English holds a prominent position in global communication, especially within the realm of scientific discourse. As a result, conducting research activities – reading and writing articles, attending conferences or presenting work – can become difficult for researchers whose mother tongue is not English. Until now, these inequalities linked to the language barrier had not been quantified. Researchers from the University of Queensland (Australia) and the University of California, Berkeley (US), whose findings were published on July 18 in the journal PLOS Biology, have therefore compared the amount of effort required to undertake scientific activities by native and non-native English speakers. "No matter how good you are at English, those whose mother tongue is English will always have a head start in research," noted Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, professor of information and communication sciences at Université Claude-Bernard-Lyon-I and an expert in scientific publishing.

To assess these disadvantages, the study's authors surveyed 908 environmental science researchers of eight nationalities (Bangladeshi, Bolivian, Nepalese, Nigerian, Ukrainian, Spanish, Japanese and British), chosen for their economic disparities and differing English proficiency levels. The authors used these two criteria "to distinguish the effect of language barriers from the effects of other types of barriers in science …, notably economic barriers."

Participants were asked to quantify the effort required to carry out their various daily scientific activities. On average, a researcher with a mother tongue other than English spends 46.6% more time reading an article if their level of English is average, and 90.8% more if their level is poor. Writing also takes longer. "It's clear to see that a lot of time is lost when you're not born an English speaker," pointed out Vincent Larivière, professor of information science at the Université de Montréal.

Above all, non-English-speaking researchers are 2.6 times more likely to have their articles rejected by scientific journals for language-related reasons, a serious disadvantage in this increasingly competitive sector: "We're in a race to get published," explained Boukacem-Zeghmouri. "So these inequalities can have major consequences on a career." Beyond the barrier to publication, lack of fluency in English can also be an obstacle to integrating into the scientific community. Forgoing participation in or hosting conferences for this reason is quite common for non-English-speaking researchers, particularly at the start of their careers. "If you are not competent in English, you give up joining the international community, and therefore give up working with it," says the researcher. These difficulties can lead young researchers to abandon their careers early.

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