Dueling Languages & Research Publishing
Authors such as George Orwell have written how language can be used as an instrument for changing perceptions of reality. Usually the examples given by Orwell and others are drawn from politics, the arts, publishing, and broadcasting. Add now to this list the sciences as suggested in two recent Science magazine articles, Autism researchers face off over language and Latin America’s bird scientists issue manifesto to end marginalization.
The former article relates how autism researchers differ about which words should be used to describe autism and associated research. Some believe that traditional terminology demeans autistic people by describing the condition in disease-like terms. Some believe that studying autistic people ignores the real problem: how other people think about and behave regarding people who are autistic.
The latter article describes how avian scientists specializing in tropical and subtropical wildlife have been marginalized by a research community long dominated by “northern” scientists. Ignoring for the moment possible political reasons for such “discrimination,” one simple explanation for such “discrimination” is language. Articles submitted in Spanish to “northern dominated” journals may simply fare less well in review than articles submitted in English.
Is this really a form of discrimination? As an English-only speaker and writer, I’m inclined to answer “yes.” Perhaps more importantly, it is an example of “systemic language discrimination” where decades (centuries?) of English domination of scientific communication are finally being challenged.
In situation like those described in both articles it makes sense to think in competitive terms. If you are an autism researcher, do you have alternative and/or competing outlets for your research that agree with your approach to terminology? Will there be friendly Facebook groups, societies, meetings, peer reviewed journals, and (yes) even listservs you can belong to? Also, how will international indexing and database publishers providing both bibliographic and full text access manage potentially incompatible or divergent terminologies? Can AI-aided search algorithms be trained to accommodate potentially “dueling” terminologies?
As with any scientific specialty your decision as a researcher on how to communicate your research findings will depend at least partially on the anticipated influence your choice of channels will have on your career prospects. This has always been the case, of course, but adding the additional and potentially political consideration of which language cohort to favor may add some additional complexity to the process.
The same goes for neotropical bird scientist. Are there alternatives to the “north dominated” communication channels and journals? I don’t know enough about these research areas to comment in any detail, but if it is true that the US is losing out to China in many research areas, perhaps Chinese or other Asian publishers could benefit by reaching out to neotropical avian researchers for research articles submissions.
Copyright 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald
