There is no certain percentage in Libya

Best Regards Alejandro Bortolus

Yes Dear Alejandro, that's true. very little percentage (in my country) who reads an English research. I've noticed that through the RG. Vast majority who reads my publications are from other countries. however, we have to continue writing in English in order to share our ideas and publications throughout the world.

 Many many thanks Jeanan! Thanks for sharing your experience. But, please, don’t let me down here. Please let me know from your personal experience (I know nobody has precise surveys for this) your best guess on my “double question”: what’s the approximate percentage getting your publications in English (when you say “little” you mean 50%? 20%? 10%? less?), and also do you think they (that little percentage) are the best local recipients you had in mind for your ideas? (please check my original questions above).

Alejandro -- I am a native speaker of English, so of course my answer to your question is that my publications are accessible to people in my country.

You question MAY be viewed in terms of the "exceptionalism" of English-speaking countries.  

But I think that it is better viewed in terms of how many people speak English as a first, second, or foreign language.  

Actually, the largest audience for my scholarly work is NOT in countries where English is spoken as a native language.  The authors of papers which cite mine are often Chinese and Arabic speakers.  But proper translation requires translators who are fully fluent in both languages being translated, and even then nuances of meaning may be lost (machine translation is totally inadequate).

I can see no practical way today to publish papers in multiple languages.

Dear Alejandro,

Through the weekly follow on who reads my work in the RG...I rarely found no one from my country (Jordan)... and I'm happy this week to see 3 of total 18 readers are from the Arab region... while the rest, Irrespective of 2, of the other readers do not use English as a mother tongue... In an optimistic view I think it works and take place all over the world but not yet through the local region.

Research papers written in English have more worldwide exposure than those written in any other language but if I have to say what percentage of people in my country (we are not native speakers of English) would be referring to stuffs written in English, then certainly the percentage is going to be  very small (If I have to take the whole population into account)! If I have to consider only the scientific  research community , then the percentage is probably more than 80 to 90%, as I have not yet seen any scientific research paper written in any language other than English in India !

Dear Alejandro:

En la  Universidad Nacional mayor de San Marcos, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, los profesores mayormente publicamos en español, nuestra lengua materna.

Mayormente las publicaciones de nuestra especialidad están en inglés y no tenemos mayor problema porque podemos leerlas con facilidad, si bien no hablamos inglés.

Best regards,

Carlos

English is not my native language because I live in Poland, however, most papers that I use for students are written in English. Also without my papers published in English or written by me in English my students will be unable to write good Master's theses and they will be unable to catch a good direction in mathematics. However, my students need my help to translate these papers into Polish. Surprisingly, most other professors in Poland ignore my papers and do not find it necessary to publish them. They simply reject them, making harm to me and to my students.  Their unprofessional unfriedliness makes my work more difficult because I must deliver my papers to each of my students individually. If they were printed in a journal, it would be easier for my students to find the papers.  I am given no help from Polish professors, This is why I am sure that  their ignorance and unfriedliness is terribly ignoble. Most of their comments sent to me are simply stupid and, although I stil like good mathematics, I dislike most mathematicians, especially I dislike  the ones responsible for publishing papers,

Hola everybody. I´m back from teaching out of town. I took the liberty of checking out your publications in RG (number and discipline) in order to explore disciplinary differences.

Priyadarsini Mishra,

Thanks a lot. Interesting answer. So you say that, in your country, scientists are the recipients of scientific articles written in English, and that most/all scientific papers are written in English. So, virtually only scientists read science articles in India. That takes us to my 2nd Q, which was directed to find out whether you consider if those readers are the best recipients possible. Of course, we know some disciplines are different than others (don’ ttake it wrong but I presume people may tend to get more involved in environmental conservation than in modeling mathematics, theoretical physics or , for instance). But your answer also makes me think that cultural and idiosyncratic differences among countries worldwide add a deep complexity to the problem I presented here.   As Wolfgang F. Schwarz implies, differences among disciplines are likely to make the difference in our analysis of this problem.    

Jeanan Shafiq ·

Thank you so much again, this time for making your answer more accurate. Your case is interesting and surprising at the same time because (as some of the other respondents also say) your English articles are being read outside your country but in countries that use other languages than English.  Nevertheless, please note that my Qs were directed to find out the % of your country fellows reading your English articles in your country AND if you think they are the best recipients possible or not. Unlike Stoica and Marek, your country does not use English as official language. I wonder if the fact that most of your English articles are read in other countries is related to the topics you publish more than to the fact that people in Jordan don’t use English.  

George Stoica 

Thank you so much for answering. Your RG reeds for last week shows:  USA (7), Colombia (6), Cuba(5), Canada (4), Vietnam (3), Italy (3) and UK (2)

Indeed, it is very interesting that 3 of these top-5 countries do not use English as first language. I wonder if the topics you publish about are more related to those 3 countries. This is fascinating. However, the fact that you live in a country where English is one of the official languages, introduces noise into the analysis of my problem. This problem is about scientists publishing mostly in English while living in countries where local people do not speak English.  Specifically when the research we do affect, for instance, local environments and/or people’s health.

Michael W. Marek 

Hola and thank you very much for your opinión. I actually agree with you about “I can see no practical way today to publish papers in multiple languages.” Me neither.  That´s why I am ok about the current use of English as an international working language.

Wolfgang F. Schwarz   

 Thank you so much for sharing your RG question! I will look into it. I agree that Humanities and Social and Cultural Sciences may follow different “rules” than Biological Sciences for instance.

Carlos Paredes

ESPAÑOL: Muy agradecido por tu opinión. Ojalá más países tuvieran esa determinación. Sin embargo, el uso de una “lengua franca o de trabajo” es necesario cuando uno pretende integrar su trabajo con el de colegas de otras naciones con culturas, idiomas y estructuras de pensamiento diferentes a las propias. El misterio (o desafío) sigue siendo hallar el balance ideal  que no interfiera con la comunicación/transferencia de nuestra investigación entre nuestra propia población.  

ENGLISH: I wish more countries had that determination. However, the use of a "lingua franca or working language" is necessary when one seeks or intends to integrate one's work with colleagues from other nations with different cultures, different languages and different structures of thoughts. The mystery (or challenge) remains in finding the ideal balance that would not interfere with the communication of our research to our own population.

Eliza Wajch

Thank you for sharing your experience. You case shows, once more, the multiple outcomes that this problem may have. Very interesting indeed.  

ALL:

I thank you so much for answering my call. I can see now I was simplifying the problem to an extreme. As usual, the context in which we analyze this problem (different disciplines, cultures, socio-economic priorities, etc) may change completely our conclusions. More opinions and experiences will be greatly appreciated.

Abrazos, Alejandro

Dear all,

In Humanities and Social Sciences, Russians use the Russian language (approximately in 80-90% cases). The Russians dislike read papers in English. So if I want to have a voice in my country I should translate paper even it was published in English

Thank you very much Mariia Rubtcova. This is an interesting point. It always seems like Humanities and Social Sciences tend to publish more in local languages (even in those cases where they also publish in English, like you). I am not surprise about your answer since it is easy to find this kind of information in internet: https://www.researchtrends.com/issue-31-november-2012/the-language-of-future-scientific-communication/

There you will see the increment in the use of English, but the relatively lower use of this language, for instance, in Russian Social Sciences (if compared to Physical Sciences). However, note that the data presented in that article are tricky because the author used Scopus as source, and as far as I know Scopus only includes literature that at least have an abstract in English.

So... if Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) seems to value more the local languages than other disciplines, THAT is something the rest of us, working on other disciplines, should notice, wonder why and use to reconsider our possition. Is it that people working in HSS don´t need to interact with colleagues worldwide like people of other disciplines do? perhaps? I don´t think so. Then, why it is so difficult for us to use our languages to publish? is it because people working in HSS don't aspire to publish in high profile (high impact factor) journals?, do they publish more in books than high impact journals? I don't think so either, although that may happen in some countries. So what are we missing?

If the use of English is mostly based/justified on the need for a working language to communicate with colleagues worldwide, then... why/how is that HSS avoid that?

Two sources (data bases) that might reflect on the question of who reads an individuals papers are: a) Google Scholar - a quick review of my recent papers shows the following top 10 citations by other authors; 1515, 387 236, 155, 135, 115, 112, 104, 92, 86; and b) the number of chapter downloads in my recent book with R.E, Turner - Sustainablity Science, The Emerging Paradigm and the Urban Environment exceeds 25,000.  I notice also that Research Gate notes that my papers, books and monographs, etc are widely read internationally.  When I come across seminal papers in other languages, I get them translated.  Papers in Russian and Spanish have been important  in my field.  Regards all!

Dear Alejandro,

Russians started Russian Index in Web od Science last year. The most part of articles is in Russian. Therefore ratio Russian/English can be another. Yes, I agree with Mariia. Russians do not read other Russians in English. However, It is common for others. For instance, I will translate my paper into Russian for Russian journal despite they accept English. Only 5% of Russian population know English and maybe 10-15% of Social Scientists really use it

Dear Alejandro !

This is interesting. Thank you.

From my personal point of view, you never really get to know (even less choose) those who read you... Nevertheless , I do enjoy pressing that reads counter on my pubs, and scrolling down to view those who read me. 

Our urge, as scientists is in fact to communicate.

English is the best language to reach worldwide in scientific terms. Nowadays, when we need financing and official creditation for our University courses in Europe, it gets mandatory to publish our curricula and at least one slide per class that is written in English. You cannot avoid, and this is the best way to promote students mobility across european courses. Our Erasmus programs bring good money to the poor Portuguese University courses. This keeps us going through a rough economic crisis...

I feel somehow fortunate that latin was soon abandoned as the international official scientific language, as it used to be some two centuries ago. It was a difficult language yo learn and more difficult to write. English is better adapted to modern times. It is easy to learn quicly, it is a direct dynamic language, and it consumes lesser amount of paper to communicate ideas, than the former complicated Latin...

Those of us with focus some in the emerging field of sustainability science have actively called for more integration of the natural, social and engineering disciplines into a transdisciplinary science of sustainability.   I tell my students that the fully trained scientists in this new field haven't been born yet!  But we are on the way (three relevant commentaries are attached - there are many many more out there) and the the effort has to be clearly international to assure that global environmental, social and economic justice applies to all.  Language should not be allowed to be an impediment!!  Regards,

Mike

Most of my papers are written in English (circa 70%). English makes paper much more visible and discoverable. My profession: technical, Earth science; nationality: Russian.