We receive a number of manuscripts with requests for consideration for including in our various publications on IBF, namely Global Islamic Finance Report (GIFR), Islamic Wealth Management Report (IWMR) and our bi-monthly magazine, ISFIRE. While some of these contributions are written in excellent styles, based on in-depth analyses, and extremely thought-provoking ideas, most other contributions are inadequately written, with flimsy analysis and thinking and with no real substance. Unfortunately, the latter come from the academic community. These include some otherwise accomplished professors whose writings are no less than a nightmare to edit.
This Pause for Thought does not intend to embarrass, humiliate or intimidate anyone but, on the contrary, it aims at highlighting a serious issue that IBF community faces – lack of adequate expression (in English). Many of these professors write very well in their mother tongues. English, unfortunately, is not their cup of tea. But, alas, they have to teach and publish their research in English language.
No one is questioning the knowledge of IBF many of these professors may otherwise possess; rather it is their writing skills that are focus of this Pause for Thought. Because of inadequacy of their writing styles, many of these academicians end up having a co-author from the Western world where English is either first language of the academicians therein or they have better English than the academicians involved in IBF. These co-authors are at best ‘free riders’ who prey on otherwise wonderful ideas that the IBF academicians can put forward only in a crude way. They just polish up their language and improve upon their writing styles and expression, and end up being co-authors of the papers they help them to publish in academic journals.
Good English and an impressive expression (both oral and written) are in some cases the only two assets many Westerners, employed in the Middle East and Asia, have. We don’t mind them working in IBF and benefitting from it. This should be debated on another occasion. We would like to highlight herein how painful it is to proofread and edit manuscripts of those with the first language other than English.
Looking into the problem, one may find out that it is not just a philological issue; rather it has cultural relevance. There are some other important factors that must be taken into account while studying such manuscripts. Some of these are briefly discussed below.
Academic style: Academicians are expected to write in an academic style. It is a default position, consistent with their training and experience. However, we have found that academic style defines the overall look of a written piece of research and not its main contents. An academically rigorous piece of work cannot be deemed as bad. We have classified many of the manuscripts as poorly written not because of their academic style but because of something else. It just happens to be the case that most of the badly-written contributions have been submitted by academicians.
No or limited exposure to the practice of IBF: Many university professors have very limited exposure to the actual practice of IBF. Consequently, they end up writing about something based on theoretical and in many cases outdated information one comes across in books and academic journals. In social sciences, academic journals publish research which is based on no less than five-year-old data. The books have an even extended gap. Besides, most of the proposed innovations by academicians are very Utopian in nature. Some of them are actually very novel but again carelessly written and hence do not catch people’s attention.
Technical language: A number of academicians are restricted to the degree of disability to write in plain English. The heavy use of jargon and technical terms makes their manuscripts inaccessible. We deem them unsuitable, especially for ISFIRE, which is a popular magazine aiming for wider stakeholders in IBF.
Boring: Most of the badly-written articles are actually boring, i.e., they don’t have a story to tell. An otherwise academically rigorous analysis utilising data on millions of companies for one hundred years and for all countries of the world is actually boring if it has only to reiterate the statement that private businesses maximise profits. Similarly, an academic piece of research loses its relevance to practitioners if it doesn’t have a relevant story for the market. When we receive such a manuscript, we find it extremely difficult to carve out an interesting and credible story out of it. At times, we may succeed in sharing a story with our readers, but we feel that it is actually our story and not the one the author intended to share. It is really frustrating as an editor.
The above factors are important but the most frustrating aspect of editing manuscripts remains poor English. It is, therefore, absolutely imperative that non-English speaking academicians get formal training in writing skills. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most instances. Although one may argue that writing a PhD thesis should have provided them an opportunity to learn how to write effectively, but in most cases this does not happen. PhD supervisors at the Western and other universities end up either editing these dissertations by themselves or they merely recommend their students to get their theses edited and proofred by professionals. While this helps in producing theses of sufficiently high quality in terms of English language requirements, it is not enough to expose the PhD scholars to acquire good writing skills.
At the end, it must be stressed that not all manuscripts written by academicians are entirely ludicrous. We have had the pleasure of editing some extremely well-written pieces of research that have contributed to the quality of contents of our publications.
