Publish in English or perish

With most global journals only publishing in English, mastering the language has effectively become a requirement for a successful career as a scientist. According to SCImago Journal Rank, a system based on the number of citations, the top 10 chemistry journals in 2020 were based in either the UK or US. The publish or perish nature of research, where you not only need to get published but also need your work to be cited, therefore puts pressure on scientists to write up their research in English.

The Organization of Ibero-American States found that in 2020, 95% of all published work in science journals was in English. Ángel Badillo, a senior analyst of Spanish Language and Culture at the Real Instituto Elcano in Spain, says ‘if you’re writing your papers in Spanish or Portuguese [or other non-English languages], you’re assuming that you’re not at the front line of the discussion’. Even if the research is groundbreaking, it is unlikely to be published in international academic journals. ‘Writing science in English has become a question of prestige,’ says Badillo. ‘If you don’t have a couple of papers included in the journals [indexed by] Clarivate or Scopus, you will not make the right progression in your career.’

Without journals offering translations of literature, finding relevant non-English work is a challenge and reduces the number of citations. Tatsuya Amano, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow working in ecology and conservation, explains that ‘the first step for increasing the visibility of such non-English-language literature is to make sure to provide English abstracts and titles’. This is a requirement for papers to be indexed in Clarivate or Scopus. However, such translations must normally be provided by authors as journals generally do not provide them.