree, native English speakers have an advantage which should be considered by reviewers and editors. However, with the taxpayers right to access publicly funded research; I believe that researchers should publish in their native language and submit an abstract written in English. Such an approach should be encouraged for two reasons: One : They have an obligation to their communities, and two , it does not hinder poor English speakers academic performance.

Writing scientific papers in English is one of the most important way to disseminate results of your research. Thus, in the most of scientific discilines, is necessary. Writng in English abilities will be need till novel computational intelligence solutions allow for simultaneous writing (with translation) in several not known languages :)

Concerning the issue, I had colourfully varying experience. If I create a histogram of the cases I think this would more or less follow a normal distribution, meaning that the peak is approximately at acceptable criticism about the language. I also faced with remarks "improvement of English required" when a native English colleague checked it prior to submission (well, maybe somewhat superficially) to the very case when the reviewer himself/herself(*) corrected the manuscript very thoroughly (thank you! this was really great!), in some cases indicating that the original statement was not understandable.

Well, this means that if my statement is difficult to understand even for a native English person, that means, the thought behind the sentence is not delivered to the reader or it is delivered incorrectly, and consequently it *must be* corrected in any scientific text.

On the other hand when I get the remark "the authors should use either British or American English" then I really become angry. Well, I learned your language (or at least I did much effort to do so), I tried to convert my way of thinking to the terms of your language (not easy! (**)), and then I am requested to use this or that flavour (flavor, suggests my spell-checker :-))... I am happy if I can understand and express myself in English in a robust way, so this request seems to be really unfair. I am not native in English, therefore I may be wrong, but I can hardly imagine any situation *in a scientific text* that the two versions or two flavo(u)r bear different meanings that might bias the understanding of the statement or paragraph I have written in a mixed American/British English.

Once I was asked to correct a term in a manuscript by an Australian colleague what I actually had looked up previously in Collins English Dictionary. (Please do not misunderstand me, I do not mean that Australians would not speak proper English, they just have (or may have) their own terms for certain things. My only problem is that how a poor native Hungarian can figure this out?)

The other case when the review makes me angry (or makes me laugh) when the reviewer finds the English of the manuscript unsatisfying and the review itself is full with typos and mistakes... :-(

Again, I emphasize that I have seen really good practices, so this type of discrimination tendency is, fortunately, by far not general.

Thank you for your interest, kind regards, Balázs

(*)This gender issue is also very difficult for us to pay attention for, in Hungarian we do not have "he"/"she". Well, at least this is understandable, but why a ship should be "she", I will never figure out... :-)

(**) @Fabián: Believe me, Spanish language is an order of magnitude closer to English than e.g., Hungarian or Japanese (try to match the tenses :-) ) or compare that to an agglutinating language. (Cf. "I love you" in Hungarian is just one word "szeretlek" that tells literally the same, including all aspects ("I", "love", and "you") in a way that is difficult to explain to non-Hungarian speakers, because actually not any part of this word means either "I" or "you" :-) - this example is just intended to show how the way of thinking differs in these languages - that of course most of the commenting colleagues know better than me.).

Like I said earlier, though the language of expression needs to be clear, papers should be judged based on their contributions to knowledge and not on the use of English language. In the same vein, editors should suggests to publishers to provide free language aid to authors whose papers are good but may have language problems.

Dear Dean,

I think, learning any language, English for example, is an art. I had studied in a vernacular medium school till Class XII. English was one of the subjects of study fro Class IV onwards. At the college level and thereafter, the medium of instruction was English. I had learnt English Grammar at the school level only. To write an article in the English language, I have never experienced any problem. According to me, one needs to know the grammar of any language well enough, and that should help in writing anything in that language.

Agreed Hemanta - it's both an art and a discipline. Grammatical structure and construction are not always easy to master and, attempted badly, can seriously affect how a manuscript reads. Some authors 'over-complicate' these rules or mis-interpret them - thinking that the more of it there is - the more it will impress. The best rule, instead, is 'keep it simple and summarised'. Don't try to over-complicate or be too technical. Of course, on the other side of things, don't make it too simple or summarised that it cannot be understood. It's a bit of a balancing act really.

Dear All,

In my opinion "NO" they are not fair.

Many times (on submission of few of my students) they use to say English language need revisions other wise all the technical issues are perfect. Countries where native English speakers are not easily available have less chances to publish with top tier journals.

Falcon Scientific Editing will be happy to edit your abstract for FREE so that you can determine what level of language editing service you require. Then, we can provide you with a quote for the remainder of your manuscript/paper. We also offer translation, illustration, and formatting services. Feel free to contact us at [email protected].

https://falconediting.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/falcon-scientific-editing/

@Rahoul made a point. (and @Denis is spamming every post about English editing with commercials...)

The issue of having the same chances regarding English is an issue, and I think it is not only find at the "manuscript level", but also in the previous steps when submitting a manuscript. 

- authors need to understand the journal's guideline, always written in English and sometimes not really clearly defined, which can be difficult to understand for non-native speakers.

- cover letter is often considered as annoying if not written in perfect English, giving less chances for the article to be considered seriously by editors.

- editors may avoid publications from foreigners due to some previous bad experience regarding English. Worse, editors could be racist (I do not expect the % of racism among editors to be null, would you?). 

- and of course, the manuscript itself, which can be disregarded if content / figures or technique is good but not properly explained in terms of English or phrasing.

That being said, my advice as a non-native speaker is, do your best when writing English. It is unfair as it takes more time by comparison to native speakers, but what is at stake here is more important. It is about sharing science in the same language, in a way everyone can understands it.