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Team:Imperial/The i in iGEM
From 2014.igem.org
The i in iGEM
Overview
As an international competition, every year iGEM welcomes teams from a great range of countries, with a variety of languages spoken amongst its teams and judges. This part of our Policy & Practices seeks to understand the effect of English as the lingua franca of science on the participation and outcome of the competition. In order to achieve this we have looked into the different nationalities of the teams and finalists and the different lingual backgrounds of teams and finalists over the years. We derived our conclusions by comparing this data with factors such as academic output and impact of their countries of origins, the lingual background of the iGEM judges, the international rankings of their universities and the English Proficiency Index of their countries of origin.
Key Achievements
Introduction
iGEM stands for ‘International Genetically Engineered Machine” and as the first word of this acronym indicates, countries and universities from all over the world are well represented. The iGEM competition has grown into a diverse community with a great range of nationalities, cultures and languages represented. The competition took its name in 2005, when 14 teams from 4 different countries came together to develop novel ideas based on synthetic biology. At that time, German and English were the only two languages represented. Since then, the competition has grown, reaching the 100 team milestone in 2009 and climbing to a staggering 245 teams from 32 different countries with 20 language this year, its 10th anniversary. The competition has been expanding in all directions. Different teams compete in different tracks, for different awards and there is now a separation between undergraduate and overgraduate teams.
The language that all the teams communicate their project is English, as per lingua academica. In the spirit of synthetic biology, where standardization and application of the same principals throughout the discipline is promoted, it is certainly essential that all the stakeholders have a common language of communication. Rapid international expansion and the necessity of a single language however present many challenges which need to be addressed.
English as the lingua franca of science
The vast volume of scientific information available in today’s “Information Age” demands effective management and distribution to individuals and institutions. Such communication of ideas in across cultures and national borders requires the use of a common language. Within the 20th century , English has become the primary language for international communication in science and business (Tardy 2006) and English-speaking countries (mainly US and the UK) are the major players in the distribution and generation of knowledge, as demonstrated by their domination in the university and journal rankings.
The status of English as lingua academica does not come without its controversies. In non-English speaking countries, the main role of English is the reporting of professional knowledge, rather than direct communication between scholars. Whilst non-native English speaking scientists may have a good level of competency in jargon and understanding written English they are still at a disadvantage when called to communicate their complex ideas in an international setting. According to SCImago Journal & Country Rankings (SJR 2014), the majority of high impact journals are in English. This forces many non-English speaking scientists and engineers to communicate their science in English, in order to gain status and recognition. This is an additional disadvantage the researchers, who are trying to conduct high impact science from a nation with peripheral status (Tardy 2006).
Other effects of the language barrier can be seen in international scientific collaborations. It is established that the growing importance of international scientific collaborations requires not only common knowledge and understanding of the scientific terminology, but also clear communication. Using a common language is the intuitive way to achieve this and English has been filling that role (Hwang 2012). Again, non-native speakers are at a disadvantage, Babcock and Du-Babcok (2001) explain that “in communication encounters, low proficiency second-language speakers contribute fewer ideas than do fluent second-language speakers or first-language speakers”. Interestingly a study conducted by Yvanez and Shrum in 2009 showed that a reason behind the collaboration between Philippine and Japanese scientists and engineers was their similar, low levels of English competency (Yvanez & Shrum 2009), reflecting perhaps a method of compromise so the voices of both sides can be heard equally.
CS1
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CS2
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The Countries
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Case Studies
CS1
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CS2
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The Language
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Case Studies
CS1
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CS2
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The Judges
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Recommendations
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For the Teams
For iGEM
References
