title: Evaluating the lexico-grammatical differences in the writing of native and non-native speakers of English in peer-reviewed medical journals in the field of pediatric oncology: Creation of the genuine index scoring system.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The predominance of English in scientific research has created hurdles for "non-native speakers" of English. Here we present a novel application of native language identification (NLI) for the assessment of medical-scientific writing. For this purpose, we created a novel classification system whereby scoring would be based solely on text features found to be distinctive among native English speakers (NS) within a given context. We dubbed this the "Genuine Index" (GI).
  
  
  METHODS
  This methodology was validated using a small set of journals in the field of pediatric oncology. Our dataset consisted of 5,907 abstracts, representing work from 77 countries. A support vector machine (SVM) was used to generate our model and for scoring.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Accuracy, precision, and recall of the classification model were 93.3%, 93.7%, and 99.4%, respectively. Class specific F-scores were 96.5% for NS and 39.8% for our benchmark class, Japan. Overall kappa was calculated to be 37.2%. We found significant differences between countries with respect to the GI score. Significant correlation was found between GI scores and two validated objective measures of writing proficiency and readability. Two sets of key terms and phrases differentiating NS and non-native writing were identified.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our GI model was able to detect, with a high degree of reliability, subtle differences between the terms and phrasing used by native and non-native speakers in peer reviewed journals, in the field of pediatric oncology. In addition, L1 language transfer was found to be very likely to survive revision, especially in non-Western countries such as Japan. These findings show that even when the language used is technically correct, there may still be some phrasing or usage that impact quality.
authors.affiliation: Center for Medical and Nursing Education, Mie University School of Medicine, Mie, Japan.|Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan.
authors.forename: Alberto Alexander
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Gayle
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Pathobiology and Cell Adhesion Biology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan.|Center for Disaster Medicine Research and Education, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan.
authors.forename: Motomu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shimaoka
mesh_terms: D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D007802:Language; D008495:Medical Oncology; D066209:Medical Writing; D010372:Pediatrics; D010380:Peer Review; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D010700:Phonetics