The journal PLOS Biology states that experts from the University of Queensland, Australia, evaluated how they face reading articles, writing, publishing, disseminating and participating in conferences, and detected a substantial disadvantage.

Compared to native English speakers, non-native speakers need up to twice as long to carry out each of these activities.

They pointed out that jobs are rejected two and a half more times, and twelve and a half more times are requested to be reviewed, which is very stressful.

These reasons in one way or another cause a third of scientists and academics to give up participating in international conferences, and half prefer not to present papers because they do not have confidence communicating in English.

jrr/jcm/joe