Spanish researchers’ difficulties to publish in international journals: metrics, editors and multilingualism
- Irene López Navarro Spanish National Research Council
- Ana I. Moreno Fernández University of Leon; Universidad de León
- Jesús Rey Rocha Spanish National Research Council
Abstract
Throughout history, there have been several languages, such as German, French or English, which have gained the status of lingua franca of international scientific communication. However, contemporary science has witnessed a significant increase in the use of English for scholarly communication. As a result, nowadays, scientific records written in languages other than English are increasingly scarce, hence, perpetuating English as a lingua franca in this context. This situation has brought about many difficulties and inequalities that non-Anglophone researchers need to face when it comes to developing their professional activity. It has also given rise to a change in researchers´ patterns of publication associated with their attitudes towards the languages they can choose to communicate their results. In this paper, we offer a state-of-the-art review and analyze the data available from the main studies that have been carried out in Spain and in other non-Anglophone contexts. Finally, pedagogical, economic and political implications are discussed.
Author Biographies
References
Altmetrics Manifesto (2011). Disponible en: http://altmetrics.org/manifesto. [Acceso 12 de Abril de 2015].
Ammon, U. (2000). Towards more fairness in international English: linguistic rights of non-native speakers? En R. Phillipson (Ed.), Rights to Language, Equity and Power in Edu-cation (pp. 111-116). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ammon, U. (2001). The dominance of English as a language of science. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ammon, U. (2012). Linguistic inequality and its effects on participation in scientific dis-course and on global knowledge accumulation - With a closer look at the problems of the second-rank language communities. Applied Linguistics Review, 3(2), 333-355.
Ammon, U. (2013). English(es) and academic publishing. The encyclopedia of applied linguistics. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
Belcher, D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Sec-ond Language Writing, 16(1), 1-22.
Benfield, J. R. y Feak, C. B. (2006). How authors can cope with the burden of English as an international language. CHEST Journal, 129(6), 1728-1730.
Bennett, K. (Ed.) (2014). The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing. Discourses, Communi-ties and Practices. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Berkenkotter, C. & Huckin, T. N. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: Cognition/culture/power. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2013). The perceived value of English for academic publishing among ESP multilingual scholars in Europe. Journal of English for Specific Purposes, 1(1), 5-25.
Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2014). ‘English is my default academic language’: voices from LSP scholars publishing in a multilingual journal. Journal of English for Academic Purpos-es, 13, 65-77.
Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2015). Peer reviewers’ recommendations for language improvement in research writing. En Plo, R. & Pérez-Llantada, C. (Eds.) English as a Scientific and Research Language: Debates and Discourses (Vol.2). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton
Bordons, M. & Gómez, I. (2004). Towards a single language in science? A Spanish view. Serials, 17(2), 189-195.
Burgess, S. (2014). Centre-periphery relations in the Spanish context: temporal and cross-disciplinary variation. En K. Bennett (Ed.), The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing. Discourses, Communities and Practices (pp. 93-104). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burgess, S., Fumero Pérez, M. C. & Díaz Galán, A. (2006). Mismatches and missed oppor-tunities? A case study of a non-English speaking background research writer. En M. Carretero et al. (Coords.), A pleasure of life in words: a festschrift for Angela Downing (pp. 283-304). La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna.
Burgess, S. & Fagan, A. (2006). From the Periphery: The Canarian Researcher Publishing in the International Context. En J. I. Oliva, M. Mcmahon & M. Brito (Coords.), On the Matter of Words in Honour of Lourdes Divasson Cilveti (pp.45-56). La Laguna: Uni-versidad de La Laguna.
Burgess, S., Gea-Valor, M. L., Moreno, A. I. & Rey-Rocha, J. (2014). Affordances and constraints on research publication: a comparative study of the language choices of Spanish historians and psychologists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 72-83.
Canagarajah, S. (1996). “Nondiscursive” requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written Communication, 13, 435-472.
Canagarajah, S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-burgh Press.
Connor, U. (2002). New directions in contrastive rhetoric. TESOL quarterly, 36(4), 493-510.
Connor, U. (2008). Mapping multidimensional aspects of research. Reaching to intercul-tural rhetoric. En U. Connor, E. Nagelhout & W. Rozycki (Eds.), From contrastive to in-tercultural research in rhetoric (pp. 299-315). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Council of Canadian Academies (2012). Informing research choices: indicators and judgment. Otawa: Council of Canadian Academics.
Curry, M. & Lillis, T. (2004). Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: negotiating interests, demands and rewards. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 663-88.
Curry, M. & Lillis, T. (2014). Strategies and tactics in academic knowledge production by multilingual scholars. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(32).
De Swaan, A. (2001). Words of the world: the global language system. Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons.
DORA (2012). The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. Disponible en: http://am.ascb.org/dora/. Último acceso 12 de abril de 2015.
Duszak, A. (1994). Academic discourse and intellectual styles. Journal of Pragmatics, 21(3), 291-313.
Duszak, A. & Lewkowicz, J. (2008). Publishing academic texts in English: a Polish perspec-tive. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 108-120.
ElMalik, A. T. & Nesi H. (2008). Publishing research in a second language: the case of Su-danese contributors to international medical journals. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 87-96.
European Commission (2003). Third European Report on Science and Technology Indica-tors. Disponible en: http://cordis.europa.eu/indicators/third_report.htm. Último acceso 12 de Abril de 2015.
FECYT (2014). Indicadores bibliométricos de la actividad científica española. Madrid: Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT).
Ferguson, G. (2006). Language planning and education. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Ferguson, G. (2007). The global spread of English, scientific communication and ESP: questions of equity, access and domain loss. Ibérica, (13), 7-38.
Ferguson, G. (2013). English, development and education: charting the tensions. En E.J. Erling & P. Seargeant (Eds.), English and development: policy, pedagogy and globali-zation (pp. 25-46). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Ferguson G., Pérez-Llantada C. & Plo R. (2011). English as an international language of scientific publication: a study of attitudes. World Englishes, 30(1), 41-59.
Fernández Polo, F.J. & Cal Valera, M. (2009). English for research purposes at the Universi-ty of Santiago de Compostela: a survey. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(3), 152-164.
Flowerdew, J. (1999). Writing for scholarly publication in English: the case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(2), 123-145.
Flowerdew, J. (2008). Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: what can Goffman’s ‘‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, 77-86.
Flowerdew, J. (2013). English for research publication purposes. En B. Paltridge & S. Star-field (Eds.), The handbook of English for specific purposes (pp. 301-322). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Flowerdew, J. & Li, Y. (2009). English or Chinese? The trade-off between local and interna-tional publication among Chinese academics in the humanities and social sciences. Journal of Second Language Writing, 18, 1-6.
Flowerdew, J. & Ho Wang, S. (2015). Identity in Academic Discourse. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 81-99.
Gea-Valor, M. L., Rey-Rocha, J., & Moreno, A. I. (2014). Publishing research in the interna-tional context: An analysis of Spanish scholars' academic writing needs in the social sciences. English for Specific Purposes, 36, 47-59.
Gentil, G. & Séror, J. (2014). Canada has two official languagesOr does it? Case studies of Canadian scholars’ language choices and practices in disseminating knowledge. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 17-30.
Giannoni, D. S. (2008). Medical writing at the periphery: the case of Italian journal editori-als. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 97-107.
Gnutzmann, C. & Rabe, F. (2014). ‘Theoretical subtleties’ or ‘text modules’? German re-searchers’ language demands and attitudes across disciplinary cultures. Journal of Eng-lish for Academic Purposes, 13, 31-40.
Gómez, I., Sancho, R., Bordons, M. & Fernández, M. T. (2006). La I+D en España a través de sus publicaciones y patentes. En: J. Sebastián & E. Muñoz (Eds.) Radiografía de la Investigación Pública en España. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva.
Gordin, M. D. (2015). How science was done before and after global English. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gosden, H. (1995). Success in research article writing and revision: A social-constructionist perspective. English for Specific Purposes, 14(1), 37-57.
Gotti, M. (2012). Cross-cultural aspects of academic discourse. Brno Studies in English, 38(2), 59-78.
Gotti, M., Heller, D. & Dossena, M. (2002). Conflict and negotiation in specialized texts. Bern: Peter Lang.
Haarmann, H. & Holman, H. (2001). The impact of English as a language of science in Finland and its role for the transition to network society. En U. Ammon (Ed.), The dom-inance of English as a language of science: effects on other languages and language communities. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hanauer, D. I. & Englander, K. (2011). Quantifying the burden of writing research articles in a second language: data from Mexican scientists. Written Communication, 28(4), 403-416.
Harwood, N. & Hadley, G. (2004). Demystifying institutional practices: critical pragmatism and the teaching of academic writing. English for Specific Purposes, 23(4), 355-377.
Harzing, A. W. & Metz, I. (2012). Explaining geographic diversity of editorial boards: The role of conference participation and English language skills. European Journal of In-ternational Management, 6(6), 697-715.
Hewings, M. (2006). English language standards in academic articles: Attitudes of peer reviewers. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 53, 47-62.
Hicks, D. (2012). Performance-based university research funding systems. Research Poli-cy, 41, 251-261.
Hicks, D., Wouters, P., Waltman, L., Rijckeb, S. & Rafols, I. (2015). The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics. Nature, 520, 429-431. Disponible traducción al castellano en: www.ingenio.upv.es/manifiesto. Último acceso 12 de Abril de 2015.
Holmes, R. (1997). Genre analysis, and the social sciences: An investigation of the struc-ture of research article discussion sections in three disciplines. English for Specific Pur-poses, 16(4), 321-337.
Holmes, R. (2000). Variation and text structure: The discussion section in economics re-search articles. ITL. Institut voor Togepaste Linguistik, (131-32), 107-137.
Hyland, K. (2016). Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaplan, R.B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education. Language Learning, 16, 1-20.
Kaplan, R.B. (2001). Foreword: What in the world is Contrastive Rhetoric? En C.G. Panetta (Ed.), Contrastive Rhetoric revisited and redefined (pp. vii-xx). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kaplan, R. B. & Baldauf, R. B. (2005). Editing contributed scholarly articles from a lan-guage management perspective. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14(1), 47-62.
Kuteeva, M. & Mauranen, A. (2014). Writing for publication in multilingual contexts: an introduction to the special issue. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 1-4.
Li, Y. (2014). Seeking entry to the North American market: Chinese management academ-ics publishing internationally. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 41-52.
Li, Y. & Flowerdew, J. (2007). Shaping Chinese novice scientists’ manuscripts for publica-tion. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 100–117.
Lillis, T. & Curry, M. J. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars in-teractions with literacy brokers in the production of English-medium texts. Written Communication, 23(1), 3-35.
Lillis, T. & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: the politics and practices of publishing in English. London: Routledge.
López-Navarro, I., Moreno, A.I., Quintanilla, M.A. & Rey-Rocha, J. (2015). Why do I pub-lish research articles in English instead of my own language? Differences in Spanish re-searchers’ motivations across scientific domains. Scientometrics, 103(3), 939–976.
Man, J. P., Weinkauf, J. G., Tsang, M. & Sin, D. D. (2004). Why do some countries publish more than others? An international comparison of research funding, English proficien-cy and publication output in highly ranked general medical journals. European Journal of Epidemiology, 19, 811-817.
Martin, B., Nightingale, P. & Rafols, I. (2014). Response to the call for evidence to the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment. Disponible en: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/research/scipol/scipolres/metrics. Último acceso 12 de abril de 2015.
Martín, P. & León, I. K. (2014). Convincing peers of the value of one’s research: A genre analysis of rhetorical promotion in academic texts. English for Specific Purposes, 34, 1-13.
Mauranen, A. (1993). Cultural differences in academic rhetoric. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
McGrath, L. (2014). Parallel language use in academic and outreach publication: a case study of policy and practice. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 5-16.
Moed, H. F. & Halevi, G. (2015). Multidimensional assessment of scholarly research im-pact. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(10), 1988-2002.
Moreno, A. I. (2008). The importance of comparing comparable corpora in cross-cultural studies. En U. Connor, E. Nagelhout & W. Rozycki (Eds.), Contrastive rhetoric: reach-ing to intercultural rhetoric (pp. 25-41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Moreno, A. I. (2010). Researching into English for research publication purposes from an applied intercultural perspective. En M.F. Ruiz-Garrido, J.C. Palmer & I. Fortanet-Gómez (Eds.), English for Professional and Academic Purposes. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Moreno, A. I. (2011). English for research publication purposes and crosscul-tural academic discourse analysis. En M. Borham Puyal, M.J. Fernández Gil, S. Bau-tista Martín, B. García Riaza, J. Ruano García, M.J. Díez García & P. Álvarez Mos-quera (Eds.), Current Trends in Anglophone Studies: Cultural, Linguistic and Literary Research (pp. 53-69). Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.
Moreno, A. I. (2011). On the universality of the politeness concept of ‘face’: Evaluation strategies for construing ‘good face’ across writing cultures: writers’ voice in academic book reviews. Recuperado a partir de http://buleria.unileon.es/xmlui/handle/10612/1132
Moreno, A. I. & Suárez, L. (2008). A study of critical attitude across English and Spanish academic book reviews. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(1), 15-26.
Moreno, A.I., Rey-Rocha, J., Burgess, S., López-Navarro, I. & Sachdev, I. (2012). Spanish researchers’ perceived difficulty writing research articles for English-medium journals: the impact of proficiency in English versus publication experience. Ibérica, 24, 157-184.
Moreno, A. I., Burgess, S., Sachdev, I., López-Navarro, I. & Rey-Rocha, J. (2013). The ENEIDA questionnaire: publication experiences in scientific journals in English and Spanish. Disponible en: http://eneida.unileon.es/eneidaquestionnaire.php. Último acce-so 17 de octubre de 2016.
Mur Dueñas, P. (2007). ‘I/we focus on…’: A cross-cultural analysis of self-mentions in business management research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6: 143-162.
Muresan, L. M. & Pérez-Llantada, C. (2014). English for research publication and dissemi-nation in bi-/multiliterate environments: the case of Romanian academics. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 53-64.
Nyhart (2015). Speaking of science: how English became the language of science. Science, 348(6231), 192.
Osuna, C., Cruz-Castro, L. & Sanz-Menéndez, L. (2011). Overturning some assumptions about the effects of evaluation systems on publication performance. Scientometrics, 86, 575-592.
Peacock, M. (2002). Communicative moves in the discussion section of research articles. System, 30(4), 479-497.
Pérez-Llantada C., Plo, R. & Ferguson, G. R. (2011). “You don’t say what you know, only what you can”: the perceptions and practices of senior Spanish academics regarding re-search dissemination in English. English for Specific Purposes, 30(1), 18-30.
Pérez-Llantada, C. (2014). ‘Glocal’ Rhetorical practices in academic writing. European Journal of English Studies, 17(3), 251-268.
Pérez-Llantada, C. (2016). Globalization and the contribution of Applied Linguistics. En Linn, A. (Ed.) Investigating English in Europe: Contexts and Agendas (Vol. 10). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Petersen, M. & Shaw, P. (2002). Language and disciplinary differences in a biliterate con-text. World Englishes, 21(3), 357-374.
Preisler, B. (2005). Deconstructing ‘the domain of science’ as a sociolinguistic entity in EFL societies: the relationship between English and Danish in higher education and research. En B. Preisler, A. Fabricius, H. Haberland, S. Kjaebeck & K. Risager (Eds.) The conse-quences of mobility: linguistic and sociocultural contact zones (pp. 238-248). Roskil-de: Roskilde University.
Rafols, I., Ciarli, T., van Zwanenberg, P. & Stirling, A. (2012). Towards indicators for ‘opening up’ science and technology policy. STI Indicators Conference, Montreal. Disponible en: http://sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol2/Rafols_Towards_675.pdf. [Acceso 12 de abril de 2015.]
Rey, J., Martín, M. J., Plaza, L., Ibáñez, J. J. & Méndez, I. (1998). Changes on publishing behavior in response to research policy guidelines. The case of the Spanish Research Council in the field of Agronomy. Scientometrics, 41, (1-2): 101-111. Rey-Rocha, J. & Martín-Sempere, M. J. (1999). The role of domestic journals in geographically-oriented disciplines: the case of Spanish journals on Earth Sciences. Scientometrics, 45(2), 203-216.
Salager-Meyer, F. (2008). Scientific publishing in developing countries: Challenges for the future. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 121-132.
Salager-Meyer, F. (2014). Writing and publishing in peripheral scholarly journals: how to enhance the global influence of multilingual scholars? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 78-82.
Salager-Meyer, F. (2015). Peripheral scholarly journals: From locality to globality. Ibérica, 30, 15-36.
St. John, M. J. (1987). Writing processes of Spanish scientists publishing in English. English for Specific Purposes, 6, 113-120.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J. (2002). Integrated and fragmented worlds: EAP materials and corpus linguistics. En J. Flowerdew (Ed.) Academic discourse, (pp. 150-164). Bern: Pearson Education.
Swales, J. (2004). Research genres: explorations and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J. & Feak, C.B. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Tardy, C. (2004). The role of English in scientific communication: lingua franca or Tyran-nosaurus rex? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 3, 247-269.
Uzuner, S. (2008). Multilingual scholars’ participation in core/global academic communi-ties: a literature review. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 250-263.
Vassileva, I. (1997). Hedging in English and Bulgarian academic writing. Trends in linguis-tics studies and monographs, 104, 203-222.
Wagner, C. S., & Wong, S. K. (2012). Unseen science? Representation of BRICs in global science. Scientometrics, 90(3), 1001-1013. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-011-0481-z
Wood, A. (2001). International scientific English: the language of research scientists around the world. En M. Peacock & J. Flowerdew (Eds.), Research perspectives on Eng-lish for academic purposes (pp. 71-83). Cambridge: Cambridge Applied Linguistics.
Format
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Teknokultura is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
