Error analysis of nonnative authors’ publications in health‑care journals: A descriptive study
نویسندگان
1 Department of Public Health, School of Health, Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, Gonabad, Iran
2 Department of Health Education, School of Health, Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, Gonabad, Iran,
3 Department of English, School of Medicine, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Sabzevar, Iran
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چکیده
BACKGROUND: As nonnative speakers of English, Iranian health researchers/authors often needto publish in English; however, published manuscripts may reflect a need for language editing. Thestudy is aimed to investigate the language accuracy of Persian authors’ articles published in Iranianhealth journals, and to explore whether these journals take steps towards an acceptable level ofStandard written English.MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this descriptive study, fifty original articles were selected fromfive health journals (from April 2017 to April 2018) with nonnative editors/proofreaders based onconvenience sampling in 2019. The articles were carefully read several times; errors were identifiedaccording to Gass and Selinker’s model and classified into four categories and further expandedinto 22 subcategories.RESULTS: The results showed 4322 errors in the 50 articles, where the “grammatical errors” obtainedthe highest frequency, with punctuation errors (n = 989) ranking first, and errors in using auxiliaryverbs (n = 19) the last in frequency. The descending order of the errors emerged as follows: thegrammatical, mechanical, lexical, and discoursal errors.CONCLUSION: All categories of errors contributed to textual unintelligibility, attributable to either theauthors’ inadequate English proficiency or their native language interference. Most errors could havebeen corrected by the journal editors. Professional development courses and hands‑on workshopsare advised for both nonnative authors and journal editors/proofreaders in Iran to help authors keepto the conventions of scientific writing.
