> I'm also kind of shocked at the idea that language barriers cause greater barriers to reading a paper (91% time increase) than to writing one (51%) in a non-n

> I'm also kind of shocked at the idea that language barriers cause greater barriers to reading a paper (91% time increase) than to writing one (51%) in a non-native language. This actually makes sense to me. Reading a paper takes time on the scale of hours, and having to stop to parse difficult sentences or look up unfamiliar words can add to that substantially. Writing a paper takes time on the scale of weeks to months, and there's a lot that goes into it other than putting words down on paper. Making figures, figuring out how to argue a certain point, thinking about what examples to provide to best illustrate what you're trying to get across--these are big parts of the writing process that are more or less language agnostic in the sense that the time-intensive part can be carried out in the writer's native language and the result translated into English. If I were to try to read a paper in my field in Russian (a language I have a decent but far from fluent grasp on, and I don't know the jargon of my field) I would expect it to take at least twice as long as reading it in English. Translating one of my papers into Russian would take a long time, but it would not double the total time spent on writing the paper.