English Writing Proficiency and the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas

Scientific research and technological innovation have contributed enormously to the growth of the global economy. Yet, despite advances in research capabilities globally, important research is overlooked. Biomedical articles published by scientists from primarily non-English-speaking countries attract 7.7% fewer citations. One hypothesis is that higher English writing quality explains this gap. Working with a sample of over 30,000 full-text articles from 20 journals, we find that writing quality bears little bibliometric effect; rather, journal selection effects explain much of the variation. Our results suggest that the under-citing of published papers is explained by mechanisms other than writing quality. This research has implications in understanding frictions to the dissemination of scientific knowledge from low-income and non-anglophone regions.