English-bias is a thorny matter. On the one hand, there are 7,000 human languages in circulation and having a lingua franca (whether for trade, science, or whatever) can do a lot of good. English is now the most common second-language on Earth, so it's a natural choice. I would like to see an effort to translate papers between languages, though. Early in my career, knowing Russian would have been a significant advantage because lots of CS papers used it. There's a fair amount of beekeeping research in Spanish. And of course people should get due credit for their work regardless of language.
On the unfair advantage of English speakers - what would you think of academia returning to publishing in Latin? European language speakers would still have an unfair advantage, but the playing field would be a lot more equal. Latin is already an important language in academia (e.g. binomial names of species in zoology) even if it isn't used nearly as much anymore.
English-bias is a thorny matter. On the one hand, there are 7,000 human languages in circulation and having a lingua franca (whether for trade, science, or whatever) can do a lot of good. English is now the most common second-language on Earth, so it's a natural choice. I would like to see an effort to translate papers between languages, though. Early in my career, knowing Russian would have been a significant advantage because lots of CS papers used it. There's a fair amount of beekeeping research in Spanish. And of course people should get due credit for their work regardless of language.
On the unfair advantage of English speakers - what would you think of academia returning to publishing in Latin?
European language speakers would still have an unfair advantage, but the playing field would be a lot more equal. Latin is already an important language in academia (e.g. binomial names of species in zoology) even if it isn't used nearly as much anymore.