Lost and found in translation: Guidelines for reporting research data in an 'other' language

Abstract

Most journals accept submissions written in one particular language. There are some exceptions: journals that include articles written in several languages, each headed by multiple versions of the abstract in those languages. Journals that are largely of national importance often publish in the (most popular) local language. International journals may publish in languages used across a range of countries, such as Spanish. However, in many scholarly fields the most influential journals only review and publish articles prepared in English. Some go beyond that and have specific style requirements for English writing. So whilst a common, reasonable, requirement is that there is consistency of style within any particular article, some journals specify that authors should use only American English spellings or only British English spellings – which must perplex some authors for whom English is an additional language. I have even known this taken to the extreme that when one of my books was cited, the entry in the reference list was changed by copy editors to Americanise the published title. (For readers from the US, that should be ‘…to Americanize…’, with a zed, oh sorry, a zee, of course.)