Table 1.
Studies published since 2016 that make claims about whether or not linguistic injustice occurs in academic publishing. The summaries given here are necessarily oversimplified, given space constraints. The judgment of whether or not the study supports the idea that linguistic injustice exists is also necessarily simplistic (and reflects our own judgment of the study’s conclusion, not necessarily what the authors of a given study state), as it is too reductive to present this as a “yes or no” debate, and many of these studies specifically conclude that the reality is more complicated than that.
| Paper | Method and finding | Linguistic injustice? |
|---|---|---|
| Botelho de Magalhães, Cotterall, and Mideros (2019) | Case studies of two scholars suggested that, while they were successful in developing their writing skills, it was challenging | Maybe |
| Hanauer, Sheridan, and Englander (2019) | In a survey, scholars self-reported that they felt greater burden when doing scientific writing in a second language (English) than in their first language | Yes |
| Langum and Sullivan (2017) | Analysis of Swedish-speaking doctoral students’ narratives showed that they perceive themselves to be deficient in not only English academic writing, but also in Swedish academic writing | No |
| McDowell and Liardét (2018) | Interviews and surveys with native Japanese-speaking scholars suggested that publishing in English, while more rewarding than publishing in Japanese, was also more challenging | Maybe |
| McKinley and Rose (2018) | Analysis of journals’ guidelines for authors showed that journal guidelines mandate a certain standard of English | Yes |
| Mirhosseini and Shafiee (2019) | Interviews with scholars suggested that publishing in English is more difficult than publishing in their native language (Farsi), and that the pressure to publish in English marginalizes the development of Farsi-language scholarship | Yes |
| Shvidko and Atkinson (2018) | Case studies of six early-career scholars showed that the non-native English speakers in the sample did not feel disadvantaged relative to the native English speakers | No |
| Soler and Cooper (2019) | Discourse analysis of e-mails from predatory publishers was consistent with speculation that the features of these e-mails may be more likely to trick non-native English speakers than native English speakers | Maybe |
| Strauss (2019) | Interviews with reviewers suggested that reviewers were biased against English that did not conform to their standard of “native-like” English | Yes |
| Yen and Hung (2019) | Analysis of publication patterns showed that English native speakers are overrepresented among authors, although language did not explain all of the differences | Maybe |
| Yotimart & Hashima Abd. Aziz (2017) | Analysis of interviews with eight scholars suggested that some of the non-native English speakers feel disadvantaged, although some of this may be attributable to non-linguistic factors | Maybe |