Penetration of the English language in science the case of a German national interdisciplinary critical care conference 英文参考文献.docVIP

Available online /content/9/6/655 Letter Penetration of the English language in science: the case of a German national interdisciplinary critical care conference Matthew E Falagas1, Eufemia Fabritsi2, Fotini C Chelvatzoglou2 and Konstantinos Rellos3 1Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, and President and Director, Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences (AIBS), Athens, Greece 2Scientific Associate, Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences (AIBS), Athens, Greece 3Associate Director, Intensive Care Unit, ‘Henry Dunant’ Hospital, Athens, Greece Corresponding author: Matthew E Falagas, matthew.falagas@ Published online: 16 September 2005 This article is online at /content/9/6/655 ? 2005 BioMed Central Ltd Critical Care 2005, 9:655-656 (DOI 10.1186/cc3817) Globalization in business, politics and other aspects of our everyday life is viewed by many as an inevitable reality. The English language has undoubtedly benefited significantly from the new era, in gradually penetrating into other cultures in many fields such as music, arts, education, and more recently science. Previous reports indicate that such penetration is also evident in the field of biomedical sciences [1,2], primarily supported by the paper and online publication in the English language of the majority of about 6,000 journals indexed in PubMed. The adoption of a universal language in science, namely English, could facilitate communication between individuals from different countries and enhance the timely interchange of ideas among researchers and scientists with potential benefits to scientific advancement and development [3]. Language barriers could also potentially be eliminated and diffusion of knowledge could be promoted through the World Wide Web in real time. We assessed the use of the English language in the published abstracts of a