Does Scientific Writing Converge to U.S. English? Evidence from Generative AI-Assisted Publications

TL;DR

This study investigates whether generative AI tools like ChatGPT are causing scientific writing from non-English-speaking countries to become more similar to U.S. English, potentially reducing language barriers in global science.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that GenAI-assisted publications from non-English countries are increasingly converging toward U.S. scientific English, especially in linguistically distant countries and lower-impact journals.

Findings

GenAI-assisted publications show increased convergence to U.S. English.

The convergence is strongest for linguistically distant countries.

Lower-impact journal articles exhibit more linguistic convergence.

Abstract

A growing literature documents that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is changing scientific writing, yet most studies focus on absolute changes in vocabulary or readability. An important question remains unanswered: Does GenAI use lead to systematic convergence, or a narrowing of stylistic gaps relative to the dominant form of scientific English? Unlike absolute changes, convergence signals whether language-related publication barriers are declining and suggests broader implications for participation and competition in global science. This study directly addresses this question using 5.65 million English-language scientific articles published from 2021 to 2024 and indexed in Scopus. We measure linguistic similarity to a U.S. benchmark corpus using SciBERT text embeddings, and estimate dynamic changes using an event-study difference-in-differences design with repeated cross-sections centered on the late-2022 release of ChatGPT. We find that GenAI-assisted publications from non-English-speaking countries exhibit statistically significant and increasing convergence toward U.S. scientific English, relative to non-GenAI-assisted publications from these countries. This effect is strongest for domestic author teams from countries more linguistically distant from English and for articles published in lower-impact journals -- precisely the contexts where language barriers have historically been most consequential. The results suggest that GenAI tools are reducing language-related barriers in scientific publications. Whether this represents genuine inclusion or a deepening dependence on a single linguistic standard remains an open question.