Why do I publish research articles in English instead of my own language? Differences in Spanish researchers’ motivations across scientific domains

A Systematic Review of Voice-Related Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Use with Adults

PURPOSE

This paper's purpose is to provide a resource for clinicians and researchers of select voice-related patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) available in the English language.

METHOD

A systematic search for voice-related PROMs was conducted between September 2020 and July 17, 2021. Databases included APA PsychInfo, Nursing and Allied Health Source, MEDLINE via the EBSCO interface, and Science Direct. Reference lists for PROMs-related articles were mined for reference to PROMs protocols.

RESULTS

Thirty voice-related PROMs were identified and categorized as either developed primarily for use in the clinic (n = 12), developed primarily for use in a specific research study (n = 6), or translated into English for publication (n = 12). Twelve PROMs were summarized: Aging Voice Index, Disease Specific Self-Efficacy in Spasmodic Dysphonia, Evaluation of the Ability to Sing Easily, Evaluating Voice Disability - Quality of Life Questionnaire, Glottal Function Index, Linear Analog Scale of Assessment of Voice Quality, Quality of Life in Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis, Speech Disability Questionnaire, Trans Woman Voice Questionnaire, Vocal Cord Dysfunction Questionnaire, Vocal Fatigue Index, and the Vocal Tract Discomfort Scale.

CONCLUSION

The PROMs can be categorized into English-language voice-related PROMs developed primarily for clinical use, English-language PROMs developed primarily for research use, and English-language PROMs translated into English. The extent of reliability and validity testing completed varies in the PROMs developed primarily for clinical use. A PROM's psychometric properties as well as the language in which the PROM was tested, should guide clinicians and researchers as they consider which instrument(s) to use.

Publishing in English or Chinese: a qualitative analysis of Chinese researchers' academic language choice

Non-native language scholars often struggle to choose between English and their native language in scholarly publishing. This study aims to identify the mechanism by which journal attributes influence language choice by investigating the perspectives of 18 Chinese scholars through semi-structured interviews. Drawing on grounded theory, this study develops a model for how journal attributes influence researchers' language preferences. We find that journal attributes influence researchers' perceived value which, in turn, affects their particular language choice, with contextual factors playing a moderating role. By examining the motivations underlying Chinese scholars' language choice, this study provides a critical understanding of the factors shaping their decision-making processes. These findings have significant implications for Chinese scholars, policymakers, and journal operators, shedding light on the issue of discrimination in academic publishing. Addressing these concerns is crucial for fostering a fair and inclusive academic environment.

Language and Geographic Representation of Neurosurgical Journals: A Meta-Science Study

OBJECTIVE

Medical journals have a role in promoting representation of neurosurgeons who speak primary languages other than English. We sought to characterize the language of publication and geographic origin of neurosurgical journals, delineate associations between impact factor (IF) and language and geographic variables, and describe steps to overcome language barriers to publishing.

METHODS

Web of Science, Scopus, and Ulrich's Serial Analysis system were searched for neurosurgery journals. The journals were screened for relevance. Language of publication, country and World Health Organization region, World Bank income status and gross domestic product, and citation metrics were extracted.

RESULTS

Of 867 journals, 74 neurosurgical journals were included. Common publication languages were English (52, 70.3%), Mandarin (5, 6.8%), and Spanish (4, 5.4%). Countries of publication for the greatest number of journals were the United States (23, 31.1%), United Kingdom (8, 10.8%), and China (6, 8.1%). Most journals originated from the Americas region (29, 39.2%), the European region (28, 37.8%), and from high-income countries (n = 54, 73.0%). Median IF was 1.55 (interquartile range [IQR] 0.89-2.40). Journals written in English (1.77 [IQR 1.00-2.87], P = 0.032) and from high-income countries (1.81 [IQR 1.0-2.70], P = 0.046) had highest median IF. When excluding outliers, there was a small but positive correlation between per capita gross domestic product and IF (β = 0.021, P = 0.03, R² = 0.097).

CONCLUSIONS

Language concordance represents a substantial barrier to research equity in neurosurgery, limiting dissemination of ideas of merit that currently have inadequate outlets for readership. Initiatives aimed at increasing the accessibility of neurosurgical publishing to underrepresented authors are essential.

Growth of non-English-language literature on biodiversity conservation

English is widely recognized as the language of science, and English-language publications (ELPs) are rapidly increasing. It is often assumed that the number of non-ELPs is decreasing. This assumption contributes to the underuse of non-ELPs in conservation science, practice, and policy, especially at the international level. However, the number of conservation articles published in different languages is poorly documented. Using local and international search systems, we searched for scientific articles on biodiversity conservation published from 1980 to 2018 in English and 15 non-English languages. We compared the growth rate in publications across languages. In 12 of the 15 non-English languages, published conservation articles significantly increased every year over the past 39 years, at a rate similar to English-language articles. The other three languages showed contrasting results, depending on the search system. Since the 1990s, conservation science articles in most languages increased exponentially. The variation in the number of non-English-language articles identified among the search systems differed markedly (e.g., for simplified Chinese, 11,148 articles returned with local search system and 803 with Scopus). Google Scholar and local literature search systems returned the most articles for 11 and 4 non-English languages, respectively. However, the proportion of peer-reviewed conservation articles published in non-English languages was highest in Scopus, followed by Web of Science and local search systems, and lowest in Google Scholar. About 20% of the sampled non-English-language articles provided no title or abstract in English; thus, in theory, they were undiscoverable with English keywords. Possible reasons for this include language barriers and the need to disseminate research in countries where English is not widely spoken. Given the known biases in statistical methods and study characteristics between English- and non-English-language studies, non-English-language articles will continue to play an important role in improving the understanding of biodiversity and its conservation.

The effects of electronic alert letters for internet surveys of academic scientists

Survey alert letters improve response rates and assure potential respondents that the research is legitimate and of high quality. Pre-notification by mail increases response rates for web surveys because it represents a second mode of communication and contributes to increases in respondent trust and study legitimacy. Due to work-from-home orders in response to COVID-19, postal alert letters are unlikely to reach research participants at their place of employment. We conducted three experiments testing the effects of sending academic scientists a pre-notification email message on web survey response rates as compared to no alert email message and variation in the timing of the pre-notification. The data comes from three random national samples of university-based scientists that were conducted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of three experiments suggest that email alert pre-notifications can have a minor effect on improving response rates to web surveys of academic scientists. The timing of those pre-notification messages, though, had no effect on survey response. These findings indicate pre-notification messages remain useful when studying academic scientists. Future research should compare the effects of electronic as compared to postal pre-notification on survey response among scientists, as postal pre-notification requires extensive resources.

International Collaboration and European Contributions to International Business Research

This study measures and ranks the performance of nations and academic institutions based on a 45-year analysis of international business (IB) publications, including 5853 academic authors from 1542 affiliated institutions. Examining authors’ academic origin and university of affiliation, and with a focus on the European nations that participated in the production of IB research, we make several novel contributions to the field: (1) identifying a unique internationalization process of IB research that consists of three distinct stages driven by international collaboration, (2) highlighting the role of international collaborations in overcoming publication barriers at the regional and country level, and (3) highlighting the role of both scale and scope of international collaborations in achieving a top-ranked position in the production of IB research.

Publishing in English is associated with an increase of the impact factor of Brazilian biodiversity journals

English is the lingua franca for scientific communication, but some journals, especially in developing countries, still publish non-English studies. A shift towards publishing in English may promote internationalization and more visibility of scientific journals. Here we compared quality indexes between Brazilian journals that have always published in English and journals that have published in languages other than English. We also investigated whether a temporal shift towards publishing in English led to elevated quality measures. Our analyses covered 16 Brazilian biodiversity journals and accounted for 12640 papers published since 2007. The mean impact factor was on average 55% higher in journals that have published consistently in English, compared to the so-called multilanguage journals. The proportion of publications in English increased to nearly three times the original value in multilanguage journals between 2007 and 2016, and the impact factor tripled during this period. At the same time, the Qualis-Capes classifications (B1-B2-B3) tended to fall. Publishing in English can be a first step to increased visibility, and this is particularly important for biodiversity journals, since Brazilian ecosystems are considered of interest to the international scientific community and nature conservation.

Limited accessibility and bias in wildlife-wind energy knowledge: A bilingual systematic review of a globally distributed bird group

Wind energy is a key component of climate action strategies aimed at reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Despite providing environmental benefits, there are increasing concerns surrounding the impact of wind farms on wildlife, with research indicating that effects on wildlife can be highly variable between species, regions, and sites. In light of this variability and the accelerating growth of the wind energy sector globally, a comprehensive understanding of wind farm effects on wildlife and ease of access to this knowledge are pivotal to inform best practice if wind energy is to become a truly sustainable source of energy. This review evaluates interactions between a globally distributed bird genus (harriers, Circus sp.) and wind farms to assess broader patterns in wildlife-wind energy knowledge accessibility and bias. A systematic review of grey and peer-reviewed literature across two multidisciplinary and two field-specific databases in two languages (English and Spanish) yielded 235 relevant sources, covering 12 harrier species and 31 countries. Findings indicate that harriers are considered to have high sensitivity to wind farms, with greatest impacts expected from habitat effects rather than from turbine collisions. In the broader wildlife-wind energy context, this study underscores (i) the predominance of grey literature and of sources solely documenting species-wind farm overlaps; (ii) limitations in grey literature availability and peer-reviewed publication accessibility; (iii) lack of standardized research and monitoring practices; and (iv) evidence of language, taxonomic, and geographic bias in literature sources. Overall, findings demonstrate that limited accessibility to wildlife-wind energy knowledge risks widening the research-implementation gap. Widespread implementation of open practices that allow researchers and practitioners to build on existing knowledge (e.g. national and international online repositories and databases, knowledge sharing and collaborative initiatives, open access publications) is crucial if ongoing wind energy development efforts are to be successfully aligned with conservation priorities.

The Institutional Context of ‘Linguistic Injustice’: Norwegian Social Scientists and Situated Multilingualism

The debate about ‘linguistic injustice’ centers on whether or not English as an additional language (EAL) writers face challenges in writing academically that are qualitatively different from those of novice academic writers irrespective of language background. This study aims to add nuance to this debate by looking at range of writers (from novice to expert) within an interdisciplinary social science research institute in Norway in order to investigate the mediating role of the institutional context. Using an ethnographic approach with an academic literacies perspective, it examines the challenges these writers face and discusses them in light of tensions between identity and institutional environment. It argues that the high degree of immersion in English causes ‘situated multilingualism’, where their ability to write about their topic in English surpasses their ability to write about it in Norwegian. Nonetheless, even the expert writers, particularly those in disciplines that value a unique authorial voice, demonstrated insecurity and lack of ownership to their writing in English. Moreover, the pressure to also sometimes write in Norwegian represented an additional site of negotiation not faced by their non-Norwegian counterparts. This suggests that the challenges EAL writers face are not determined by their language background alone, but also by their institutional environment—including the pressure to publish ‘internationally’, the amount of writing expected, and their immersion in English.

Factors Influencing Cities’ Publishing Efficiency

Purpose

Recently, a vast number of scientific publications have been produced in cities in emerging countries. It has long been observed that the publication output of Beijing has exceeded that of any other city in the world, including such leading centres of science as Boston, New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Researchers have suggested that, instead of focusing on cities’ total publication output, the quality of the output in terms of the number of highly cited papers should be examined. However, in the period from 2014 to 2016, Beijing produced as many highly cited papers as Boston, London, or New York. In this paper, another method is proposed to measure cities’ publishing performance by focusing on cities’ publishing efficiency (i.e., the ratio of highly cited articles to all articles produced in that city).

Design/methodology/approach

First, 554 cities are ranked based on their publishing efficiency, then some general factors influencing cities’ publishing efficiency are revealed. The general factors examined in this paper are as follows: the linguistic environment of cities, cities’ economic development level, the location of excellent organisations, cities’ international collaboration patterns, and their scientific field profile. Furthermore, the paper examines the fundamental differences between the general factors influencing the publishing efficiency of the top 100 most efficient cities and the bottom 100 least efficient cities.

Findings

Based on the research results, the conclusion can be drawn that a city’s publishing efficiency will be high if meets the following general conditions: it is in a country in the Anglosphere–Core; it is in a high-income country; it is home to top-ranked universities and/or world-renowned research institutions; researchers affiliated with that city most intensely collaborate with researchers affiliated with cities in the United States, Germany, England, France, Canada, Australia, and Italy; and the most productive scientific disciplines of highly cited articles are published in high-impact multidisciplinary journals, disciplines in health sciences (especially general internal medicine and oncology), and disciplines in natural sciences (especially physics, astronomy, and astrophysics).

Research limitations

It is always problematic to demarcate the boundaries of cities (e.g., New York City vs. Greater New York), and regarding this issue there is no consensus among researchers. The Web of Science presents the name of cities in the addresses reported by the authors of publications. In this paper cities correspond to the spatial units between the country/state level and the institution level as indicated in the Web of Science. Furthermore, it is necessary to highlight that the Web of Science is biased towards English-language journals and journals published in the field of biomedicine. These facts may influence the outcome of the research.

Practical implications

Publishing efficiency, as an indicator, shows how successful a city is at the production of science. Naturally, cities have limited opportunities to compete for components of the science establishment (e.g., universities, hospitals). However, cities can compete to attract innovation-oriented companies, high tech firms, and R&D facilities of multinational companies by for example establishing science parks. The positive effect of this process on the city’s performance in science can be observed in the example of Beijing, which publishing efficiency has been increased rapidly.

Originality/value

Previous scientometric studies have examined cities’ publication output in terms of the number of papers, or the number of highly cited papers, which are largely size dependent indicators; however this paper attempts to present a more quality-based approach.

Estimación del valor educativo de los libros académicos que no están en inglés: el caso de España

Este estudio examina el valor educativo de 15.117 libros escritos en español y publicados por editoriales españolas en disciplinas de ciencias sociales y humanidades en el período 2002-2011, en base a las menciones que reciben desde guías docentes en línea. Se implementó un método para identificar automáticamente las menciones y filtrar los resultados. El chequeo manual de las 52.716 menciones encontradas estimó una precision del 99,5% para filtrar las menciones falsas y del 74,7% para identificar las menciones correctas. Una quinta parte de los libros (2.849; 19%) se mencionaron al menos una vez en guías académicas en línea, y casi todos ellos (95%) han sido publicados por un tercio de las editoriales incluídas en el estudio. Un análisis detallado de los 23 libros más recomendados en guías docentes mostró que la mayoría son monografías de humanidades con un solo autor, escritos originalmente en español. Las menciones procedieron de 379 dominios web, mayoritariamente de sitios web de universidades españolas. En conclusión, es posible crear indicadores a partir de las menciones en guías docentes para evaluar el valor educativo de los libros en español, aunque se requieren chequeos manuales si los valores se usan para evaluar libros individuales.

Do prestigious Spanish scholarly book publishers have more teaching impact?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to assess the educational value of prestigious and productive Spanish scholarly publishers based on mentions of their books in online scholarly syllabi.

Design/methodology/approach

Syllabus mentions of 15,117 books from 27 publishers were searched for, manually checked and compared with Microsoft Academic (MA) citations.

Findings

Most books published by Ariel, Síntesis, Tecnos and Cátedra have been mentioned in at least one online syllabus, indicating that their books have consistently high educational value. In contrast, few books published by the most productive publishers were mentioned in online syllabi. Prestigious publishers have both the highest educational impact based on syllabus mentions and the highest research impact based on MA citations.

Research limitations/implications

The results might be different for other publishers. The online syllabus mentions found may be a small fraction of the syllabus mentions of the sampled books.

Practical implications

Authors of Spanish-language social sciences and humanities books should consider general prestige when selecting a publisher if they want educational uptake for their work.

Originality/value

This is the first study assessing book publishers based on syllabus mentions.

Publishing research in the international context

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study to explore the Egyptian social science scholars’ academic writing behaviour in local and international context. Understanding the challenges that scholars in social science and humanities face while publishing in the international outlets would help to suggest strategies to improve academic writing in non-Arabic journals.

Design/methodology/approach

This study deployed mixed methods approach. The quantitative data were collected using an online questionnaire. Interviews were conducted with a group of scholars in the five faculties to elucidate the publishing behaviour of the sample.

Findings

The interviews and the questionnaire showed that social science scholars in Egypt prefer local publishing outlets. The number of scholars who publish internationally is very low compared to scholars who publish locally. Scholars who tried to publish internationally faced many challenges, such as language barriers, lack of academic writing skills and lack of appropriate training.

Research limitations/implications

This study was conducted in one university in Egypt. While the results can be generalised to Egyptian and Middle East universities, it cannot be generalised to non-Arab communities because of the differences in culture and education system.

Originality/value

This study provides insight on publishing practices in the international context among social science scholars in Egypt using a mixed methods approach. This helped to capture the scholarly publishing practices and the attitude toward international publishing and the main challenges that scholars face who attempt to publish in international outlets.