Principles of English-language academic publication Seminar version October 2012 Carolyn Brown

English language predominance  Source: The New World Order, Joel Kotkin, published by Legatum Institute, November 2011  Since World War II, English has replaced French, Russian, and German as the primary language of business and science  English now spoken by 40% of Europeans (French spoken by 20% of Europeans)  In Latin America, sales of English-language cultural goods increased by 25% in 2010  How does the predominance of English affect your work and publication plans as an academic? Group discussion

Countries ranked by publication of scientific papers Source: Science Watch, Thomson Reuters Science 2007 CountryTotal Papers, United States2,907,592 Japan Germany England France China Canada Italy Spain Australia India South Korea Taiwan 790, , , , , , , , , , , ,940

Countries ranked by publication of scientific papers Country Papers among top one per cent most cited United States54,516 England Germany France Japan Canada Italy Australia China Spain South Korea India Taiwan 10,090 9,427 5,967 5,662 5,301 3,825 2,804 2,189 2,

Top cited journals (2009 impact factor) RankJournalPapers Citations 1Journal of Biological Chemistry54,6951,652,432 2Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (PNAS)30,3961,376,541 3Nature10,5491,242,392 4Science9,3691,125,022 5Physical Review Letters31,112884,911 6J. American Chemical Society29,272881,457 7Physical Review B48,888612,377 8Astrophysical Journal26,418581,299 9New England Journal of Medicine3,564568,698 10Applied Physics Letters36,759549,224

Relative ranking of Mexican scientific papers (in Latin America) Source: SJR country rankings, Latin America, , data from Scopus RankCountryDocuments Citable documents Citations Self- Citations Citations per Document 1Brazil328,361318,2942,409,214783, Mexico125,646122,2681,005,002221, Argentina93,88391,056886,653200, Chile50,37948,964505,58998, Colombia23,49222,785154,07924, Venezuela21,95421,397160,77724, Cuba19,35518,71793,08222, Puerto Rico8,5298,315111,1758, Uruguay7,3267,09381,83812, Peru6,2955,99567,6237,

A different language, a different culture  In giving this course, we have noticed some cultural differences  Do you think there are differences between Spanish- language and English-language scholarly publishing cultures? What would you say they are? Group discussion

A different language, a different culture  What are the features of English-language papers?  Clear  Concise  Focussed  Structured  Attribution:  What is the contribution of the authors?  What is being cited from other authors?

Common problems  Common overall problems with papers noted in teaching academic writing (see examples)  Difficulty defining or expressing the hypothesis – what is the unique contribution of this paper?  Literature review too extensive and too long – no need for review of foundational knowledge  In scientific papers, methods not explained in sufficient detail  Not clear which ideas are the author’s and which ideas are from sources  Structure not clear – information in the wrong section  Elements missing from abstract  What problems do you see in papers? Group discussion

Meeting the expectations of editors  What are editors looking for? What gets a paper published? Group discussion  Do you think there is a good understanding of this in your faculty? Why or why not?  What can you do? How do you help develop a publishing culture at your university?

Ethical issues  Editors are very concerned about ethical issues because of high-profile problems  What kinds of issues?  Plagiarism  Duplicate publication (also called redundant publication or self- plagiarism)  Understanding copyright (permission to reproduce)  “Salami science”  Authorship disputes – who should be considered an author?  Scientific misconduct

Ethical issues

 Have you seen any examples of ethical issues? How are these handled? Discussion  What would you do in the following real situations:  You find part of a student’s paper is too polished, and you suspect it may not be original  A student tells you his supervisor submitted his paper without his permission  A technician in charge of a vital piece of equipment demands to be included as an author in return for running a test on the equipment  You discover that a colleague’s data do not match what he or she published in a paper, leading to a different conclusion

Hypothesis/objective  Unique contribution of your paper, as expressed in the hypothesis or objective Last paragraph of introduction Abstract Cover letter

Hypothesis/objective  Last paragraph of introduction  Follows from rest of introduction  Results and discussion refer back to this statement of hypothesis  Discussion of examples  Abstract  Contains all elements of the paper  Includes a clear statement of the objective  First part editors read – may make decision based on abstract; only part most readers ever read  Discussion of examples  Cover letter  Assures editor that there are no ethical issues  “Sells” editor on the value of your paper  Sample cover letter

Hypothesis/objective  Strength of claim  How does your paper fill a gap in the research or literature?  If you can make a claim for the originality and uniqueness of your paper, it is more likely to be published  “This is the first paper to...”  “We used a unique approach...”  “This has never before been studied in humans.”  But make sure you can make that claim  “To our knowledge...”  “As far as we are aware...”  “While other studies have covered..., our paper is the first to explore...”