ArticleAmbio2017
Publish (in English) or perish: The effect on citation rate of using languages other than English in scientific publications.
Article in Ambio, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Associations between prevalent unhealthy lifestyles and the gut microbiota: a comprehensive multi-database bibliometric analysis of pathogenic mechanisms and clinical trajectories.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Health Effects of Religion, Spirituality, and Supernatural Beliefs in Mainland China: A Systematic Review.Journal of religion and health · 2022Pooled it
- Investigating the landscape and trajectory of spina bifida research in Asia: a bibliometric analysis.Child's nervous system : ChNS : official journal of the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery · 2022Pooled it
- Systematic review on post-stroke computerized cognitive training: Unveiling the impact of confounding factors.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Pooled it
- Multilevel factors influencing child overweight and obesity in the Pacific Islands.The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific · 2026Review
- [Scientific output of the Revista Médica del IMSS in PubMed (2005-2025): a bibliometric analysis].Revista medica del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- National-, institutional-, and individual-level determinants of pharmacology and pharmacy research excellence: an analysis of stanford-elsevier lists of the top 2% scholars (2017-2023).Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- The Gender and Geographic Location of Authors Impact Citation Rates of GBE Papers.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- BioWikiNet: Multilingual wikipedia taxonomic networks aligned with the GBIF backbone taxonomy.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Perceived barriers for accessing international research funding among Latin American researchers.PloS one · 2026Article
- Reporting quality of qualitative health studies published by Peruvian authors: A scoping review.PloS one · 2026Article
- Assessment of H-index and research impact amongst academic medical oncologists in Canada.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- Building better citation practices in public health research: Practical considerations for student researchers, from source discovery to crafting and positioning claims.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Clam research in Nunavut: A scoping review of the literature.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025Review
- Language inclusion intentions in scoping reviews.Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA · 2025Article
- Language barriers in conservation science citation networks.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Observational
- Systematic Review of the Ovitrap Surveillance ofTropical medicine and infectious disease · 2025Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is a tendency for non-native English scientists to publish exclusively in English, assuming that this will make their articles more visible and cited. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the effect of language on the number of citations of articles published in six natural sciences journals from five countries that publish papers in either English or other languages. We analyzed the effect of language (English vs non-English), paper length, and year of publication on the number of citations. The articles published in English have a higher number of citations than those published in other languages, when the effect of journal, year of publication, and paper length are statistically controlled. This may result because English articles are accessible to a larger audience, but other factors need to be explored. Universities and scientific institutions should be aware of this situation and improve the teaching of English, especially in the natural sciences.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.