Is there such a thing called native speaker bias when publishing?

Question

This has been a subject that has occupied my thoughts for the past years but haven't really managed to formulate it completely for myself. I have this feeling (and I can't say it's more than a feeling at this point) that native speakers of English have an easier time with getting their article published.

I should make it clear, right away, that I don't mean just because you are a native speaker you can get whatever published, but given a particular project, if the main author is a native speaker the article is more likely to get accepted, or at least draw more positive reviews. I motivate the potential existence of such a bias on the fact that it's likely that a native speaker does a better job in writing than someone who has English as a foreign language.

Since I do not have any data to back this theory up, I would like to ask if you have come across any numbers/facts regarding any such bias in the publication/acceptance rates in general, as well as high-IF journals specifically.

EDIT: I should perhaps rephrase and add a bit more details to the question here. I do not refer to small grammatical mistakes, misspellings or anything of that nature. What I am referring to here, is the wider vocabulary a native-speaker has in his/her disposal, the phrases and expressions that they use that might not be readily and easily available to non-native speaker. I could perhaps summarise it the differences as the metaphorical chocolate chips that a native speaker can and most likely will bake into the cookie that is the manuscript.

I am clear on the point that the clearness criteria is still the most important and that's why I did not talk about the rejections (it's natural that non-native speakers get their papers rejected based on language more often compared to native speakers). As a non-native speaker myself, it is beyond any doubt that I need to write my manuscripts with a clearly understandable language in order for them to get published, but again that's not really what I am asking here. I am more interested in whether or not articles written by native speakers come across as "better quality" based on the fact that they are more likely to utilise their edge with the language.

There are of course other factors at play, but it would be interesting to see if there are any stats involved.

Answer 1

If the effect is due to native speakers writing better in that language --- whether that's due to fewer grammatical errors, larger vocabulary, it's not really a native-speaker bias as such. You could say that native speakers have an "unfair advantage" in the sense that they have a leg up in using the language, but I think it's incorrect to call that a bias. Tall players may have an advantage in basketball, but that on its own doesn't mean that there is a "tallness bias" in player selection.

In addition, it's not clear how reviewers (or anyone else who hadn't met the author personally) could know that the author was a native speaker, as opposed to just a good writer in the language. I'd say that to argue it was a native speaker bias specifically, you'd have to show that native speakers as a whole were given preferential treatment over non-native speakers, independent of their writing ability.

A different question, though, would be whether there's a writing quality bias. I think it's possible that articles with a "better" writing style (whatever that may mean) get an edge over articles that are competently but not so eloquently written. It could be argued that this is a bias, if it means that interesting and important results are less likely to be published due to writing-quality issues at the top end of the scale. Everyone agrees that some minimum level of writing quality is needed for the article to be readable and useful, but if excellent writing "above and beyond" that minimum gives an article an undue boost over others with equally important findings, that could be a bias. Again, though, it would be a bias in the relative evaluation of characteristics of the articles themselves, not a bias related to the author's status as a native or non-native speaker. In particular, this would mean that native speakers who aren't very good writers would also be adversely affected by the bias.

I don't know of any data on this issue, but I'd be skeptical that there is a bias towards native speakers per se. I could believe there is a bias towards better writing (even when extra-good writing "doesn't matter" in terms of the scientific value of the article).

Answer 2

Let me share with you my personal experience and feeling about this issue. I am not a native English speaker and I am aware that my word choices and the patterns of my sentences makes it clear to my audiences and especially my readers. However, I have received several positive compliments in the referee reports of my papers about my writings. Therefore I strongly believe that people who are in charge of deciding about accepting a paper mostly consider the logical and grammatical correctness of the writing of the paper ( and of course its scientific value). So I would be very surprised if I see such a phenomenon as you described.

Answer 3

The answer is yes but the issue is not as clear as you state it. To publish a paper, it must meet certain criteria which include form, clarity and of course scientific contribution. If you are a native speaker it will be easier to meet these criteria and particularly those that deal with language issues. The disadvantage we, who are non-native speakers, meet is to be good enough with regards to these criteria. The point is not that grammatical errors as such may make acceptance less likely but if the language makes understanding the paper difficult or even make one misunderstand the paper, then it becomes a problem.

So the problem can be called bias but it can also be seen as not meeting the standards required. From the latter point it is not clearly a matter of native vs. non-native speakers but a matter of being able to express the science in an intelligible way. I am chief editor of an international journal, albeit not with the IF of Nature, and out of all papers we reject (50% of all submitted) a small part is based on the above problem. In most cases it is due to poor science and then with no particular emphasis on native or not speakers.