I think these are wise words from Toshihiko (and also from Scot and Michel). Interestingly enough, as a coauthor I am going through a manuscript in great detail right now that was returned from a journal because of syntax errors and other English problems. The paper was written by a PhD student whose level of English certainly has room for improvement, but writing the paper has been a very effective way of improving his English (because adviser/coauthors have done their job). Having gone through the paper word by word (as a non-native English speaker that is), I find the English to be quite good, with a few exceptions that are easily corrected by a person whose mother tongue is English (the editor has to read through the paper anyway, and a few quick corrections would not take much of his time). I am spending my entire Saturday twisting my brain, not really improving the English much, but trying to figure out what on earth the editor had in mind when referring to poor English. More importantly, the minor flaws that I have discovered do not at all affect the meaning.
And this is where the line should be drawn: When poor language clutters the scientific message, language definitely has to be dealt with. I also have (in very rare cases) refused to review manuscripts whose content is basically incomprehensible due to poor English. There is no alternative, really, and I think everyone agrees on this, just as much as we agree that coauthors have a responsibililty both when it comes to scientific contents and language (I definitely agree with Michel on this). However, returning to the other end of the scale, I think the whole community of non-angloamerican geoscientists is very grateful to the many native English-speaking reviewers and editors who spend valuable time improving the English language of their manuscripts. Although such editing may feel like a burden, the advantage of being able to communicate through ones own mother tongue certainly outweighs that burden.
Haakon Fossen
Professor
Department of Earth Science
University of Bergen
Allιgt. 41
5007 Bergen
Norway
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: (+47) 55 58 34 95
fax: (+47) 55 58 36 60
URL: www.uib.no/people/nglhe
Blog: http://structuralgeo.wordpress.com/
On Nov 17, 2012, at 10:17 AM, Toshihiko Shimamoto <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Geo-tectonics members
> Nov. 17, 2012
> This is Toshi Shimamoto. I have no objections to what is mentioned by Drs. M. Bestmann and S. Kruger about submission and reviewing papers. I would like to express my view on English in scientific papers as a person from a non-English speaking country.
>
> I am 66 years old, retired from a university in Japan and work for an institute in Beijing now. Throughout my career over 30 years, I have tried to revise nearly all papers by my former students. I fully understand how hard and how much time it takes to revise or often re-write papers (I thank all reviewers who reviewed our papers). But at the same time, I hope that native speakers of English would understand how hard it is for us from non-English speaking countries to write perfect English. Good structure of a paper and logical sequence of discussions are common to anyone. However, as for writing English, there is no way for us to write as perfect English as high-level scientists with English as native language do. I always tried hard to write good English, but once every two or three papers we submitted we receeived comments like, English has to be improved. I understand it is not perfect, but at some point improving English further becomes like "squeezing a dry towel to get drops of water". One may suggest to send it to a professional for revision. Of course I know there are places that revise papers on bussiness. One time one of my former students had sent a manuscript to such a place, and English was improved indeed. But all subtle nature of statements related to the research subjects were all gone. I had to rewrite it completely before sumission of the paper. Without knowing the subject it is not easy to revise a paper properly.
>
> Scientific journals are not literature, but are written forum for scientific community! I can communicate with most foreigners orally with my imperfect English. Scientific journals will not be an international journals if papers with impefect English are excluded. I know that editors of Nature and Science do superb job in making final revision. But most journals do not have that luxury. I think that international journals should have criteria for acceptable level of English. I'm sure some of you have 10 or 20 suggestions to improve my English in this short mail. But if you understand all essence I am trying to make, we are communicating!
>
> Best regards with many thanks for reviewers,
>
> Toshi
>
> --
>
> Toshihiko Shimamoto
> Invited professor
> ----------------------------------------------
> State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics
> Institute of Geology
> China Earthquake Administration
> P. O. Box 9803
> Beijing 100029, China
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> Tel. 86-(0)10-6200-9142 (office)
> Cell phone: 18600262139
>
>
>
> (2012/11/16 0:11), Krueger, Scot wrote:
>> While I agree with the assertion that it would be nice if editors culled a little more of the submissions which are simply not well prepared, I think it is something which can also be taken to extremes the other way. I have been a reviewer on several papers where the lead author clearly did not have english as their primary language, and as a result the manuscript was a challenge to read and understand, but where the science was so good, or the geology described was from such a novel new locality, that I felt happy to put in the hard work of helping the author with a thorough rewrite to bring it up to acceptable standards. I do this simply to make sure that the larger community will be able to see such valuable contributions rather than have them lost due to language difficulties. I think we would all be worse off if the editors had simply tossed such submissions in the circular file because they appeared to need too much work. Deciding whether a submission contains a "diamond in the rough" which is worth the effort to help an author bring it up to publishable standards is part of the task of editors and reviewers alike. As a reviewer, if I can see the diamond I will often put in considerable effort to help an author polish it up so that it is suitable for presentation. If I cannot see the gem buried in the rough, then I am more likely to give it only a cursory review and reject it as needing more work. Every submission is unique and I have great sympathy with editors who balance the scales between what is just shoddy preparation and what is a potentially valuable contribution from an author who simply needs some significant editorial help (which in the case on non-english speaking authors their advisors may not be able to provide).
>>
>> Scot Krueger
>> From: Tectonics & structural geology discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michel Bestmann
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 10:06 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: inappropriate ms to review
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have to raise a topic probably many of us have to deal with. In the last couple of years I received more and more manuscripts to review which are not in an appropriate scientific style. Sometime it is obvious that the ms was written by a student and I do not want to blame him or her, they have to learn how to write a proper research paper. But it should be the task of the supervisor to instruct the student how to write an article and I expect that the supervisor will read carefully the ms before it will be submitted. But many times it seems that this is not the case. Even worse, once I have received a ms to review where the main author is a senior full professor and I only can use the term it was terrible. However it seems that also the coauthors sometimes did not read the ms before submission and also the quality of their contributions is in many times poor. Ironically, these co-authors produce by their own high-quality papers. But it seems that sometimes they do not want to make a big effort into other papers where they are obviously only marginally involved. Please do the reviewers a favor and do not contribute or do a proper job.
>>
>> As we know all it is really a lot of work to do an in-depth review. As a reviewer it is not our task to do corrections which actually should be done before submission by the authors and the coauthors/supervisors. It is really annoying to read such kind of inappropriate ms.
>>
>> Therefore I hope in future that only those ms will be submitted if all authors, coauthors and supervisors have carefully read the ms. And if you are not able (time problem) to stick to a deadline of i.e. special volume, o.k. no problem submit it later to another volume or journal.
>>
>> But please do not bother the reviewers to correct your ms.
>>
>> From now on I personally only will accept papers to review which are in a scientific appropriate style and as soon I realize that this is not the case I will refuse to continue with the review.
>>
>> Finally I have to say: I also have received many excellent ms to review, from students and from senior full professors ;)
>>
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> Michel Bestmann
>>
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