Quality of scientific writing considered in peer review?
Martin Fenner
Monday, 01 October 2007 05:53 UTC
I was wondering how much, if at all, the quality of the writing of a submitted paper is considered in the peer review process? I mean not the quality of the data or the arguments in the discussions but the writing style itself (language, grammar, etc.). In other words, will a nicely written paper with the same data be more likely be accepted?
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To Juan: Thank you for your clarification. This particular Nature Network forum is “Ask the Nature Editor”, in which we the editors answer authors’ and potential authors’ questions about publishing in Nature and the Nature journals. I agree that there are broader issues than those we are discussing here, but this particular forum is not the best place to discuss them, as the Nature editors are only qualified to speak for what is done on our own journals.
To Edoardo: Thank you for your comments. Nature cannot provide a translation service free of charge to authors who have not yet submitted to our journals, but we are happy to refer people to such services if they wish to use them before submitting. It would not be practical for us to offer to translate papers before submission, as we recieve many papers which, for various reasons, are not sent out to peer-review and so will never be published in our journals.
We consider papers submitted to us in the English language only. If such a paper is considered suitably interesting to be sent to peer-review, the editors and peer-reviewers provide plenty of help and advice, including rewriting suggestions when necessary. -
I didn’t expect this forum discussion to last for more than 5 months. And there is new material on the topic in the March issue of EMBO Reports. In the editorial called Language Barriers, Frank Gannon talks about the special difficulties of non-native English speakers to write a scientific texts. And he discusses a paper called Six senses in the literature. The bleak sensory landscape of biomedical texts (subscription only, see also this Spoonful of Medicine post) in the current issue of EMBO Reports. The paper studied the use of dry and impersonal language in scientific papers. The last sentence in the editorial (which is meant as a parody) is a good example of dry and obscure language used so often in scientific papers today:
The possibility could be considered, taking into account various relevant factors, that a modest alteration in the mode of expression could, in due course and after a preliminary and statistically relevant trial period, be phased into the scientific discourse, such as an alteration focusing on the first person, but not exclusively, or a measured change from the passive to the active mode of writing.
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I feel sorry for those native speakers who work abroad. If the non-english speaking authors would actually follow-up on the advice to always consult a native speaker, (s)he would hardly get any of her own work done.
Consider, for instance, a big microbiology dept. I was part of for only seven months, back in 2001/02 (Regensburg University, Germany). At that time, there was only one native speaker available on a total of 50+ scientists working there (from Germany, Austria, Poland, etc.).
The sole native speaker was a US postdoc who was kind enough to check papers, but also the theses of the students, not to mention grant applications (which often have to be submitted in english to facilitate international reviewing), etc.
Checking texts is a lot of work, because altering/improving phrases may result in a(slightly) different meaning and always has to be checked with the original author.
This way, the native speakers working abroad also experience the language barriers – perhaps they even feel them the most, albeit indirect.
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