THE IMPACT OF ENGLISH ON SCIENTIFIC AND ACADEMIC PUBLICATION IN

THE FIELD OF TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING

Wlisses Bonelá Fontoura

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Department of Transportation Engineering
Althea Marie Danielski
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Department of Humanities & Arts

ABSTRACT
English is a global language, being the official language in over 50 countries. Consequently, English is a dominant
language in scientific publications and academic exchange. However, despite being the second most spoken
language in the world, many researchers don't speak English, struggling to access the best studies in their field and
to publish their articles. Aiming to identify and to understand the impact of English on scientific publications about
transportation, this study presents an analysis of the search results obtained in research databases. In addition, this
study presents a comparative analysis between studies published in English and in other languages. The results
show that articles in English have more citations and they are more likely to be published in the best journals.
Furthermore, it was found that non-native English speakers translate their articles as a strategy to internationalize
their research.

RESUMO
O inglês é um idioma global, sendo o idioma oficial em mais de 50 países. Consequentemente, o inglês é o idioma
dominante em publicações científicas e na troca de experiências acadêmicas. Entretanto, apesar de ser o segundo
idioma mais falado no mundo, muitos pesquisadores não falam inglês, apresentando dificuldades para ter acesso
aos melhores estudos e para publicar os seus artigos. Com o objetivo de identificar e compreender o impacto do
inglês nas publicações científicas sobre transportes, este estudo apresenta uma análise dos resultados de buscas em
bases de dados. Além disso, é apresentada uma análise comparativa entre estudos publicados em inglês e em outros
idiomas. Os resultados mostram que os artigos em inglês têm mais citações e possuem mais chances de serem
publicados nos melhores jornais. Além disso, constatou-se que os pesquisadores que possuem inglês como segundo
idioma traduzem os seus artigos como estratégia de internacionalização de suas pesquisas.

1. INTRODUCTION
English is legally an official language in more than 50 countries and the most studied foreign
language in the world, being spoken by 1.35 billion people (Lyons, 2021). However, this group
represents only 17% of the world population (United Nations, 2021). Therefore, despite being
called as the global language, English is still spoken by a small portion of the world's
population.

There are several barriers to learning English such as, environment, age, motivation, general
exposure to English, poverty, underdevelopment, among others (Frans, 2016). Among all these
challenges, a person economic status stands out as the greatest obstacles, since learning a second
language is a privilege of the middle and upper classes in many countries (Vandrik, 2014).
Thus, many people around the world only speak their native language, mainly in developing
and underdeveloped countries (Pool, 2018).

As a result of this current scenario, many graduate students and researchers around the world
do not speak English, facing challenges to develop their research. The main challenge faced by
them is to find a variety of studies published in their native language. Regardless of the field of
study, most scientific studies are published in English (Huttner-Koros, 2015). Consequently,
many researchers who do not speak English develop their studies without consulting the most
cited articles in their field of study.

The supremacy of English in scientific publication and academic exchange occurs because,
besides the native English speakers, non-native English speakers also publish in English as a
strategy to internationalize their studies (Ferguson, Pérez-Llantada & Plo, 2011). In many fields
of research, the best journals only publish manuscripts in English, forcing researchers to
translate their studies. In Transport Engineering it is no different, as can be seen in the
instructions for authors by the best journals, such as Transport Policy, Transportation Research
(Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D and Part E), Transport Review, among others.

Based on this discussion, the following research problem is identified: How does English affect
the development of studies by researchers in the field of transportation engineering? Thus, this
paper aims to identify, the effects of English on the development of research in the field of
Transport Engineering. In addition to pointing out the challenges caused by not being fluent in
English, it is intended to present suggestions to improve the academic performance of non-
English speakers’ students and researchers of the field. For that, a literature review and an
analysis of the main academic research databases was carried out.

In addition to this introductory section, this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents
the methodology used in this study. Section 3 presents a discussion about the dominance of
English in scientific publication. Section 4 discuss the scientific publication and academic
exchange in Transportation Engineering. Finally, the authors’ main conclusions and
recommendations for future research are presented in Section 5.

2. THE DOMINANCE OF ENGLISH IN SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATION AND

ACADEMIC EXCHANGE
A thought, an action or a process can be described in different ways in a single language. The
number of possibilities to describe them increases when they are expressed in more than one
language. However, the differences between languages (different vocabulary, diverse accents,
among others) can cause disruptions in communication, which is huge a problem in academia,
as it hinders the dissemination of information (Pudelko and Tenzer, 2019).

In addition to standardizing scholarly journal publications, scholars and researchers noted the
need to use a universal language to facilitate the dissemination of research. Therefore, English
was recognized as the language of international science (Gordin, 2015). Consequently, the use
of English in the academic domain has grown to the point of being a necessary skill for
academics and researchers (Landa, 2006).

To have access to the best studies published in any field of study, the researcher needs to have
at least English reading skills (Hyland, 2009). However, as already mentioned, speaking a
second language is a symbol of social and economic status in many countries. Therefore, in
many developing countries where English is not the official language, most students do not
have English classes in public schools and, when they do, the courses are basic, which is not
enough to become fluent (Nunan, 2003; Draper, 2012; Sayer, 2015; Wijayatunga, 2018). Thus,
the students who pursue an academic career struggle with English because, to understand, to
evaluate, to compare, and to synthesize the information in the scientific articles, they need to
be fluent in the language (Grabe, 1991).

In addition to the challenge of understanding international studies, non-English-speaking

researchers have a major challenge in disseminating their findings. The articles published in
other languages than English are often restricted to local journals, while English articles are
accessible to a large audience, having a higher number of citations than those published in other
languages (Bitetti and Ferreras, 2017). Therefore, as a strategy for the internationalization of
their research, academics usually translate their articles into English. However, this activity
demands a high level of proficiency in English.

To get around the problem of not being fluent in English, many students use online tools to
translate international articles into their native language and to translate their studies into
English (Ducar and Schocket, 2018). However, these tools are not 100% reliable. So, using
these tools, the students are unable to fully understand the articles published by international
journals and they also submit poorly written articles to journals, impacting its evaluation and
approval (Pudelko and Tenzer, 2019).

If English reading and writing skills are essential for conducting and disseminating research,
listening, and speaking skills become essential in academic networking. As most articles are
published in English, this language becomes the official language of major international
conferences (Kirkpatrick, Kageto and Sato, 2013). Thus, it is fundamental to have English
speaking and listening skills to exchange information with the best researchers in your field at
these events.

Given the challenges discussed in this section, it is evident that non-English speakers have
additional barriers to pursuing an academic carrier when compared to English speakers. To
identify and analyze the reality of transport engineering researchers who do not speak English,
we developed a methodological procedure which is presented in the next section.

3. METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURE
To achieve the objective of this study, we will perform an analysis of search results in the main
academic research databases. This analysis will compare the number of publications and
citations of articles in English and in other languages. We also intend to compare the impact
factor of journals that only accept English articles and journals that accept research in other
languages. Finally, we analyze the schedules (presentations, workshops, and sessions) of the
main international conferences in the field. For that, we developed a methodological procedure
which is described below.

As can be seen in Figure 1, the first step of this methodological procedure is defining the search
criteria. At this point, we defined the languages that would be analyzed and the areas of
transport engineering that would be used in the searches. Thus, we choose to compare the
number of publications in three languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese. These languages
are the second, the third and the sixth most spoken language in the world, respectively (Lane,
2021). For this, we performed a search for scientific articles about four major areas of
Transportation Engineering: logistics, urban mobility, transportation planning and traffic
engineering.

Figure 1: Methodological framework

To find articles in these areas and in the selected languages, we selected three databases:
Compendex, ScienceDirect and Scopus. In addition, searches were performed on Google
Scholar, a web search engine. It is worth mentioning that these searches were carried out in
November 2021.

In addition to analyzing the number of publications and citations, guidelines for authors and the
metrics of some journals resulting from these searches were analyzed. Regarding the
conferences, we analyze the program of the last year (2021) of five international transportation
conferences, each one in a different continent: Annual Meeting - Transportation Research
Board (America), European Transport Conference, Eastern Asia Society for Transportation
Studies Conference, Annual Southern African Transport Conference and Annual Victorian
Transport Infrastructure Conference (Oceania).

In Step 3, the data obtained in the searches was extracted, synthesized, and analyzed. Finally,
in the last step (Step 4), these data were used to discuss the effects of English in transportation
scientific publications and academic exchange, presenting the main findings of this study and
suggestions for future studies.

4. SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS AND CONFERENCES ABOUT

TRANSPORTATION
As discussed in the previous section, we searched for articles in four areas of transportation
engineering (Logistics, Traffic Engineering, Transport Planning and Urban Mobility) to
identify the effects of English on science dissemination. Among the three languages analyzed
in this study (English, Spanish and Portuguese), English is the one with the most documents in
the three databases and the search tool used in this study, as can be seen in Table 1.
 Table 1: Research results
Review
Research Topic Language Database Documents
Articles
Compendex 141,762 65,992
Google Scholar 2,840,000 107
English
Science Direct 120,426 6,951
Scopus 600,275 519,292
Compendex 194 120
Spanish Google Scholar 1,550,000 6,100
Logistics
(Logística ) Science Direct 8,580 196
Scopus 687 598
Compendex 194 120
Portuguese Google Scholar 1,550,000 6,100
(Logística ) Science Direct 8,580 196
Scopus 687 598
Compendex 274,464 111,618
Google Scholar 3,250,000 126,000
English
Science Direct 157,543 6,079
Scopus 42876 18,755
Compendex 25 17
Spanish
Traffic Google Scholar 114,000 540
(Ingeniería de
Engineering Science Direct 139 6
tráfico )
Scopus 2 1
Compendex 22 19
Portuguese
Google Scholar 89,500 551
(Engenharia
Science Direct 41 1
de tráfego )
Scopus 1 1
Compendex 101,762 50,210
Google Scholar 3,760,000 187,000
English
Science Direct 252,805 14,723
Scopus 63,039 38,113
Compendex 11 10
Spanish
Transportation Google Scholar 567,000 2,110
(Planificación
Planning Science Direct 724 56
del transporte )
Scopus 11 10
Portuguese Compendex 12 7
(Planejamento Google Scholar 427,000 4,370
de Science Direct 233 3
Transportes ) Scopus 3 3
Compendex 27,515 15,117
Google Scholar 3,220,000 142,000
English
Science Direct 84,902 4,971
Scopus 25,214 16,387
Compendex 14 14
Spanish
Google Scholar 338,000 1,610
Urban Mobility (Movilidad
Science Direct 530 16
Urbana )
Scopus 54 47
Compendex 6 1
Portuguese
Google Scholar 230,000 1,730
(Mobilidade
Science Direct 65 2
Urbana )
Scopus 48 41
When filtering the results for peer-reviewed articles, the number of results in English is still
higher than in the other two languages. On ScienceDirect, for example, the search result in
English shows thousands of review articles for the four areas, while for Spanish and Portuguese
the searches resulted in only hundreds, dozens or even a few units of review articles. It is
noteworthy that these numbers represent the raw values of the searches, i.e., we did not review
the article titles and the abstracts to eliminate articles not related to transportation engineering.

For Spanish and Portuguese speakers, some search results may be the same due to the similarity
in the writing of some terms, such as logistics. In these cases, researchers need to filter the
articles that are in their language. However, it is not only in these cases that the search results
show articles in other languages than the one used in the search. As already discussed, many
scientists publish their articles in English as a strategy for the internationalization of their
studies. However, some journals allow the publication of articles with more than one abstract
(one in English and one (or more) in another language). Consequently, articles in English appear
in search results in other languages because the terms used in the search are present in the
second abstract. Besides that, due to proper names that are mentioned in some abstracts, articles
in English appear in searches using other languages. For example, the Portuguese search about
traffic engineering on Scopus resulted in only one article. However, as seen in Figure 2, this
article is in English. This article appears as a search result due to the name of an institute (in
Portuguese) that is mentioned in the abstract.

As a result of the internationalization strategy, there are a considerable number of non-English

publications found in searches carried out with terms in English. As can be seen in Figure 2,
approximately 10% of the articles found in the English search for traffic engineering and urban
mobility on Scopus are in other languages. Therefore, despite writing their article in their native
language, authors increase the reach of their study by adding an abstract in English, making
their article appear in more searches.

Regarding the number of citations, it is observed that articles in English have more citations
than manuscripts in other languages. Table 2 shows the articles about urban mobility with the
highest number of citations in each language available on Scopus. Besides the higher number
of citations, it is noted that the articles in English are published in a journal with greater impact
on the scientific community.

Table 2: The most cited articles about urban mobility on Scopus

Number of Journal’s
Language Most cited article
citations impact Factor
English González et al. (2008) 3981 4.379
Spanish Talavera-Garcia et al. (2014) 9 NI
Portuguese Mello and Portugal (2017) 11 NI
NI = No information.
 URBAN MOBILITY

Search in English Search in Spanish Search in Portuguese

1% 5% 3%
18%
3% 26%

64% 10%

91% 79%

EN SP PT Others EN SP PT EN SP PT

TRAFFIC ENGINEERING

Search in English Search in Spanish Search in Portuguese

12%
0,22%
0,05%

87,74% 100% 100%

EN SP PT Others EN SP PT EN SP PT

EN = English; SP = Spanish; PT = Portuguese.

Figure 2: Language of articles found in each search on Scopus

Google Scholar presents a ranking with the best transportation journals. This ranking is made
according to the number of citations of the manuscripts published by the journals. All 20
journals in this ranking accept articles in English only. Thus, it is evident that non-English
speakers must overcome a major obstacle to have their studies published in world-recognized
journals. To help them, many of these journals have a language editing service to assist authors
who feel that their article may require editing to eliminate errors and to conform to correct
scientific English. However, this service is not cheap. In one of the transportation journals listed
on Google Scholar’s ranking, the price of this service for an 8,000-word article can range from
$410 to $1020, depending on the service due date.

Finally, we analyze the last schedule (year of 2021) of some international transport conferences.
All five events analyzed in this study used English as the official language. The published
articles, technical sessions, roundtables, and presentations are in English. The adoption of
English as the official language at the Annual Meeting - Transportation Research Board, the
European Transport Conference and the Annual Victorian Transport Infrastructure Conference
can be justified due to the official language of the countries where the conferences were held:
United States, United Kingdom and Australia, respectively. However, these events are
organized by committees with members from all over the world. The European Transport
Conference, for example, has an organizing committee composed of British, Italian, Belgian,
Hungarian, Irish, Dutch, German and Norwegian members. Thus, it is observed that this event
has a diverse audience, with different nationalities, and even so, English is the only language
used at the conference.

The Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies Conference and the Annual Southern
African Transport Conference also have presentations in English only. However, most of the
authors of the articles at these events are from countries where English is not the official
language. Therefore, it is noted that English predominates in major international conferences,
becoming a necessary tool for researchers who want to share their studies and to learn more
about their field of study.

5. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
This article sought to identify the effects of English on the scientific and academic publication
in the field of transportation engineering and the main challenges faced by non-English
speaking researchers. For that, we carried out a search on articles about four areas of
transportation engineering in different databases, which allowed us to identify and to compare
the publications in English and in two other languages (Spanish and Portuguese).

The findings of this study show that the number of publications in English is higher than in
other languages. Consequently, manuscripts in English have a higher number of citations.
Furthermore, it is observed that articles in English are more likely to be published in high impact
factor journals, as the best journals in the field accept manuscripts in English only.

Due to the dominance of English in the academic world, the translation of articles into English
has become a strategy to internationalize studies. For non-English-speaking researchers who
are unable to translate their articles, inserting just an English abstract in the articles can increase
the reach of it. In addition, there are English language editing services, but this option is not
viable for everyone due to the cost.

Not only non-English speakers are harmed by this situation. By not publishing their studies in
the main journals, the rest of the academic community does not have access to their studies,
making it impossible to compare the applications of tools and methods of the field in different
parts of the world. In this way, researchers may be trying to solve a problem that is also being
studied or has already been solved by someone else in the world. These communication failures
delay the development of research in the field.

Despite the valuable results presented, this study has some limitations. Chinese, which is the
most spoken language in the world, is excluded from the analysis. Furthermore, this study does
not address all areas of transport engineering and it uses only four search tools. Therefore, we
suggest a new study that, in addition to including Chinese, uses more database and more areas
of transportation engineering. In addition, an analysis of more international conferences is
suggested.

This study is relevant because it addresses the challenges of transportation researchers who do
not speak English. In addition, it raises the discussion on the dominance of English in the field,
emphasizing the importance of including other non-English publications in the best journals
and international conferences. Finally, this manuscript complements existing studies in the
literature on the subject.

Acknowledgements
This research was partly supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq
and Fulbright Commission Brazil. This support is gratefully.

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Wlisses Bonelá Fontoura (wlisses@pet.coppe.ufrj.br)

Department of Transportation Engineering, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Technology Center, Building H, Room 106, Cidade Universitária – Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Althea Marie Danielski (amdanielski@wpi.edu)
Department of Humanities & Arts, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
100 Institute Road, WPI - Salisbury Laboratories, Worcester, MA, United States