The language barrier hinders scientific and academic development

According to the journal PLOS Biology, experts from the University of Queensland in Australia evaluated how they approached reading articles, writing, publishing, publishing and participating in conferences, and discovered a significant flaw.

Compared to native speakers of English, non-native speakers need twice as long to carry out each of these activities.

They point out that jobs have been rejected two and a half times, and a review is required twelve and a half times, which is very stressful.

These reasons in one way or another cause a third of scientists and academics to give up participating in international conferences, and half of them prefer not to submit research papers because they do not trust English communication.

The researchers warned that the language barrier causes many promising professions to stagnate, and many scientists abandon them at an early stage, creating an equity problem.

Experts lamented that “we are likely to lose a significant contribution to science from a large number of people, simply because their mother tongue is not English.”

The researchers proposed unlocking the potential of disadvantaged communities and proactively addressing this problem by supporting, for example, free language publishing to achieve multilingualism in science.

JCM/Joe