According to the journal PLOS Biology, experts from the University of Queensland, Australia examined how they cope with reading articles, writing, publishing, distributing and attending conferences and found a significant disadvantage.
Compared to native English speakers, non-native speakers take up to twice as long to complete each of these activities.
They point out that jobs are still being rejected two and a half times and being asked for review 12 and a half times, which is very distressing.
One way or another, these reasons mean that a third of scientists and academics refrain from attending international conferences, and half prefer not to present papers due to lack of confidence in communicating in English.
The researchers warned that the language barrier is causing many promising careers to stagnate and many scientists to abandon them early, leading to an equity issue.
“We are potentially losing a large contribution to science from large numbers of people simply because their first language is not English,” the experts lamented.
Researchers suggested unlocking the potential of disadvantaged communities and proactively addressing this issue, for example by supporting free language publishing to achieve multilingualism of science.
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