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 papersSource: Science Watch, Thomson Reuters Science 2007

Country Total Papers, 1996-2006

United States 2,907,592

JapanGermanyEnglandFranceChinaCanadaItalySpainAustraliaIndiaSouth KoreaTaiwan

790,510742,917660,808535,629422,993394,727369,138263,469248,189211,063180,329124,940

Countries ranked by publication of scientific papersCountry Papers among top

one per cent most cited United States 54,516

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 2,155 929 694 550

Top cited journals (2009 impact factor)Rank Journal Papers

1998-2009 Citations

1 Journal of Biological Chemistry

54,695 1,652,432

2 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (PNAS)

30,396 1,376,541

3 Nature 10,549 1,242,392

4 Science 9,369 1,125,022

5 Physical Review Letters 31,112 884,911

6 J. American Chemical Society 29,272 881,457

7 Physical Review B 48,888 612,377

8 Astrophysical Journal 26,418 581,299

9 New England Journal of Medicine

3,564 568,698

10 Applied Physics Letters 36,759 549,224

Relative ranking of Mexican scientific papers (in Latin America)Source: SJR country rankings, Latin America, 1996-2010, data from Scopus

Rank CountryDocuments

Citable documents

CitationsSelf-Citations

Citations per Document

1 Brazil 328,361 318,294 2,409,214 783,003 9.57

2 Mexico 125,646 122,268 1,005,002 221,648 9.49

3 Argentina 93,883 91,056 886,653 200,940 10.56

4 Chile 50,379 48,964 505,589 98,339 12.69

5 Colombia 23,492 22,785 154,079 24,235 10.00

6 Venezuela 21,954 21,397 160,777 24,663 8.13

7 Cuba 19,355 18,717 93,082 22,445 5.35

8 Puerto Rico 8,529 8,315 111,175 8,834 14.65

9 Uruguay 7,326 7,093 81,838 12,291 13.51

10 Peru 6,295 5,995 67,623 7,768 13.97

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

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 ...”