>I'm also kind of shocked at the idea that language cause greater barriers to reading a paper than to writing one in a non-native language. When writing people

>I'm also kind of shocked at the idea that language cause greater barriers to reading a paper than to writing one in a non-native language. When writing people needs just a small subset of the language. Lets say that with the 10% of the language you can express most ideas in a simple way, and be understood. When you read you face a different subset, maybe a much more wide vocabulary, a lot of phrasal verbs, not familiar constructions, local jargon or ambiguous cultural context... plus the research theme, that can be difficult to grasp by itself. A funny and not uncommon fact when you are in an international congress is to find that everybody understands the other, until the English native researcher starts to speak. Journals often look for this symptoms as a seal of quality, but it is not. The sad fact is that speaking English well doesn't made you an expert on science, or a genius, you are just an English-native.