You have no idea how atrocious the English is in papers that I see as a reviewer. And depending on journal I don't even get to reject it for that as long as the science is sound.
> And depending on journal I don't even get to reject it for that as long as the science is sound.
and you shouldn't. As long as it is somewhat legible, forcing people who are not native English speakers to conform to another language 100 % in order for their science to be published is horrendous.
There was a time 300 years ago, where great thinkers who did not speak French or German could not publish their thoughts and answers, and to us now it seems atrocius. Let us not go a head and redo that with English
The problem is that "somewhat legible" is not a given and you don't know if the version that comes out of language editing (if it is still done, a lot of journals skip it to save money) is still scientifically correct.
Edit: A possible solution would be to have "good idea, please language edit and send back for further review" as an option along with "reject" / "needs major revisions" / "needs minor revisions" / "accept".
actually, sometimes "native" English is much harder to read for non-natives than a non-native writing, due to 1. less vocabulary, and 2. more straight forward sentence structure.
If you say so - but honestly, why not just publish it in French then (I think the author is French)? If I were publishing something in French - technical or scientific or otherwise - Iād want it to be reviewed by a native speaker.
I can list that in the feedback to the authors or recommend that in the confidential remarks to the editor. If they will listen (and force the authors if necessary) depends on the journal.
