LAUSR

I thank Dr Djoutsop and Dr Mbougo for their replies to our article [1]. They have highlighted the strengths of an altruistic international collaboration and rightfully called for greater research mentorship and support. Their thoughts on social media being a great democratizer are also wellwarranted, given the increasing role that social media is playing in addressing the gender gap in surgery [2]. However, it is interesting that they state social media may be excluding non-English speakers from the discourse. When it comes to social media, thinking globally means thinking beyond the English language. With more languages taking their share on the Internet, multilingual social media is extremely relevant for global health advocacy and research work. This requires moving beyond Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter and engaging major social networks in non-English speaking regions. This could include WeChat, Weibo, Line, KakaoTalk, VKontakte, and Taringa to name but a few. It also means being proactive in including voices from non-English speaking regions that may have been missed from prior research. Therefore, core members of our steering committee replicated the work of the ISOMERS study in Brazil [3] and Cameroon [4]. However, both articles were published in English: the ‘‘universal language of science’’. Having a universal language may allow scientists to communicate ideas freely and gain access to global scientific literature. However, simultaneously the use of a single language creates barriers for those who are nonnative English speakers. Writing manuscripts and grants, preparing and presenting oral presentations, and general communication in English are likely much more challenging for non-English speaking scientists. In our advocacy work internationally to build research capacity in nonEnglish speaking nations [5], we have found that reviewers often reject manuscripts by focusing on the quality of English rather than the scientific content. Encouraging authors to submit in the language of their choice may circumnavigate this issue. Publishers could enlist translating services to translate articles into English and other commonly used languages. Additionally, with improvement in technology, publishers could partner with Google Translate to share the burden of multilingual communication. Having said that, journals are already making important strides to even the scientific playing field. Policies such as Open Access, pre-print submissions, removing anonymity of reviewers, and encouraging submission of data to repositories are some of the ways that we have advanced. However, we urge continued action from journals on this regard.