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I was asked to review an article written by non-native English speakers. I had never seen this before, but the manuscript includes a link to a certificate from a website called Textcheck that says:

We hereby certify that Textcheck has checked and corrected the English in the manuscript named above.

A specialist editor with suitable professional knowledge (M.Sc. or Ph.D./M.D.) reviewed and corrected the English. An English language specialist subsequently checked the paper again. The first language of both editors is English.

Unfortunately within the first few pages I'm already encountering clauses that make it obvious that this was not done to any depth. The issues are so blatant that even a quick glance by a native English speaker would catch them.

Should I point out major grammatical errors such as these in my review? Should I comment to the authors that they essentially got ripped off by this service (in more polite terms, obviously)? Should I comment to the editorial office?

EDIT: I also see that I can email Textcheck about the article. Should I do that? If so, what should I say/ask?

Craig W
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    From the Textcheck website (under their "guarantee"): Please note that reviewers' judgment of English is very unreliable. Many reviewers are not native speakers of English, and unfortunately these reviewers often criticize English that is grammatically correct and well written. We hope that our certificate at the end of your document will help to prevent this problem. – Kimball Jun 19 '15 at 04:27
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    @Kimball That takes some serious chutzpah. – jakebeal Jun 19 '15 at 05:35
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    You should consider the possibility that the manuscript could have undergone last-minute changes after the TextCheck service had completed its service. They would not have changed the name and there is no digital signature or hash that would allow you to check that the text has not been altered after TextCheck proofread it. I would not blame anyone, just state that the English is really lousy, possibly add these two and two more examples, and have the authors sort it out with TextCheck. – Alexander Jun 19 '15 at 07:48
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    The plus side is that if Textcheck continue to attach this certificate to poor English, eventually it will become widely known that they are nothing but fraudsters. – Dawood ibn Kareem Jun 19 '15 at 07:49
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    I heard from an editor that these certificates are common, and totally worthless. I forget which editor. – Anonymous Physicist Jun 19 '15 at 12:42
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    @Alexander: If we're exploring the possibility that Textcheck might not be a scam, I'd also seriously consider that maybe they submitted the document, received it back with corrections, and then submitted the original instead of the corrected version, with only the link included... – Steve Jessop Jun 19 '15 at 20:12
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    As an anecdotal side note: a colleague once told me of a review they did of a paper, also written by authors without native fluency in English. They found and pointed out a number of grammatical errors, and offered full, grammatically correct versions for the authors' free use. A detailing of why the grammar was incorrect, and what the correct grammar rules were, was even included! When the authors submitted a corrected manuscript, absolutely none of the grammatical revisions were made. That reviewer lost their taste for offering such grammatical precision as a result. – zibadawa timmy Jun 20 '15 at 00:39
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    Maybe you should write at the end of your review something along the lines "We hereby certify that Textcheck has done a poor job"... – Nick S Oct 15 '16 at 15:26
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    Proofreading and correcting someone's language is a hard, tough job. Being a native English speaker isn't enough. You need to be a native speaker with a good grasp of the language, but then it also takes an enormous amount of mental strength. What you see written in black and white has enormous strength; the proofreader has to be stronger. From my own experience, being given a lengthy translation to my native language to proofread, after two or three pages of correction after correction I just couldn't handle it any more. – gnasher729 Oct 15 '16 at 21:39
  • Refer the authors to this service. – Count Iblis Oct 16 '16 at 06:50
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    These sites are usually dodgy. They themselves are non-native speakers. I had IEEE 'proof readers' changed a perfectly written article, after acceptance, into their rubbish and they had the audacity to change the facts in my paper to suit their 'understanding'. – Prof. Santa Claus Jan 23 '17 at 21:04
  • https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147225/should-i-pay-for-a-certificate-showing-the-quality-of-my-manuscript-before-i-sub/147226#147226 – Anonymous Physicist Jun 17 '21 at 01:19

3 Answers3

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You should not email Textcheck about the article. The journal review process should be confidential, and you should not take the liberty to violate it. You should put the quality of the writing in your review. If it's still bad even after review by this company, then those are the breaks. It sounds like it still needs some help.

Bill Barth
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    And explicitly mention in the review that you are a native speaker and that you are aware the authors used the service. I'd go as far as advising the authors not to use that particular service again, since it clearly falls well short of what one would expect in a professional copy-editing service. – David Richerby Jun 19 '15 at 07:43
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    @SteveJessop, I'm not talking about the author breaking the blinding to find out who the reviewer is nor the reviewing breakind double-blinding to find the author (though those are also relevant concerns), I'm talking about the confidentiality associated with the fact that these authors have a paper under review with this journal at all. A reviewer should not take it on their own initiative to break that by letting an external party know. Everyone involved has a responsibility to try to maintain the integrity of the process. – Bill Barth Jun 19 '15 at 20:41
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    @BillBarth: sure, I'm just noting that publicly posting extracts from a work under review is already a breach of confidentiality, separate from the breach you're advising the questioner not to make. Hopefully that doesn't matter in this case, by itself, since nothing significant about the paper has been given away. But specifically doing so with your name attached risks reviewer anonymity. – Steve Jessop Jun 19 '15 at 20:45
  • @SteveJessop, oh yeah! That's a great point. He might want to edit that to anonymize and paraphrase the style. – Bill Barth Jun 19 '15 at 21:05
  • @SteveJessop and BillBarth: What do you recommend I do? I tried to keep the article under review as anonymous as possible while still conveying how poor the English is, but I didn't think about how that would make the excerpts easily Googleable... – Craig W Jun 22 '15 at 17:18
  • @CraigW, you could drop the excerpt altogether. It's not necessary to the point of the question. – Bill Barth Jun 22 '15 at 18:14
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    @SteveJessop you probably want to remove that comment then, since the excerpt is still googleable from the text in your comment – Some_Guy Oct 14 '16 at 13:07
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I agree with Bill's advice from the previous post. If you email Textcheck then they will come up with some argument proving that they did a correct job, and moreover it's not you who paid them, so it's better that the person who paid them should contact them if required.

You should just indicate that the English used in the manuscript is sub-standard and can not be accepted in the present format. Though, this does not necessarily mean that you reject the manuscript. If you find that the scientific content is good enough then maybe you should indicate accept with major revision.

Peter Mortensen
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Saurabh
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    "If you find that the scientific content is good enough then may be you should indicate accept with major revision". True, but sometimes it is really hard to judge on the scientific content when you can't hardly understand what it is said... – ddiez Jun 19 '15 at 10:14
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    True!! But if you have been asked to review a paper then for sure if not an expert, you still know enough about the type of work under consideration and hence you would easily be able to evaluate via figures and the confusing text the quality of science. Moreover if the author of this question has done the effort to post this question here, then it already shows the indication that the current manuscript has problems mainly in english only, otherwise it would have been rejected on the first instance only!!! – Saurabh Jun 19 '15 at 10:23
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    @ddiez The examples given in the question suggest that the scientific content is understandable, despite the bad English. – David Richerby Jun 19 '15 at 10:46
  • Absolutely true Saurabh and David. I was only pointing out that possibility regarding the quoted comment, which can be interpreted more generally than in the context of the OP question. – ddiez Jun 19 '15 at 13:11
  • @ddiez. You have made some grammatical mistakes in your comments above. e.g., "...what it is said" should be "what it says". – CKM Apr 03 '16 at 03:58
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Just express your opinion, try and be objective and don't worry about what does not depend on you.

Walter Florio
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