Tatsuya Amano, Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda , Violeta Berdejo-Espinola, Israel Borokini, Shawan Chowdhury , Marina Golivets, Juan David González-Trujillo, Flavia Montaño-Centellas, Kumar Paudel, Rachel Louise White, Diogo Veríssimo

Scientific communities need to understand and eliminate barriers that prevent scientists from reaching their full potential. However, the combined impact of individuals’ linguistic, economic, and gender backgrounds on their scientific productivity is poorly understood. Using a survey of 908 environmental scientists, we show that being a woman is associated with up to a 45% reduction in the number of English-language publications, compared to men. Being a non-native English speaker from a low-income country is associated with a further 25% reduction. The linguistic and economic productivity gap narrows when based on the total number of English- and non-English-language publications. We call for an explicit effort to consider linguistic, economic, and gender backgrounds and incorporate non-English-language publications when assessing the performance and contribution of scientists.