Seven Deadly Sins: Culture’s Effect on Scholarly Editing and Publishing

Abstract

The opinion piece aims to draw readers’ attention to the effects cultures other than English-related ones exert on the processes of scholarly editing and publishing. Non-Anglophone writers with little academic English skills or a weak command of English tend to face desk-rejections or very difficult and time-consuming rounds of edits and revisions. Second-language researchers often are biased toward national schools of thought with the most prominent international research ignored. Such authors are unaware of the recent developments in their field on a global scale and are sometimes prone to misunderstanding scientific and academic genres in the internationally accepted mode. Non-Anglophone writers are also inclined toward native-language patterns of thought and, consequently, rhetorical schemas different from English. Such second-language researchers may have their specific understanding of ethics and criticism, responding to the latter in an unexpectedly harsh way. This combination of factors can lead to unoriginal, vague, unimportant, and unacceptable submissions to international journals, resulting in failures to disseminate their research globally. The authors share their approaches to curbing unpleasant and inefficient experiences for second-language contributors, editors, and reviewers.