Raising the Acceptance Rate of Article Submissions from ESL Authors

Raising the acceptance rate of article submissions from ESL authors a white paper Yeen Lau, BioMed Central Tom da Costa, Edanz Group November 2014 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY COMPARISON OF ACCEPTANCE RATES FOR SUBMISSIONS TO BIOMED CENTRAL JOURNALS BioMed Central overall Acceptance rate of acceptance rate manuscripts edited by Edanz Rejected Accepted 39% 66% Since 2011 BioMed Central has partnered with Edanz to support non-native English speaking researchers through language editing, on-campus educational workshops and e-learning. BioMed Central and Edanz analyzed the outcomes of 232 manuscripts on which Edanz had performed language editing and where the designated target journal was a BioMed Central journal. Of the submitted manuscripts on which Edanz performed language editing, 66% were accepted for publication (75% of those from Japan, 59% from China and 68% from the rest of the world). This compares favourably with the overall percentage of manuscripts that were accepted by BioMed Central in 2013: 39% (44% of those from Japan, 25% from China and 42% from the rest of the world). The use of a trusted and high quality language editing service, ideally as part of a wider strategy of author outreach, seems to improve the likelihood of manuscript acceptance and is a positive way to help non-native English speaking authors publish their research. INTRODUCTION MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS TO BIOMED CENTRAL JOURNALS Researchers and clinicians, particularly non-native English speakers, face a 80% variety of challenges when trying to publish manuscripts: selecting the 70% appropriate journal, adhering to journal 60% guidelines, interpreting journal editor decisions and reviewers’ comments, 50% writing in English, as well as keeping up 40% with the literature [1]. Researcher demography is also changing. More and 30% more research from Asia and other 20% non-native English speaking countries is 10% being published in English language journals, approaching parity with the 0% United States and the European Union 2010 2011 2012 2013 [2]. Scopus publication data from 2012 Submissions from China showed that nearly 70% of publications Submissions from Asia (including China) Submissions from all countries except Asia were from non-native English speaking countries, with East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) contributing to more Figure 1: Manuscript submissions to BioMed than 20% of the total [3]—these Central journals 2010–13 percentages are up from 54% and 13%, respectively, in 1996. Within a few years, there will likely be more resources for authors, such as BMJ’s submissions from researchers in China patient consent forms [6]. Other than from those in the United States. publishers provide multi-language Submission data from BioMed Central educational resources, such as corroborates this increase (Figure 1). Springer’s Author Academy [7]. Springer, together with Edanz, also The changing researcher demographics organises and delivers local author described above have exacerbated workshops that aim to help authors certain issues, too: author improve their scientific writing skills and disambiguation; differences in culture provide guidance on how to contribute and communication styles; language as a peer reviewer. barriers; and the pressure placed upon peer reviewers. Publishers worldwide are LANGUAGE BARRIERS addressing this demographic shift in a Language barriers are a specific variety of ways. Some initiatives to challenge for the entire scientific address these include cross publisher publishing process, from authors collaboration on ORCID, the researcher through to funding bodies, journal digital identifier, and local language web editors and publishers. For example, portals such as BioMed Central’s native English speakers spend around ‘Gateways’ for China and Japan [4, 5]. 95 hours preparing a manuscript—as a Some publishers provide comparison, survey results from China industry-standard multi-language suggest that over 40% of authors spend more than 200 hours [1, 8]. For increases the quality of their funders, previous studies have manuscripts. suggested that the proficiency in the English language among a country’s For journal editors, receiving higher scientists may influence its scientific quality manuscripts not only saves their output [9–13]. For journal editors and time during initial assessment, but also reviewers, manuscripts from non-native helps them in their relationship with English speaking authors often suffer busy peer reviewers: well-written from some or all of the following manuscripts that conform to journal problems: poor word or phrase choice; guidelines allow peer reviewers to poor grammar; non-adherence to concentrate on the science. journal guidelines; poor structure. The Furthermore, there are savings in time resulting manuscripts have low and resources spent on manuscripts readability—busy journal editors and that might otherwise be rejected. reviewers may end up rejecting potentially good science because the BIOMED CENTRAL–EDANZ PARTNERSHIP manuscript is poorly prepared. To support non-native English speaking authors in getting legitimate and There are a handful of professional professional language editing help, in language editing service providers that 2011 BioMed Central and Springer both operate worldwide. Some publishers chose a “partner” relationship with have recognised language editing as a Edanz after a vetting process. In potential revenue stream by providing addition to recommending Edanz to services under their name—such as authors seeking language editing, Edanz Elsevier and Nature Publishing Group and BioMed Central/Springer have [14, 15]. While there are many legitimate co-delivered over 160 author and professional service providers, workshops. There is no financial some poor practices have been reported relationship between Edanz and BioMed within the language editing and author Central/Springer, although authors do services industry. For example, receive a 10% discount on Edanz’s unscrupulous businesses offering services. publication support in China were exposed in a news article published in Many BioMed Central journals Science: some were selling authorships, recommend Edanz to authors others were brokering deals on data or pre-submission from within the journal ghostwriting manuscripts [16]. Authors instructions [17]. The overall goals of might also struggle to make an this partnership are to: 1) improve the informed choice, when a Google search quality of submissions to BioMed for language editing services can yield Central journals by recommending a numerous service providers. vetted and approved language editing service provider; and 2) train and Testimonials from non-native English educate authors on how to write and speaking researchers and clinicians prepare manuscripts for submission to indicate that they appreciate journals international journals. (and journal editors) recommending a reliable and high quality service—this in turn saves their time and potentially OBJECTIVES OF the manuscript title and the author’s given name and family name. ANALYSIS However, there were some limitations in We aimed to measure the impact of the the full matching method. Occasionally, Edanz–BioMed Central partnership using author names were spelled slightly the manuscript acceptance rate. What differently, or their given names and was the acceptance rate of manuscripts family names inverted (most frequently by authors who used the Edanz among Chinese authors). Another language editing service prior to limitation was the difficulty in finding submission? How did it differ from the exact matches on manuscript titles overall acceptance rate of manuscripts owing to minor differences in spelling, submitted to BioMed Central? word order or punctuation. These challenges meant that the Excel formulas were not adequate in METHODOLOGY identifying all actual matches. In a second stage of analysis, further Data were from all 232 manuscript manuscript matches were identified language editing orders undertaken by manually by the strong similarity in their Edanz between 1/1/2013 and titles and author names. 30/3/2013, with a target journal defined as a BioMed Central journal. The matching analysis revealed the Data were from each of Edanz’s three proportion of Edanz-edited manuscripts business units, defined as Japan, China that were submitted to and accepted by and the rest of the world. BioMed Central journals. The acceptance rate of Edanz-edited manuscripts was Data supplied were: Edanz order date; then compared with the acceptance rate Edanz customer given name, family of all manuscripts submitted to BioMed name; target journal; the edited title of Central during the whole of 2013. the manuscript. All data were password protected, and none were shared outside of BioMed Central and Edanz. I discovered Edanz through the BioMed Central “ recommendation ... They are fast, thorough To find out whether the Edanz-edited and give me so many useful tips. The best manuscripts were submitted to and thing about Edanz is that they not only edit my accepted by a BioMed Central journal, language, they also edit and recommend cross-matching analysis and manual changes in the content ... Even my statistician checking were performed. All analyses was impressed with the knowledge the person were carried out by BioMed Central. editing my manuscript had about statistics. I Using database queries, manuscript have no doubt in my mind that Edanz has records on the BioMed Central system helped me increase my chances of being were extracted

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