Illustration: David Parkins

The problem

Dear Nature ,

I’m a biologist originally from India doing my postdoc at a German institution, and I aspire to run my own laboratory one day. However, because I’m from a Hindi-speaking background, navigating the English-dominated scientific-publishing world has been challenging.

Some years ago, my former supervisor and I submitted a paper to a small, low-tier journal and it was immediately rejected on the grounds that the English was not good enough. With the help of a professional editing service — which cost roughly €600 (US$700) — the paper was eventually accepted by an international journal. But in my current position in Germany, grants don’t typically cover the cost of professional manuscript editing, so I would have to pay for such services out of my own pocket.…