The tax on where you were born

English's share of global research output has been falling. The indexed record has not kept pace. About 90% of Scopus, and about 96% of Web of Science, is still English-only.

The extra time sits with the author. Amano et al., writing in PLOS Biology in 2023, compared researchers who had published one English-language paper. Those who are not native speakers, from countries of moderate English proficiency, spend a median 50.6% more time writing that paper in English. It is an early-career cost.

A figure from the same paper is often repeated as 12.5 times as many revisions. That is not what was measured. Non-native speakers are asked to improve their English during peer review 12.5 times more often. Among speakers from countries of moderate English proficiency, 42.5% say this happens often, most of the time, or always, against 3.4% of native speakers.

Reading is a separate cost. Speakers from countries of low English proficiency spend 90.8% more time reading a single English paper. Tolayda is for the other direction: getting the paper you wrote into English, with the original still in view.

The figure on the Why Tolayda page is the writing estimate, with the citation beside it.

The product side of this is simple to say and slow to do. Submit the paper in the language it was written. Read each passage of the English beside the one you wrote. Trust it when it says what you meant.

The name of the product, and what we refuse to invent about its history, is in a separate note.