Abstract
English is the lingua franca for scientific communication, but some journals, especially in developing countries, still publish non-English studies. A shift towards publishing in English may promote internationalization and more visibility of scientific journals. Here we compared quality indexes between Brazilian journals that have always published in English and journals that have published in languages other than English. We also investigated whether a temporal shift towards publishing in English led to elevated quality measures. Our analyses covered 16 Brazilian biodiversity journals and accounted for 12640 papers published since 2007. The mean impact factor was on average 55% higher in journals that have published consistently in English, compared to the so-called multilanguage journals. The proportion of publications in English increased to nearly three times the original value in multilanguage journals between 2007 and 2016, and the impact factor tripled during this period. At the same time, the Qualis-Capes classifications (B1-B2-B3) tended to fall. Publishing in English can be a first step to increased visibility, and this is particularly important for biodiversity journals, since Brazilian ecosystems are considered of interest to the international scientific community and nature conservation.
Highlights
For researchers to reach a higher scientific status and academic promotion, they are encouraged to communicate their research findings as peer-reviewed publications in respectable refereed journals (Luukkonen 1992, Bornmann & Williams 2017)
The ‘national literature tradition’, meaning that authors tend to publish in the language of the country they live in (Swales 1985, Meneghini & Packer 2007, Ma et al 2012), has prevailed throughout the history of Latin American scientific journals
A journal will not be found in the Qualis-Capes list if none of the graduate programs of that area published in it that year (Barata 2016)
Summary
For researchers to reach a higher scientific status and academic promotion, they are encouraged to communicate their research findings as peer-reviewed publications in respectable refereed journals (Luukkonen 1992, Bornmann & Williams 2017). Beyond publishing, having their work cited is important, as this helps all levels of academic work to reach wider audiences (Clapham 2005). To achieve this, publishing scientific papers in English has become paramount (López-Navarro et al 2015, Di Bitetti & Ferreras 2017). Publications in Portuguese and Spanish were commonplace and accounted for a significant part of what was published in journals from the southern neotropical region. In the past 10 years or so, this pattern has changed substantially, and journals have gradually modified their publishing policies, submissions of manuscripts in English have
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