Timeline for How to tactfully (and constructively) discuss language issues when writing a referee report
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
14 events
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| Mar 27 at 21:18 | comment | added | Servaes | Re: "...presumably if the authors did have access to a willing native proofreader, they would have used their help the first time around" That's a pretty bold assumption, and quite obviously false, as anyone with an internet connection has access to a willing native proofreader. It seems more realistic that the author(s) were not willing to make the effort of having their paper proofread by someone trained in writing English (which most natives barely are). There is nothing rude about letting them know that they should make the effort, native or not. | |
| Mar 27 at 15:41 | comment | added | ScottishTapWater | At the end of the day, there's a huge benefit to having a lingua franca in science. Primarily, everyone just learns the same thing as their second language and then we can all read all of science. Whether that should be english is a different matter. Now, given the level of communicative excellence we expect in scientific literature, I don't think it's an unreasonable burden to expect non-native speakers to have their papers editted by a native speaker or translated professionally if they're not up to the standard. It's also worth noting that many native speakers can't hit this standard. | |
| Mar 27 at 14:01 | comment | added | Kimball | Is this a journal which has proper editorial staff? If so I don't usually spend much effort correcting English usage in papers (maybe note a couple common mistakes and say that at some stage grammar should be corrected), except in the case where it obscures the meaning. | |
| Mar 27 at 7:32 | answer | added | Aru Ray | timeline score: 9 | |
| Mar 27 at 2:43 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Mar 26 at 21:08 | comment | added | Adam Přenosil | Well, that's your answer then, isn't it? If your goal is to avoid having them feel what you felt, either be sure that they are not (near) native speakers, or avoid implying that they are not (near) native speakers. You seem to be saying both "I was upset because someone had falsely assumed I was a non-native speaker" (understandable) and "these are actual non-native speakers who write actually ungrammatical English". I understand the question of "how do you bring up language issues sensitively" but I guess I don't really understand why you are drawing a parallel between the two situations. | |
| Mar 26 at 20:51 | comment | added | Stanley Yao Xiao | @AdamPřenosil of course there is a lot of subjectivity as to whether something is "seriously rude"... I most certainly considered the report to be seriously rude, though you might disagree with my assessment. This is exactly why I asked the question here, I do not want to come off as unacceptably rude even though I have no intention of being rude at all. That said, I do not give any benefit of the doubt to the referee: to me we received those comments because the referee saw our names and assumed we were Asians who did not speak English. | |
| Mar 26 at 20:46 | comment | added | Adam Přenosil | @StanleyYaoXiao Understood, although unless the report was seriously rude – as in, insulting rather than merely saying that your written English is bad – it might not be clear to the editor to what extent the referee was exaggerating the issue. I mean, in many cases it is legitimate to strongly criticize the quality of the writing and to propose to the authors to consult a native speaker. (I personally don't do this not because I find it insulting but because presumably if the authors did have access to a willing native proofreader, they would have used their help the first time around.) | |
| Mar 26 at 20:26 | comment | added | Richard Erickson | @AdamPřenosil depending upon the tone and content of the reviews, a good editor will shelter authors from abusive or otherwise bad reviewer comments. Especially for younger authors or those who may not be able to standup for themselves. | |
| Mar 26 at 19:49 | comment | added | Stanley Yao Xiao | @AdamPřenosil If the same situation happened today I would most certainly bring this up to the editors. At the time I was a PhD student who was virtually unknown, so I did not feel that my comments to the editor (who is a prominent academic, very well-known and connected in my field) would help me, and might be perceived as very negative or whiney. It could have potentially hurt my future career aspects, so I decided not to do it. That said, a journal should take responsibility for what their referees do because they were the ones who asked said people to referee their submissions. | |
| Mar 26 at 19:21 | comment | added | Adam Přenosil | "Because of this, I have vowed to never submit a paper to this particular journal again (though I did not bring this issue with the editors)." I am sorry, but this makes zero sense to me. How is it the journal's responsibility if a referee exaggerates languages issues in a manuscript? A meaningful course of action would be the opposite: instead of vowing not to submit to journal X but not saying anything to the editors, it would have made sense to mention this to the editors' (who can act on it in some way or another) but not engage in a dramatic but private act of vowing not to submit there. | |
| Mar 26 at 19:01 | answer | added | Richard Erickson | timeline score: 17 | |
| Mar 26 at 18:50 | comment | added | Richard Erickson | As an aside, I've grown up a native English speaker and gotten snarky reviewers telling me to get help from a native speaker. | |
| Mar 26 at 18:41 | history | asked | Stanley Yao Xiao | CC BY-SA 4.0 |