Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences Of Writing And Publishing In English: A Social-Cognitive Perspective 3030339378, 9783030339371, 9783030339388

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 5
References......Page 10
Contents......Page 13
Abbreviations......Page 17
List of Figures......Page 18
List of Tables......Page 19
1.1 Background of the Study......Page 20
1.2.1 A Brief History of International Publishing Development in China......Page 23
1.2.2.1 Large Number of Scientific Researchers and Publications......Page 24
1.2.2.2 Imbalance Between the Number of Publications and the Quality of Research......Page 25
1.2.2.3 Publication-oriented Academic Performance Evaluation System......Page 26
1.2.2.4 Outflow of High-quality Papers......Page 27
1.3 Purposes and Significance of the Study......Page 28
1.4 Features of Scientific Research and Discourse......Page 31
1.5 Layout of the Book......Page 33
References......Page 35
2.1 Overview......Page 42
2.2 Intercultural Rhetorical Theory......Page 43
2.3 Cognitive Process Theory......Page 45
2.4 Social Constructivist Theory......Page 50
2.5 Social-cognitive Framework of Writing for Publishing in English......Page 52
References......Page 58
3.1 Overview......Page 64
3.2 Challenges Faced by Multilingual Scholars......Page 65
3.3 Strategies Employed by Multilingual Scholars......Page 68
3.4 Controversial Issues in ERPP Studies......Page 70
3.5 Summary and Research Questions......Page 77
References......Page 79
4.1 Overview......Page 86
4.2 Justification for Ethnographic Case Study Design......Page 87
4.3 Research Setting and Participant Selection......Page 90
4.4 Instruments and Procedures......Page 92
4.4.1 Online Questionnaire Survey......Page 93
4.4.2 Semi-structured Interview......Page 95
4.5 Data Analysis......Page 98
4.6 Reliability, Validity and Role of the Researcher......Page 100
4.7 Summary......Page 102
References......Page 103
5.1 Overview......Page 107
5.2 Language Choices for Research Publication......Page 108
5.3 Causes of Unwillingness to Write and Publish in English......Page 110
5.4 Reasons for Manuscript Rejection......Page 112
5.5 The Most Difficult Sections in Writing Research Articles......Page 113
5.6 Difficulties in Communicating with Reviewers......Page 114
5.7 Language Problems in Academic Communication......Page 115
5.8 Imbalanced Distribution of Resources......Page 116
5.9 Lack of Training in Academic Writing......Page 118
5.10 Summary......Page 119
References......Page 121
6.1 Overview......Page 124
6.2 Background Information of Professor Zhao......Page 125
6.3 Discursive Strategies......Page 127
6.3.1 Discourse-Organizing Strategies......Page 128
6.3.2 Discourse-Cohesive Strategies......Page 131
6.3.3 Awareness of Rhetorical Difference Across Languages......Page 134
6.4.1 Language Selecting Strategies......Page 136
6.4.2 Planning Strategies......Page 138
6.4.3 Monitoring and Modulating Strategies......Page 139
6.5.1 Revising Strategies......Page 141
6.5.2 Responding Strategies......Page 145
6.6.1 Training Academic Team......Page 148
6.6.2 Being Confident......Page 151
6.7 Summary......Page 153
References......Page 154
7.1 Overview......Page 159
7.2.1 Organization......Page 160
7.2.2 Use of the First-person Pronoun......Page 164
7.2.3 Hedging Devices......Page 165
7.2.4 Awareness of Rhetorical Differences Between English and Chinese......Page 166
7.3.1 Language Selection......Page 168
7.3.2 Journal Selection......Page 169
7.3.3 Writing Directly in English......Page 170
7.4.1 Imitation Strategies......Page 171
7.4.2 Writing More......Page 172
7.4.3 Point-by-point Responses to the Reviewer......Page 174
7.5.1 Extensive Cooperation......Page 175
7.5.2 Seeking Help from Language Editing Services......Page 177
7.6 Summary......Page 180
References......Page 181
8.1 Overview......Page 186
8.2.1 Organizing Strategies......Page 187
8.2.2 Awareness of Rhetorical Differences Between English and Chinese......Page 191
8.3.1 Writing Directly in English......Page 192
8.4 Cognitive Strategies......Page 193
8.4.2 Rearranging the Content......Page 194
8.4.3 Rewriting the Content......Page 197
8.4.4 Language Revising Strategies......Page 198
8.4.5 Responding Strategies......Page 202
8.5.1 Seeking Help from the Convenience Editor......Page 204
8.5.2 Being Patient......Page 206
8.6 Summary......Page 207
References......Page 208
9.1 Overview......Page 210
9.2.1 Problem-oriented Logic......Page 211
9.2.2 Elements of Research Article Introductions......Page 212
9.2.3 Genre Awareness......Page 213
9.3.1 Language Selection......Page 216
9.3.2 Epiphany......Page 218
9.4.1 Incorporating the Reviewers’ Suggestions in Revisions......Page 219
9.4.2 Writing in Plain Language......Page 222
9.6 Summary......Page 223
References......Page 225
10.1 Overview......Page 227
10.2.1 Challenges Chinese Multilingual Scholars Faced in Publishing in English......Page 228
10.2.2 Taxonomy of Writing Strategies for Publishing International Journal Articles......Page 234
10.3 Pedagogical Implications for Academic English Writing and ERPP Writing......Page 236
10.4 Suggestions for Further Study......Page 245
References......Page 247
Appendix A: Survey of Chinese Scholar’s English Writing and Publishing Experience (Online)......Page 250
(English Version)......Page 251
Appendix B: Scholars Interview Guide......Page 258
Index......Page 260

Citation preview

Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English A Social-Cognitive Perspective Congjun Mu

Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English

Congjun Mu

Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English A Social-Cognitive Perspective

Congjun Mu College of Foreign Languages Shanghai Maritime University Shanghai, China

ISBN 978-3-030-33937-1    ISBN 978-3-030-33938-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

We have received and reviewed your manuscript “xxx.” While we believe that your paper addresses an interesting and important topic in the field of xxx, we feel that it is inappropriate for publication in the Journal of xxx. We see the Journal’s audience as xxx specialists primarily interested in explorations of theoretical issues and reports of empirical research that advance our understanding of xxx. One of the main criteria to publish a piece of research in our Journal is that it should make an important contribution to our current knowledge on xxx. In our view the manuscript you sent us fails to meet this criterion. We regret that we are unable to use the article you sent us, but we appreciate your interest in the Journal and your willingness to share your work with us. We hope that this experience will not discourage you from future submissions to the Journal. (Abridged from one of  the  journal editors’ email to the author of the present book)

Researchers may not be unfamiliar with the above quotation from the editor’s feedback to my very first submission, adapted from my doctoral thesis that I had just completed in 2007. Obviously, as a novice researcher, I aimed too high in submitting my manuscript to a prestigious higher-­ ranking journal in applied linguistics. Although my external examiner had advised me to adapt three journal articles from my thesis, I gave up submitting the manuscript to any higher-ranking journals as I was intimidated by the editor’s feedback. I felt frustrated and puzzled as to how I v

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could succeed in publishing international journal articles in English. How could I estimate the quality of my own manuscript? How could I select a proper journal? How could I show my contribution to the research field in the manuscript? Where could I get help to revise the manuscript? All these questions confused me as a neophyte researcher. Hence, my personal publishing experiences motivated me to take up writing this volume, intending to help other research beginners, the multilingual novice researchers in particular. Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact that the competition to publish in higher-ranking international journals is fiercer than before because both anglophone center-based scholars and nonEnglish speaking researchers from peripheral countries and regions submit their manuscripts to the world-leading journals, of which a majority (95 %) are English-mediated ones, in the interests of securing tenure or achieving the requirements of doctoral graduation (Hyland, 2011, 2015). The publication-oriented academic appraisal system in China has intensified this competition, imposing heavy pressure on Chinese scholars pitting them against very demanding challenges in writing and publishing research articles in English. However, to my surprise, little, or at least quite insufficient, attention has been paid to the needs of Chinese multilingual scholars, even though ERPP (English for Research Publication Purposes) is being vigorously studied in the center and in many peripheral countries or regions in the world. To the best of my knowledge, there is at present no book-length systematic study exploring the pressure and challenges Chinese multilingual scholars experience, though there are some case studies (e.g., Li, 2006a, 2006b, 2014; Luo & Hyland, 2019; Tian, Su, & Ru, 2016) on Chinese doctoral students or academics. Moreover, most of the current ERPP studies (e.g., Bardi, 2015; Burgess, Gea-Valor, Moreno, & Rey-Rocha, 2014; Hanauer & Englander, 2011) focus more on the challenges and difficulties multilingual scholars experience than the strategies they use in their writing and publishing international journal research articles. Even though some strategies have been mentioned in some investigations, they are usually presented in a scattered and sporadic manner in research articles. Few applied linguists bother to discuss them from a theoretical perspective, so that the theoretical and pragmatic value of ERPP studies has not been generalized to the greatest possible extent. Therefore, the present book aims to fill in the gap

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by reporting the result of a large-scale quantitative and qualitative investigation of Chinese multilingual scholars’ experiences while writing and publishing research articles in English. It is generated from a project supported by the Chinese National Social Sciences Fund. The process of writing for international publications is near-mythical to many people in that the writing process itself is individualistic and idiosyncratic, and the process of manuscript reviewing is insufficiently transparent to outsiders. It is commonly observed that some scholars are prolific while others may not publish a paper for several years. As Belcher (2009) points out, many novice researchers may believe that only articles that are heavily theoretical with sweeping implications, entirely original and packed with interesting ideas, can get published (pp. 48–49). Such myths tend to confuse and even discourage newcomers. However, these beliefs are all half true but half false. They are true because people often do not know how other researchers can publish their articles successfully; it is false because there are conventions for successful publication. As Belcher (2009) puts it: Research articles get published because they say something new about something old. A publishable article is organized around a single significant new idea that is demonstrably related to what has come before. If your idea is interesting but not new, your article will not be published. If your idea is new but not related to the old (usually previous research), your article will not be published. If your ideas are new but disconnected from each other, your article will not be published. (p. 49)

This volume attempts to demystify the processes of writing for international publications to some degree, arming multilingual scholars with writing strategies for research articles. This book holds to the view that writing for international publications is a complicated, recurring process, inseparable from the research process, influenced by such factors as the writer’s social, cultural, and educational background, and his or her cognitive development. Multilingual scholars engaged in writing for international publications are situated in  local, international, and disciplinary communities, and they can adopt discursive, metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective strategies to overcome the difficulties they encounter

viii Preface

while writing and publishing research articles in English. This volume invokes an ethnographic case study design to explore the attitudes and experiences of 118 Chinese academics from 18 universities in Shanghai, and presents four cases in which scholars succeeded in publishing their articles in higher-ranking international journals. The in-depth “thick” description of Chinese multilingual scholars’ experiences writing and publishing international journal articles will both expose some rarely visible mental activities of individuals, and introduce documents such as journal editors’ and peer reviewers’ comments, and writers’ responses, that are rarely open to outsiders. The social-cognitive theoretical framework and the taxonomy of writing strategies may be instructive to multilingual academics in other parts of the world and to teaching practitioners in the academic writing classroom as well. It is expected that this book will enable more researchers to understand the challenges faced by multilingual scholars and the strategies they use in writing and publishing international journal articles. These commitments and beliefs have structured the goals of this book. Chapter 1 gives a brief account of the development of international publications in China and the purpose and significance of the exploration of Chinese scholars’ experience in publishing international journal articles in English. Chapter 2 attempts to establish a social-cognitive theoretical framework of writing for international publications based on relevant theories such as intercultural rhetoric, cognitive process theory, and constructivism. Chapter 3 reviews the previous studies related to ERPP and proposes the research questions for the present book. Chapter 4 justifies an ethnographic case study design for the project and elaborates on the specific research methods. Chapter 5 presents the challenges Chinese multilingual scholars encountered resulted from the analysis of an online questionnaire survey. Chapters 6 through 9 report the strategies employed by four Chinese scholars in writing and publishing research articles in English. Chapter 10 summarizes the major findings of the study and makes some pedagogical recommendations for EAP (English for Academic Purposes) teaching and ERPP practice. This book is directed to a number of audiences. First, it will be of use to postgraduate students preparing to publish their research articles in

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international journals. Second, multilingual scholars unfamiliar with international publications may learn from the experiences of the four cases presented in this book. A third intended audience is investigators in the field of ERPP studies who focus on only qualitative or quantitative methods and may find here guidance on ways to combine these two methods to carry out more comprehensive studies. Finally, the book addresses the general community of academic writing or EAP educators who are teaching multilingual writers, particularly Chinese writers, to better understand their subjects. This book has benefited from the support and contributions of many institutions and individuals. Firstly, I appreciate the Chinese National Social Sciences Fund, who supported the three-year project (14YY151) from which this product is derived, and the China Scholarship Council (201808310009) who sponsored me for a year at the University of Birmingham so that I could concentrate on writing this book. Secondly, I am grateful to colleagues and friends such as Lawrence Jun Zhang, Guohui Liu, Xinfang Rong and Shuzhen Cui who have helped me complete the project and generously shared their feedback and criticism. In particular, I would extend my gratitude to Professor Lawrence Jun Zhang for his ever-lasting friendship; it has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with him in publishing several papers in higher-ranking international journals. Moreover, I thank Dr. Nicholas Groom and Dr. Suganthi John for their invitation to visit the University of Birmingham and Dr. Kathy Lin for her recommendation. To the participants, especially the four scholars who generously accepted my request for an interview and allowed me to use their materials, I owe a special debt of gratitude. They reviewed the transcripts and chapter drafts and kindly offered me their feedback and modification. All the names of the participants used in this book are pseudonyms intended to protect their privacy. My families are to be commended to their patience, forbearance, and enthusiastic endorsement. My parents, my wife and my son did not see me for nearly a year while I composed this book at the University of Birmingham. However, my son and my wife did help me draw the figures used in the book via emails. They all supported me during the throes of composition.

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I am especially grateful for the assistance and unfailing enthusiasm of the editors Cathy Scott and Alice Green at Palgrave Macmillan and the book proposal reviewers for their helpful suggestions and encouragement. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the tacit support that the editors from the Journal of Scholarly Publishing have given to this work. Still others served as examples and are cited in the following pages. I hope that this volume continues and enhances the tradition. Shanghai, China

Congjun Mu

References Bardi, M. (2015). Learning the practice of scholarly publication in English—A Romanian perspective. English for Specific Purposes, 37, 98–111. Belcher, W.  L. (2009). Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks. London: SAGE. Burgess, S., Gea-Valor, M.  L., Moreno, A.  I., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2014). Affordances and constraints on research publication: A comparative study of the language choices of Spanish historians and psychologists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 72–83. Hanauer, D.  I., & Englander, K. (2011). Quantifying the burden of writing research articles in a second language: Data from Mexican scientists. Written Communication, 28, 403–416. Hyland, K. (2011). The presentation of self in scholarly life: Identity and marginalization in academic homepages. English for Specific Purposes, 30(4), 286–297. Hyland, K. (2015). Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge. London: Oxford University Press. Li, Y. (2006a). A doctoral student of physics writing for publication: A sociopolitically-­oriented case study. English for Specific Purposes, 25, 456–478. Li, Y. (2006b). Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15, 159–178. Li, Y. (2014). Seeking entry to the North American market: Chinese management academics publishing internationally. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 41–52.

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Luo, N., & Hyland, K. (2019). “I won’t publish in Chinese now”: Publishing, translation and the non-English speaking academic. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 39, 37–47. Tian, M., Su, Y., & Ru, X. (2016). Perish or publish in China: Pressures on young Chinese scholars to publish in internationally indexed journals. Publications, 4(2), 1–16.

Book Abstract

This book analyses the English writing and publishing experiences of 118 scholars from 18 Chinese universities from a social-cognitive perspective. It addresses the challenges and strategies multilingual scholars, particularly Chinese academics, report in the process of writing and publishing in English. This allows the author to present a taxonomy of English-language journal article writing strategies that correspond to the lived experiences of scholars in China, but which may also be applied to other contexts in the world. This book offers a step-by-step analysis of ethnographic case studies, insights, and implications for teaching practice, as well as directions for future research. It will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of ERPP (English for Research Publication Purposes) as well as students and scholars of applied linguistics more broadly.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 1.1 Background of the Study   1 1.2 The Status of International Publishing in Mainland China  4 1.3 Purposes and Significance of the Study   9 1.4 Features of Scientific Research and Discourse  12 1.5 Layout of the Book  14 References 16 2 A Social-cognitive Framework 23 2.1 Overview  23 2.2 Intercultural Rhetorical Theory  24 2.3 Cognitive Process Theory  26 2.4 Social Constructivist Theory  31 2.5 Social-cognitive Framework of Writing for Publishing in English  33 References 39 3 Controversial Issues in ERPP Studies 45 3.1 Overview  45 3.2 Challenges Faced by Multilingual Scholars  46 xv

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3.3 Strategies Employed by Multilingual Scholars  49 3.4 Controversial Issues in ERPP Studies  51 3.5 Summary and Research Questions  58 References 60 4 An Ethnographic Case Study Design 67 4.1 Overview  67 4.2 Justification for Ethnographic Case Study Design  68 4.3 Research Setting and Participant Selection  71 4.4 Instruments and Procedures  73 4.5 Data Analysis  79 4.6 Reliability, Validity and Role of the Researcher  81 4.7 Summary  83 References 84 5 Challenges Faced by Chinese Multilingual Scholars While Publishing in English 89 5.1 Overview  89 5.2 Language Choices for Research Publication  90 5.3 Causes of Unwillingness to Write and Publish in English 92 5.4 Reasons for Manuscript Rejection  94 5.5 The Most Difficult Sections in Writing Research Articles 95 5.6 Difficulties in Communicating with Reviewers  96 5.7 Language Problems in Academic Communication  97 5.8 Imbalanced Distribution of Resources  98 5.9 Lack of Training in Academic Writing 100 5.10 Summary 101 References103 6 Professor Zhao—A Commander-in-Chief107 6.1 Overview 107 6.2 Background Information of Professor Zhao 108

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6.3 Discursive Strategies 110 6.4 Metacognitive Strategies 119 6.5 Cognitive Strategies 124 6.6 Social/Affective Strategies 131 6.7 Summary 136 References137 7 Dr. Zheng—A Faithful Co-operator143 7.1 Overview 143 7.2 Discursive Strategies 144 7.3 Metacognitive Strategies 152 7.4 Cognitive Strategies 155 7.5 Social/Affective Strategies 159 7.6 Summary 164 References165 8 Dr. Zhou—A Strong-willed Writer171 8.1 Overview 171 8.2 Discursive Strategies 172 8.3 Metacognitive Strategies 177 8.4 Cognitive Strategies 178 8.5 Social/Affective Strategies 189 8.6 Summary 192 References193 9 Dr. Ma—An Epiphanic Scholar195 9.1 Overview 195 9.2 Discursive Strategies 196 9.3 Metacognitive Strategies 201 9.4 Cognitive Strategies 204 9.5 Social/Affective Strategies 208 9.6 Summary 208 References210

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10 Conclusion213 10.1 Overview 213 10.2 Major Findings 214 10.3 Pedagogical Implications for Academic English Writing and ERPP Writing 222 10.4 Suggestions for Further Study 231 References233  ppendix A: Survey of Chinese Scholar’s English Writing and A Publishing Experience (Online)237 Appendix B: Scholars Interview Guide245 Index247

Abbreviations

CARS EAL EAP EIL ELF ERPP ESL HSS LPP NS SCI SSCI ZPD

Create A Research Space English as an Additional Language English for Academic Purposes English as an International Language English as a Lingua Franca English for Research Publication Purposes English as a Second Language Humanities and Social Sciences Legitimate Peripheral Participation Natural Sciences Science Citation Index Social Science Citation Index Zone of Proximal Development

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Writing process model. (Source: Adapted from Flower & Hayes, 1981) 27 Fig. 2.2 Social-cognitive framework of writing for international publishing36 Fig. 5.1 Survey participants’ preferred language for research writing, grouped by years spent working 93 Fig. 5.2 The difficult sections in English research article writing 96 Fig. 7.1 Dr. Zheng and his colleagues’ response to the reviewer’s comments158 Fig. 7.2 Editorial certificate 162 Fig. 9.1 The logical line of the development of Dr. Ma’s RA introduction197 Fig. 10.1 An example used in Professor Zhao’s lecture note 1 228

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List of Tables

Table 1.1

Number of publications in Cell, Nature, and Science from the United States and China (2007–2013) 7 Table 3.1 Summary of multilingual scholars’ difficulties in ERPP writing mentioned in previous studies 48 Table 3.2 Taxonomy of writing strategies mentioned by multilingual scholars in previous studies 52 Table 4.1 Background information of the participants in the survey 76 Table 4.2 Background information of the interviewees 78 Table 5.1 Chi-square test of the number of international publications in three disciplines 92 Table 5.2 Evaluation of personal language skills by respondents from types of university 99 Table 6.1 Comparison of the response letter drafted by the student and revised by Professor Zhao 116 Table 6.2 Comparison of the response letter drafted by the student and revised by Professor Zhao 127 Table 6.3 Number of Professor Zhao’s publications at the different stages132 Table 7.1 Structure of Dr. Zheng’s article 148 Table 8.1 Comparison between the first version of the abstract and the published abstract 181 Table 10.1 Taxonomy of writing strategies for publishing in English 221

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1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study It has, perhaps, become a global issue that the great pressure academics around the world have felt is to publish their findings or ideas in higher-­ ranking journals in English, no matter whether they are native speakers or non-native speakers, and no matter whether they are from the center or the periphery of academic community (Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Hyland, 2019; Swales, 2004). Novice researchers such as postgraduate students are required to publish one or two articles in SCI (Science Citation Index) journals (more than 95% of which are in English) to graduate (Casanave & Li, 2015; Hyland, 2015), and junior scholars are also eager to publish for reasons of contract renewal, tenure, and promotion (Flowerdew, 2015). This high-pressure environment results in fierce competition in international publications. It is reported that the rejection rate in some prestigious journals is even as high as 93% (Hyland, 2012). Against this background, a new branch of English for Academic Purpose (EAP) research, that is, English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) has grown quickly in recent years to address the concerns of professional

© The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8_1

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researchers and postgraduate students who need to publish in ­peer-­reviewed international journals (Cargill & Burgess, 2008). A large number of studies in ERPP have reported the challenges and pressure experienced by English as an Additional Language (EAL) scholars from almost every corner of the world, for example, Hong Kong (Flowerdew, 1999a, 1999b; Li & Flowerdew, 2009), mainland China (Lei & Hu, 2019; Li, 2014; Mu & Zhang, 2018; Tian, Su, & Ru, 2016; Zheng & Gao, 2016), Taiwan (Huang, 2010), Poland (Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008), Brazil (Santin, de Souza Vanz, & Caregnato, 2016), Germany (Schluer, 2014), Romania (Bardi, 2015; Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014), Spain (Moreno, Rey-Rocha, Burgess, López-Navarro, & Sachdev, 2012; St. John, 1987), Russia (Korotkina, 2018), Mexico (Hanauer & Englander, 2011, 2013), South Korea (Cho, 2009), Indonesia (Cargill et  al., 2017; Farley, 2018), Canada (Gentil & Séror, 2014), Hungary (Lillis & Curry, 2006), India (Thorat & Verma, 2017), Iran (Gholami & Zeinolabedini, 2017; Karimnia, 2013), Italy (Giannoni, 2008), and Sudan (ElMalik & Nesi, 2008). It seems that the situation of academics being pressured to publish in elite international journals is unlikely to change in the near future; thus, ERPP may exist as a subject of study, exploring details of the issue in depth, for years to come. In addition to the above-mentioned journal research articles , there are book-length publications investigating EAL researchers’ experiences in writing and publishing in English (e.g., Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995; Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Curry & Lillis, 2018; Habibie & Hyland, 2019; Hanauer & Englander, 2013; Hyland, 2015; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Pérez-­Llantada, 2012; Sheldon, 2018). These ground-breaking publications have explored ERPP from various aspects. For instance, Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) proposed the concept of “news value” in research articles. Lillis and Curry (2010) discussed the politics of localization and globalization in academic publications and the hegemonic position of English-medium journals from the social practice perspective. In particular, they contributed to research with their innovative approaches such as text-oriented heuristics, textual history, and social networking analysis. Hyland’s (2015) comprehensive book has explored almost all controversial issues in ERPP such as the dis/advantage of EAL scholars, localization and globalization, bias from the “gatekeepers (editors and reviewers),” and open access journals. Hanauer and Englander (2013) applied a q­uantitative approach to

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Mexican scientists’ difficulties with and anxieties about international publications. The edited book by Cargill and Burgess (2017) is a collection of the perspectives from a group of researchers and practitioners who met in Coimbra, Portugal in 2015 for the PRISEAL (Publishing and Representing Research Internationally: Issues for Speakers of English as an Additional Language) and MET (Mediterranean Editors and Translators) meetings. In the book, they explicitly argue that scholars whose first language is not English have a greater challenge in producing English-language publications than do their anglophone counterparts. Although the challenge and pressure faced by Chinese multilingual scholars have received considerable attention from ERPP researchers (Flowerdew, 1999a, 1999b; Huang, 2010; Lei & Hu, 2019; Li, 2014; Li & Flowerdew, 2009; Mu & Zhang, 2018; Tian et  al., 2016; Zheng & Guo, 2018), unfortunately, to date there are few book-length explorations of their experiences and strategies in writing and publishing international journal articles in English. To fill this gap, the present book will explore the challenges and strategies Chinese multilingual scholars report in the process of writing and publishing in English, applying both quantitative and qualitative approaches. This book has several important advantages over the above-mentioned publications. First, with its focus exclusively on Chinese multilingual scholars, it will contribute to the field from a perspective of a specific geographical context. Second, its unique features such as a new ethnographic case approach and a new taxonomy of multilingual writing and publishing strategies may interest academics in the fields of EAP and applied linguistics. Third, like Hanauer and Englander’s (2013) book focusing on Mexican scientists, this book is centered on Chinese multilingual scholars, one of the largest groups of scientists in the world. It will facilitate the advance of international science and technology when Chinese scientists have improved their English writing ability with the help of this book. Since this volume focuses exclusively on Chinese multilingual scholars writing and publishing English-language journal papers, it is necessary to contextualize the present study. The next section briefly introduces the development and characteristics of international publishing in mainland China. With this background information, we can better understand the challenges and pressure Chinese multilingual scholars experience while writing and publishing in English.

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1.2 T  he Status of International Publishing in Mainland China 1.2.1 A  Brief History of International Publishing Development in China For academics in mainland China, seeking international publication is a recent endeavor. Before the reform and opening-up policy was implemented in China at the end of the 1970s, few research articles from China appeared in international journals. Only in the mid-1980s did the first stage of international publishing development begin. Called “the Breaking-through Stage,” it was characterized by a pursuit of international publication in quantity (Qiu, 2013). As Li (2006a) noted, Nanjing University was the institution that started the “SCI (Science Citation Index) strategy” emphasizing international publications, and this strategy was picked up and executed widely in many Chinese higher education and research institutions in the 1990s. At this stage, researchers in China were being encouraged to submit their research to international journals in order to demonstrate the capacity of scientific research in a developing nation. Scientists publishing in SCI-indexed journals are usually awarded US$500–1000 (Xiong, 2013). The second stage of international publishing development in China took off in the first ten years of the twenty-first century. This “upgrading stage” was characterized by seeking publication in higher-quality international publications (Qiu, 2013). Chinese scholars competed to publish their articles in journals with higher impact factors, and citations of their papers were highly regarded. For example, two professors in a Chinese agricultural university were awarded about US$150,000 each because they had published research articles in Cell and Nature in 2006 (Ye & Gao, 2013). However, Chinese scientists were criticized for not making a “historic breakthrough” in scientific research though they had the ability to publish quantities of research articles in high-status journals. In particular, it was widely noted that no scientist in mainland China had ever been awarded a Nobel Prize in science (here mainly referring to natural sciences) since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 (Youyou Tu was the first mainland Chinese Nobel Prize winner in science, being awarded the physiology or

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medicine prize in 2015). Since 2010, people have begun to reflect on the first thirty years’ experience of international academic publishing. Scientists are now urged to focus on cutting-edge research in the world rather than publishable but insufficiently “big” research. Hence, the third, current, stage of academic publishing in China: the “Innovation stage,” characterized by an emphasis on the impact of research in solving key issues in the world (Qiu, 2013). Arguably, research publications are treated more rationally than before.

1.2.2 Features of International Publishing in China As the number of SCI-indexed research articles is an indicator of both the development of knowledge-intensive economies and the degree of international collaboration among countries (Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014), international publishing is accentuated in China. The recent significant investment in sciences and the greater knowledge economy has resulted, so far, in mainland Chinese academics’ international publishing being, typically, large in terms of sheer volume of research output, but relatively low-quality in terms of research innovation. Furthermore, Chinese scholars are monitored by a monolithic and unitary assessment system.

1.2.2.1  L  arge Number of Scientific Researchers and Publications China is home to the largest number of scientists and researchers (63 million in 2011) in the world—25.3% of the total scientific personnel in the world are based in China, while the United States hosts 17% (Chang, 2014). Around 44% of Chinese scientific personnel (27.4 million) have at least a bachelor’s degree or above. From 2007 to 2011, the growth rate of scientific human resources in China was 13.5%, compared with a global growth rate of 3.7% (Chang, 2014); the growth rate of Chinese scientific human resources is the highest in the world. Since 2009, due to its large number of scientific researchers, China has surpassed Japan and

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Europe in terms of its research output; it has been the second-largest producer of scholarly publications in the world for nine consecutive years, first position being held by the United States (Wu, 2018). The number of publications from China that have appeared in the expanded list of SCI-indexed journals skyrocketed from 41,417  in 2002 to 361,200 in 2017. However, even though China’s scientific research publications rank second, much more work needs to be done in improving research productivity because the total number of SCI-indexed papers in the United States was 524,000 in 2017 (Wu, 2018)—nearly 1.5 times as much as China. Furthermore, China’s output may be much less than that of the United States considering the large number of Chinese researchers, let alone the invisibility of social sciences such as management research in the world (Li, 2014; Xu & Nesi, 2019). Therefore, the Chinese government may still require scientific researchers to increase their publication rate to catch up with or even surpass the United States. Naturally, this will impose more pressure on Chinese scholars, which means more research on ERPP is needed in China.

1.2.2.2  I mbalance Between the Number of Publications and the Quality of Research Much of the tremendous increase in submissions (and thus output) is a reflection of the significant investment that developing nations have placed in scientific research and the greater knowledge economy (Silva, 2012). In 2015 the Chinese government invested roughly $400 billion in research and development (R & D) (2% of GDP) (Tollefson, 2018). Now China has become the second-largest country in R & D investment behind the United States which spent the most on R & D— around US$500 billion in 2015, or 26% of the global (Tollefson, 2018). However, the quality of Chinese research is still behind the world ­average, as reflected by citation indicators and the share of PhDs among researchers, because the Chinese government spends much of its R & D budget on building infrastructure, so that less of it goes into actual research than in most other countries (Casassus, 2014). Research in China has been criticized for its lack of creativity. It is posited that Chinese

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7

Table 1.1  Number of publications in Cell, Nature, and Science from the United States and China (2007–2013) Year

USA

China

China proportion (%)

Ratio USA:China

2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007

2392 2495 2441 2384 2475 2495 2436

224 186 144 140 112 90 74

9.4 7.5 5.9 5.9 4.5 3.6 3.0

10.7 13.4 17.0 17.0 22.1 27.7 32.9

researchers imitate ideas from developed countries and the many of the numerous SCI publications they have produced are based on duplication of experiments in American or Japanese laboratories (Qiu, 2013). This is the reason why China has far fewer research articles published in the world’s prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature, and Science (CNS) than the United States (see Table 1.1). As is evident in Table 1.1, American scholars were still publishing over ten times more higher-ranking journal papers than Chinese scholars in 2013. It is reported that only six papers were published in Nature and its branch journals with Chinese scholars involved as co-authors in 2000 (Qiu, 2013). Furthermore, Chinese SCI-indexed papers have fewer citations than American papers do (Feng, Beckett, & Huang, 2013; Fu, You, & Li, 2012). For example, in 2014 Chinese scholars from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao published 506,654 papers while American scholars published 552,690 papers (Zhu, 2015). There is not much difference between the two countries in the number of publications, but American authors’ work attracted twice as many citations as their Chinese counterparts (Zhu, 2015). This suggests that Chinese scholars need to improve the quality of their research and publications, even allowing for other reasons that might have played a significant role.

1.2.2.3  P  ublication-oriented Academic Performance Evaluation System The rewarding system in China has played an important role in promoting publications in SCI-indexed journals. As mentioned above, it is

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c­ommon practice in Chinese higher education institutions to award US$500 to US$1000 for each article published in an SCI-indexed journal (Xiong, 2013). Under this assessment system, Chinese scholars desire to seek international publications both for professional recognition and financial reward. One unfortunate result is that cases of academic misconduct have been found and some papers from China have been retracted by international journals in which these articles were published (Qiu, 2013). Among ordinary academic staff, the attitude to SCI-indexed papers has changed from one of admiration to contempt. Such publications are looked down upon and their academic values minimized by some academic staff due to jealousy, or personal animus, but also for the valid reasons stated above. This attitude has resulted in an often negative perception of international publishing in China.

1.2.2.4  Outflow of High-quality Papers There is a continuous debate in China on whether high-quality papers should be submitted to overseas journals. China has nearly 6,000 scientific journals (second to the United States in terms of the number of journals), of which only 173 were included in SCI in 2017 (Wu, 2018). As English-language journals with higher impact factors are valued much more than Chinese journals within the current academic assessment system, Chinese scholars generally prefer to submit their higher-quality papers to international journals. According to Qiu (2013), 80% of Chinese SCI papers in 2012 were published in overseas journals. Chen (2012) speculated that every year over 160,000 papers from China were published in international SCI-indexed journals. Consequently, there is concern that the quality of Chinese journals is declining. The government has taken the initiative of promoting the impact of Chinese ­scientific journals (Pan & Ding, 2012). However, Chinese scholars still seem to be inclined to publish their best papers in overseas journal. In sum, due to the current publication-oriented academic assessment system in China, Chinese scholars have to face fierce competitions in international publishing and make great efforts to publish their research articles in English. Although China has become the second-

1 Introduction 

9

largest producer of SCI-indexed journal papers in the world, its number of publications is still much less than that of the United States, the largest producer of SCI-indexed papers. Moreover, the number of publications per capita is still small when one takes account of the large number of scientific researchers in China. Furthermore, Chinese scholars have to increase the number of high-quality publications based on world-class innovation in international journals with high impact factors in order to enhance China’s scientific standing in the world. Therefore, it is important to explore Chinese scholars’ publishing experiences with international journals so that we may come to understand the support junior scholars need in order to have a chance of producing high-quality international publications.

1.3 Purposes and Significance of the Study During 2005–2010 submissions of scientific papers from the United States and Japan increased by 177% and 127%, respectively. Submissions from China and India increased even more rapidly—by 484% and 443% respectively; Iran and Malaysia both generated a more than 800% increase (Hyland, 2015). Paralleling the dramatic increase in submissions, the manuscript rejection rate is remarkably high. In the fields of science and medicine, for example, journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) usually reject 50% of submissions; Science and Nature reject 70% or 80% of submissions before sending out for peer review (Sciencenet, 2013). It was reported in 2012 that Science received 13,000 submissions every year, but only 800 (6%) of them were finally published after double-blind peer review (Mei, 2012). However, it is unclear how many of the manuscripts rejected were from writers to whom English was an additional language. In the field of humanities and social sciences (HSS), based on her analysis of a sample of accepted and rejected manuscripts submitted to an applied linguistics journal, Belcher (2007) found that 83% of US-originated submissions were finally accepted while only 24% of the China-originated submissions succeeded. Such findings indicate English as an additional language (EAL) scholars

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possibly face greater challenges in publishing research in international journals. To help Chinese multilingual researchers to write and publish international journal research articles, studies have been conducted to investigate their writing and publishing experiences. The earliest investigations seem to have been Flowerdew’s (1999a, 1999b) seminal studies on the writing and publishing experiences of Hong Kong Chinese academics who have Cantonese as their first language. He identified a series of problems these scholars encountered while writing for publication in English: (1) they have low facility in English expressions; (2) it takes them longer to write; (3) they have a poor vocabulary; (4) they find it difficult to make claims for their research with the appropriate amount of force; (5) their process of composition may be influenced by their first language (L1); (6) qualitative articles are more problematic than quantitative articles; (7) they are restricted to a simple style; (8) the Introduction and Discussion sections of scholarly articles are particularly problematic parts (Flowerdew, 1999a, p. 243). Later, John Flowerdew and Yongyan Li conducted a series of case studies of both Hong Kong academics and doctoral students from mainland China (e.g., Flowerdew & Li, 2009; Li & Flowerdew, 2007, 2009). Individually, Li (2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) has carried out qualitative studies on Chinese scholars’ publishing experiences in English. In mainland China, the study of academics’ experiences in publishing in English did not receive attention until recently (e.g., Tian et al., 2016; Zheng & Gao, 2016) although some teaching materials were published intended to teach students how to write English-language research articles (e.g., Hu, 2000; Ren, 2004). While the above studies have exposed some challenges and pressures faced by Chinese academics, it seems that the experiences of Hong Kong Chinese scholars have been explored more than scholars in mainland China. However, the situation in mainland China differs tremendously from that in Hong Kong. For instance, while the majority of Chinese libraries have an extremely limited collection of books or journals in English, university libraries in Hong Kong are comparatively superbly equipped. Also, a majority of academics in Hong Kong have an overseas educational background (Flowerdew, 1999b). More significantly, in contrast to the situation in mainland Chinese universities, which use

1 Introduction 

11

Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction, Hong Kong higher education is predominantly carried out in English (Braine, 2005; Li & Flowerdew, 2009). Although Li (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007) focused on novice researchers (doctoral students) in higher education institutions in mainland China, the publishing experiences of more senior academics in mainland China are little documented. There are so many questions that have not been answered as yet: What difficulties do mainland Chinese scholars face in publishing international journal papers? How do mainland Chinese academics advance their claims? What literatures do they rely on and how are these literatures invoked in arguments? What kind of evidence is needed to support intellectual arguments and how can that evidence be appropriately developed, analyzed, and interpreted given prevailing standards? What kind of stance can authors appropriately take as contributors to their field? How do they treat the relationship between the local publication and international publication? To better understand Chinese academics’ publishing experiences in English and improve their English writing ability, an ethnographic case study reported in this book has been conducted to find out how 118 Chinese academics from 18 universities in Shanghai, China perceive publishing their research and what difficulties they experience when publishing in English. We particularly explored factors related to the dissemination of their research, such as their language choices and perceptions of rhetorical challenges of disciplinary writing. At the same time, we explored in-depth into the writing and publishing processes of four cases of academics and identified the strategies they have used while writing and publishing in English. The results of the analysis of a large-scale online survey, in-depth semi-­ structured interviews and four scholars’ writing and publishing processes are significant because there is both a niche to fill in ERPP studies, and a practical need to meet. So many Chinese postgraduate students in China and in English-speaking countries expect to publish in international journals and so many editors and reviewers have to process Chinese scholars’ submissions. As academic publication is the dominant standard for academic output, researchers will continue to feel the necessity to publish, and journals will receive more submissions. Editors will also confront regional and cultural challenges in effectively selecting the

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better submissions from groups with which they are relatively unfamiliar. Mainland Chinese academics are such a group. Therefore, the research findings of the present study may contribute to the knowledge base in the discourse community about the writing practices of Chinese multilingual scholars, responding to Hyland’s (2015) and Flowerdew’s (2015) calls for more studies to understand, and respond to, EAL academics’ particular situations. This research is also expected to have pedagogical implications for EAP writing and curriculum design in teaching and learning contexts that are both within and outside the anglophone center (Curry & Lillis, 2004).

1.4 F eatures of Scientific Research and Discourse Before coming to the end of this chapter, it is necessary to clarify what a scientific discourse used through the rest of the book refers to. Firstly, we use “scientific” in a general meaning for academic research. The large-­ scale survey conducted among 18 universities in China examined the experiences of scholars from a broad range of disciplines: Natural Sciences (NS), Engineering, and Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) are all included for comprehensiveness and representativeness. We emphasize “scientific” because we consider publication—the sharing of final results or findings with colleagues and the scientific community—to be one of the definitive scientific research processes, alongside idea conception, literature investigation, experiment, and report writing. And by “publication” we mean to include associated procedures (notably submission and being subject to peer review). The “discourse” here mainly refers to empirical research articles or journal papers representing the scientific research results or findings. For Chinese multilingual scholars, the predominant outlet for international publications is a journal research article in English; this directly determines their research performance and brings great pressure onto them as well. Therefore, it will be helpful for us to understand the features of scientific discourse for better understanding Chinese multilingual scholars’ writing and publishing experiences in English.

1 Introduction 

13

Scientific discourses or research articles (RAs) are the productions of scientific research which is characterized by novel predictability, falsifiability, and duplicability. According to Popper (Diennes, 2008), science is the process of proposing falsifiable theories then rigorously attempting to falsify them. It is necessary to share the theories with colleagues to improve them. However, lacking a tradition like Western scientific research, Chinese culture emphasizes “transmitting” instead of “innovating” knowledge (述而不作) (Hu & Cao, 2011). The Analects is merely a collection of sayings of Confucius noted and compiled by his disciples. Hence, traditionally, publishing does not count as much as research itself in most of the Chinese scholars’ eyes. As mentioned in Sect. 1.2.1, China’s output of international publications has grown since the 1990s due to the “SCI strategy.” That is, Chinese scholars are instrumentally motivated to write and publish research articles in English. In addition, as Kuhn (1962) noted, a paradigm of beliefs, values, and techniques is shared by members of a scientific community. An idea or an empirical finding has to be reviewed, duplicated for testing, and then accepted by the scientific discourse community. In this process of new-­ knowledge formation, the peer review process, started nearly 300 years ago, plays an important role in determining the publication of new findings by scientific community members (Paltridge, 2013). Thus, any writing submitted for publication has to experience rigorous reviewing by peers. However, research published in a higher-ranking journal need not necessarily be accepted by the community members. In 2016, Chunyu Han, a scientist from Hebei University of Science and Technology, became a research star by having a paper published in Nature Biotechnology. He was soon made vice-president of the Hebei Association of Science and Technology and acquired a large sum of funding from the government (Cyranoski, 2018). However, immediately after his paper’s publication, dozens of laboratories attempted to duplicate his experiment but failed. Han refused to provide his peers with the samples and details of the experiment when he was challenged (Cyranoski, 2016). In August 2017, Han and his co-authors agreed to retract the paper, citing other researchers’ inability to replicate the results (Cyranoski, 2018). This incident testifies to the features of scientific research, including novel predictability,

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falsifiability, and duplicability. A scientific discourse may be acknowledged to contribute to new knowledge based on these features of scientific research. It is evident that the process of scientific discourse production is complicated and rigorous. For researchers, their ideas or findings published indicate their acknowledgment by the public. Otherwise, it is a kind of self-entertainment and meaningless. In view of these research features, the scientific community has ruled some relatively steady patterning features of discourse, though they may vary in different disciplines (Hyland, 1999; Swales, 1990). For example, a research article is usually composed of such elements as Title, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. The language of scientific discourse is usually concise and precise, persuading the audience to believe its claims. Technical terms are used with passive voice to mitigate “face” threatening (Myers, 1989). Like one’s appearance, the style of a discourse may impress gatekeepers of journals, influencing the decision on whether a submission is appropriate to publish. In a nutshell, the relationship between scientific research and the discourse is one between content and form. Without substantial content or innovative research, the journal will reject the submission though the language is competent and appropriate. And, contrarily, a paper may fail to be accepted by a journal because poor language may obscure the merit of the research. Therefore, successful publications usually possess both innovative content and correct language.

1.5 Layout of the Book This book is composed of ten chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction in which the general research background, context, purposes, significance, and features of scientific research and discourse are presented. Like other multilingual scholars in the world, Chinese scholars are also pressured to publish their research findings in international journals in English for job-seeking, rank promotion and other benefits. While some case studies (e.g. Flowerdew, 1999a, 1999b; Li, 2006a, 2006b) have explored Chinese scholars’ difficulties in publishing in English, mainly in Hong Kong and

1 Introduction 

15

partly in mainland China, few large-scale quantitative surveys have been undertaken to look into mainland Chinese scholars’ challenges in writing and publishing international journal research articles. The present study was conducted to explore in depth the challenges and pressures that Chinese multilingual scholars encounter, and the strategies that they employ to cope with those difficulties while writing and publishing in English. This volume argues that multilingual scholars should be aware of cross-linguistic and cultural rhetorical preference in different discourse communities, and writing behavior should be considered as a multidimensional social act and a trainable higher-level cognitive process. Owing to the close relationship between ERPP and second-language writing, the present study focusing on Chinese multilingual academics’ experiences in writing and publishing international journal research articles in English has drawn heavily on theories from second-language writing research as its theoretical foundation. Chapter 2 sets up a theoretical framework by drawing from intercultural rhetorical theory, writing process theory, and social genre theory. The author argues that multilingual writers’ behavior is not only a highly cognitive action but also a social action with cross-cultural awareness involved. Chapter 3 reviews relevant literature in the field of ERPP, a newly rising branch of EAP study. The challenges and strategies recognized by previous studies are summarized. Controversial issues are identified in ERPP research: (1) whether multilingual scholars are at a disadvantage while writing and publishing in English; (2) whether international journal editors/ reviewers have a bias against multilingual scholars; (3) whether to publish in international journals for internationalization or in local journals for localization; (4) whether production by multilingual scholars has been constrained by language selection. The data generated from the current investigation will demonstrate Chinese academics’ perceptions on these issues, contributing to the field of ERPP research. Chapter 4 justifies the selection of an ethnographic case study approach to investigate Chinese multilingual scholars’ experiences in writing for scholarly publication in English. Mixed methods with quantitative survey and qualitative semi-structured interviews are used to elicit data exposing Chinese scholars’ attitude to the controversies discussed in the literature and the strategies they report using to cope with the challenges

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they face in writing and publishing in English. An in-depth case analysis method with ethnographic text-history analysis is introduced. Chapter 5 reports the results of the quantitative survey analysis. Chinese multilingual scholars’ attitude to international publishing in English has been identified: 92.4% of respondents accepted English as a lingua franca in academic communication. However, only 25.4% preferred writing research articles in English, while 51.7% were inclined to write in Chinese. It indicates that writing and publishing in English is, at the least, challenging to most of the participants in our investigation. Their perceptions about the four controversies recognized in the ERPP literature are also reported in this chapter. Chaps. 6, 7, 8 and 9 present “thick” descriptions of four cases of Chinese multilingual scholars: their writing and publishing processes are investigated by a combination of interview data and text-history analyses. The strategies they reported using and the processes they followed as they wrote up the manuscripts and responded to reviewers may provide a heuristic for helping novice academics to cope with the challenge and pressure they encounter while writing and publishing in English. The final chapter summarizes the major findings of the study, discusses the pedagogical implications, and suggests some teaching methods which could be used in training novice researchers to write and publish in English.

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Pan, X., & Ding, L. (2012). CAST funded scientific research journals in English in China to promote the impact of China journals. China Science Daily. Retrieved March 4, 2019, from http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/ 2012/12/272356.shtm Pérez-Llantada, C. (2012). Scientific Discourse and the Rhetoric of Globalization. London: Continuum. Qiu, C.  H. (2013). The assessment system needs reforming thoroughly to exclude the academic rubbish. China Youth Daily. Retrieved March 3, 2019, from http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2013/5/278285.shtm Ren, S. L. (2004). How to Write and Publish Scientific Papers in English. Beijing: Science Press. Santin, D., de Souza Vanz, S., & Caregnato, S. (2016). Internationality of publications, co-authorship, references and citations in Brazilian evolutionary biology. Publications, 4(1), 1–13. Schluer, J. (2014). Writing for publication in linguistics: Exploring niches of multilingual publishing among German linguists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 16, 1–13. Sciencenet. (2013). An interview with Benjamin Shaw, Deborah Yang and William Michael Kelley. Retrieved March 14, 2019, from http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2013/12/286813.shtm Sheldon, E. (2018). Knowledge Construction in Academia: A Challenge for Multilingual Scholars. Oxford: Peter Lang. Silva, J. (2012). Global publishing: Changes in submission trends and the impact on scholarly publishers. Reuters Report. St. John, M.  J. (1987). Writing processes of Spanish scientists publishing in English. English for Specific Purposes, 6, 113–120. Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. (2004). Research Genres: Exploration and Applications. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Thorat, S., & Verma, S. (2017). Social Science Research in India: Status, Issues, and Policies. New Delhi: Oxford University Press and Indian Council of Social Science Research. Tian, M., Su, Y., & Ru, X. (2016). Perish or publish in China: Pressures on young Chinese scholars to publish in internationally indexed journals. Publications, 4(2), 1–16. Tollefson, J. (2018). China declared largest source of research articles: Report also finds United States is still a science powerhouse despite increasing competition. Nature, 553(25), 390.

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Wu, Y. S. (2018). Statistical data of Chinese S & T papers. Retrieved February 27, 2019, from http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1557-1143946.html Xiong, B. Q. (2013). “Paper worship” cannot strengthen science and technology in China. Xin Hua Mei Ri Dian Xun (Xin Hua Daily Telegraph). Retrieved July 11, 2019, from http://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2013/1/274224. shtm?id=274224 Xu, X., & Nesi, H. (2019). Differences in engagement: A comparison of the strategies used by British and Chinese research article writers. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, 121–134. Ye, T. Q., & Gao, S. W. (2013). CNS worship reflects the defect of Chinese research assessment. China Youth Daily. Retrieved March 4, 2019, from http://zqb.cyol.com/html/2013-12/20/nw.D110000zgqnb_20131220_ 1-08.htm Zheng, Y., & Gao, A. X. (2016). Chinese humanities and social sciences scholars’ language choices in international scholarly publishing: A ten-year survey. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 48(1), 1–16. Zheng, Y., & Guo, X. (2018). Publishing in and about English: Challenges and opportunities of Chinese multilingual scholars’ language practices in academic publishing. Language Policy, 18(1), 107–130. Zhu, P. (2015). Comparison of research articles in USA and China. Retrieved September 13, 2019, from http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-212210-904888. html

2 A Social-cognitive Framework

2.1 Overview ERPP, a very young branch of research in the field of applied linguistics, is considered to have been started by Maggie Jo St. John since 1987 (Uzuner, 2008). However, it was Cargill and Burgess (2008) who offered a definition for ERPP in their introduction to a special issue of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes (JEAP). As they note, ERPP is a very broad and complex field usually involving “journal publishers, editors and referees, authors’ editors and translators, ERPP teachers, materials writers and course designers, and applied linguists working in fields such as genre analysis and intercultural rhetoric” (Cargill & Burgess, 2008, p. 75). This definition identifies ERPP as a cross-disciplinary branch of research involving such disciplines as second-language writing and intercultural rhetoric. Therefore, it seems natural to set up a theoretical framework for the present study by drawing theories from second-language writing, intercultural rhetoric, and genre analysis. Hence, this chapter reviews theories of intercultural rhetoric, cognitive process, genre analysis, and social constructivism relevant to ERPP studies. In what follows, such issues will be discussed: the question whether thought pattern ­determines © The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8_2

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discourse organization is still a matter of controversy in the study of cross-cultural writing, and the aspects of the mother tongue that may influence the target language writing, positively or negatively, needs to be further explicated for the benefit of multilingual writers. It is conceded that every language has its own rhetorical preferences, and no one can say the English rhetorical pattern is better than the Chinese one. However, the awareness of intercultural rhetorical differences may help multilingual writers to avoid their mother tongue’s negative influences while they attempt to write and publish for the target discourse community. The writers’ practice is considered as both cognitive and social action. Based on these theories related to academic writing, a theoretical framework is proposed for the present study.

2.2 Intercultural Rhetorical Theory Intercultural rhetoric, originally called contrastive rhetoric, proposed by Kaplan (1966) to solve the organizational problem in the second language (L2) writing, has developed into an important branch in applied linguistics (Matsuda, 1997). Kaplan (1966) argued that the rhetorical patterns across languages and cultures are different, which may cause difficulties for second-language writers. While it has been successfully applied in the L2 writing classroom, it has provoked debates in applied linguistics (Connor, Nagelhout, & Rozycki, 2008). The contrastive rhetorical theory has been attacked for ethnocentrism, determinism, and essentialism (Casanave, 2004; Connor, 2001). John Hinds, a text linguist, pointed out that instead of only examining the second-language writing of learners, researchers needed to examine these students’ first-­language acquisition (Connor et al., 2008). He has compared English expositive writing with Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Thai expositive writings and found English rhetorical patterns different from the four Eastern writing patterns (Hinds, 1987, 1990). He called Eastern writing style “delayed introduction of purpose,” and ascribed the difference to different reader expectations: Eastern writing which is foreign to the English-speaking reader may be natural to the native speaker (Hinds, 1990, p.  98). He claimed that “the traditional distinction that ­ English-­ speaking readers make between deductive and inductive writing style is inappro­

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priate to the writing of some non-native authors” (ibid, p. 99). Eastern writers may aim to “stimulate readers into contemplating an issue or issues that might not have been previously considered” (ibid, p.  100). Many other researchers (e.g., Matalene, 1985; Mohan & Lo, 1985) tried to look for the causes of the problems arising in L2 students as a consequence of such factors as educational background, curriculum and cognitive growth, in addition to rhetorical organization. Unlike earlier contrastive rhetorical studies, which mainly focused on students’ writing, later studies expanded to include such genres as journal articles, patient information booklets, online communication, and news media, drawing on “theories of many related disciplines including translation studies, new literacy studies, cultural studies, and English for specific purposes” (Connor, 2014, p.  122). And attention is paid to the dynamic context rather than merely comparing static texts in two cultures. Loi and Sweetnam Evans (2010) compared the rhetorical organization of Introductions between English and Chinese research articles in the field of educational psychology and found cultural differences between two languages. They cautioned that the expectations of native English-­ speaking readers are different from those of Chinese-speaking readers. Similarly, Mur Dueñas’s (2011) comparison of metadiscourse usage between English and Spanish reveals “significant differences in the way authors express their arguments, portray themselves and their readers in the international American and national Spanish contexts” and “different interactions seem to be established between authors and their audiences in the two languages and contexts” (p.  3075). Our own study (Mu, Zhang, Ehrich, & Hong, 2015) also found that English-language research articles tended to use more interactional metadiscourse features to involve the audience in the text, though they did share some common features of academic writing with Chinese research articles. However, some scholars (e.g., Matsuda, 2001; Matsuda & Jeffery, 2012; Stapleton, 2002) argued that the problem with L2 students’ writing might not be related to cultural or ideological differences across languages. While there still exists controversy concerning cultural role in the rhetorical organization, it is commonly acknowledged that different languages and cultures have their own preference for textual pattern and multilanguage users need to switch between these different writing conventions to meet their target readers’ expectations.

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2.3 Cognitive Process Theory Since the late 1970s and 1980s, L2 writing research has been influenced by cognitive psychology (Kroll, 1990). Researchers began to consider other factors than the sentence and discourse structure of the products generated by L2 students. Like English composition researchers, L2 writing experts (e.g. Raimes, 1985; Zamel, 1983) explored the processes of L2 writing underlying the production of written texts and found that some advanced L2 writers had similar writing processes with the native English writers. In classroom teaching, the writing process was emphasized, and writing strategies, multiple revisions, and peer feedback became important parts of L2 writing instruction (Matsuda, 2003). It is worth noting that many L2 writing researchers (e.g., Arndt, 1990; Jones & Tetroe, 1987; Leki, 1995; Wang & Wen, 2002) have investigated the strategies L2 writers used in the process of writing by means of questionnaire survey and verbal reporting. They found L2 writers transferred both positive and negative skills from L1 writing into L2 writing, and their mother tongue played both positive and negative roles in their L2 writing process. However, the L2 writing process study has been greatly influenced by English L1 writing process theories which will be introduced in the following pages. Applying protocol analysis to the composition process, Flower and Hayes (1981) proposed a cognitive process theory of writing. In contrast with the previous studies classifying writing processes into pre-writing, writing and post-writing, they considered writing processes as circulate and hierarchical stages (see Fig. 2.1) including three major units: the task environment, the writer’s long-term memory, and the writing processes (basically planning, translating, and reviewing under the control of a monitor). To understand this writing process model, Flower and Hayes (1981) set four principles: 1. The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.

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Task Environment Rhetorical problem

Growing text

Topic/audience

Long -term Memory Knowledge of topic Audience Plans

Writing Process Planning Translating Reviewing

Monitor

Fig. 2.1  Writing process model. (Source: Adapted from Flower & Hayes, 1981)

2. The processes of writing are hierarchically organized, with component processes embedded within other components. 3. Writing is a goal-directed process. In the act of composing, writers create a hierarchical network of goals and these, in turn, guide the writing process. 4. Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating goals and supporting sub-goals that embody a purpose; and at times, by changing or regenerating their own top-level goals in light of what they have learned by writing. (p. 366) The importance of Flower and Hayes’s (1981) model lies in its understanding of the circulation of the writing process. It is particularly imperative for writing research articles that need revising again and again. However, this model has been criticized by Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) for its shortcomings in methodology and assumption. On the one hand, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) claimed that it was insufficient to propose this model simply on the basis of protocol analysis because think-­ aloud protocol analysis had some limitations, such as intervening in ­writers’ thinking and intentionally meeting the researchers’ expectations. On the other hand, Flower and Hayes (1981) did not distinguish the writing processes of competent writers from those of incompetent writers.

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Based on think-aloud protocol analyses, experimental research as well as direct observation, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) proposed another model of English writing process including a knowledge-telling model for novice writers and a knowledge transformation model for expert writers. The knowledge-telling model is a task-execution model and does not involve any complex problem-solving activities. According to the knowledge-­telling model, the immature writers’ main problem is to generate enough information related to the topic, and their primary goal is to tell their audience what they have generated. Once they have found out what they know about the topic and the genre, they start writing. If they are stuck, they reread the text written so far and use it to generate additional information. In contrast, the knowledge-transforming model is a problem-solving model that requires the writers to engage in constant reflective processes between the content problem space and the rhetorical problem space. Expert writers usually establish a conceptual framework before writing. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) found the novice writers who employed the knowledge-telling model of writing usually revised at the local level while mature writers did global revisions that involved transformations of information. This model has been used extensively in ERPP to explain the difference in English writing between novice scholars and experienced academics (e.g., Buckingham, 2014; Casanave, 2010; Dong, 1996; Li, 2006, 2012). With a qualitative case study of a small group of L2 students at a university in the United States, Leki (1995) identified ten strategies that successful students reported using to cope with writing tasks across the curriculum: (1) classifying strategies; (2) focusing strategies; (3) relying on past writing experience; (4) taking advantage of first-language/culture; (5) using current experience or feedback; (6) looking for models; (7) using current or past ESL writing training; (8) accommodating teachers’ demands; (9) resisting teachers’ demands; (10) managing competing demands. From these strategies, it can be seen that Leki was concerned with the context of the participants’ writing experience as well as the writing process itself. This may be regarded as an example of L2 writing research influenced by L1 composition theoretical studies (e.g., the above-mentioned Flower & Hayes, 1981). Likewise, using the naturalistic qualitative approach, Riazi (1997) investigated four Iranian doctoral

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students’ experience writing in English. Following the categories of metacognitive, cognitive and social strategies proposed by experts in second-­ language learning strategies (e.g., O’Malley & Chamot, 1990), he added another category, “searching strategy.” He identified the participants’ phases of the composing process as reading, writing, reading and writing, and task representation. The cognitive strategies include note-taking, elaboration, use of mother tongue knowledge and skill transfer from L1, inferencing, and drafting (revising and editing). Metacognitive strategies include assigning goals, planning (making and changing outlines), rationalizing appropriate formats, monitoring and evaluation. Social strategies are composed of appealing for clarification and getting feedback from professors and peers. Searching strategies consist of searching and using libraries, using guidelines, and using others’ writing as a model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the earlier research using categories of metacognitive, cognitive, and social strategies to categorize academic writing strategies. Teng and Zhang (2016) proposed a model of writing strategies including goal-oriented monitoring and evaluating, idea planning, peer learning, feedback handling, interest enhancement, emotional control, motivational self-talk, text processing, and course memory under the higher-order categories of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and emotional strategies. They found most of these writing strategies have positive relationship with language proficiency. In sum, influenced by L1 composition theories, L2 writing process research also pays attention to studying writing strategies from theoretical perspective. In particular, the social-­ cognitive perspective into writing process is heuristic for the present investigation of multilingual scholars’ writing and publishing experiences. In ERPP, few researchers have attempted to study the multilingual scholars’ writing process at a theoretical level, but some researchers (e.g., Buckingham, 2014; Burgess, Gea-Valor, Moreno, & Rey-Rocha, 2014; Cargill, O’Connor, & Li, 2012; Flowerdew & Wang, 2016; Li, 2014), when they explored scholars’ experiences in writing and publishing English-language journal papers, recognized strategies multilingual scholars used. For example, Flowerdew (1999) summarized twelve key ­strategies used by successful native- and non-native-speaking writers of scholarly articles drawn from the literature before the 1990s:

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1. Measuring proposed research against the current conversations in the discipline by interacting with scholars who make up the discourse community of the discipline. 2. Deciding what is appropriate for publication in an internationally refereed English-language journal and what is more appropriate for a local or regional English-language journal or indigenous language journal. 3. Using a native-speaking mentor or colleague as co-author. 4. Using a native-speaker at various stages of drafting. 5. Making use of peer help in reviewing writing. 6. Relating to the anticipated audience, i.e., predicting the knowledge and attitudes the text can assume that readers will have. 7. Using implicit knowledge of the “move” structure (discourse organization) of the key parts of the academic article. 8. Structuring the argument appropriately. 9. Judging the appropriate charge to put upon the reader, i.e., what the author would like the reader to do after being convinced by the article. 10. Expressing appropriately the author’s self —i.e., making the reader aware of the author as an individual statement-maker, coming to terms with a distinctive perspective. 11. Presenting knowledge claims with the caution expected by the academic community. 12. Using appropriate degrees of persuasive language. (p. 128) Uzuner (2008) has also summarized the following writing strategies used by multilingual scholars: (1) patience and persistence; (2) collaboration and co-authorship with experienced researchers; (3) familiarizing oneself with the journal guideline and conventions; (4) updating the knowledge of the relevant literature in one’s own research field. While these strategies are comprehensive and derived from cognitive process research, they were reported in a sporadic and unsystematic way. Among these studies, Kwan’s (2009) research on instruction about research publication in doctoral programs is an exception because she proposed a competence model for succeeding in publishing internationally, including discursive competence (e.g., organizing the research article text), competence in strategic research conception (e.g., considering relevance with the international community, selecting journal), competence

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in strategic management of research and publishing (e.g., schedule management), and competence in publishing the thesis-in-progress. We have proposed a taxonomy of writing strategies for non-native English speaking students as well, including rhetorical strategies (organizing ideas in writing conventions acceptable to native speakers of English), metacognitive strategies (planning and controlling the writing process consciously), cognitive strategies (actual writing actions), social strategies (interacting with others in the writing process), and affective strategies (regulating emotions, motivations, and attitudes in the process of writing) (Mu & Carrington, 2007). Although this model has basically a great deal in common with the model proposed by Kwan (2009) in that both categorize the various kinds of writing strategies/competence, Kwan (2009) pays attention to the publishing process as well. These models will be used as a potential tool to explore participants’ writing and publishing processes in the current study.

2.4 Social Constructivist Theory The social constructivist theory assumes that human development is socially situated and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others (McKinley, 2015). This theory was developed by post-­revolutionary Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) who argued that learning could not be separated from its social context. He contended that learning not only referred to the assimilation and accommodation of new knowledge by learners but also the process by which learners were integrated into a knowledge community (Vygotsky, 1978). Many theories related to EAP and ERPP are influenced by social constructivist theory, for example the theory of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) a popular theory used in ERPP research. This theory offers us: a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artifacts, and communities of knowledge and practice. It concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice. A person’s intentions to learn are engaged and the meaning of learning is configured through the process of becoming a full participant in a sociocultural practice. (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 29)

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As Belcher (1994) notes, a legitimate peripheral participant is a newcomer to a community of practice. S/he may grow up with learning and interacting with the expert in the field. The newcomer’s entry into the community is a process of “centripetal participation in the learning curriculum of the ambient community” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p.  100). The novice researchers are regarded as the “apprentices” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) of the discourse community which is also called as “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) by Vygotsky (1978). As Flowerdew (2000) explains, “legitimate, because anyone is potentially a member of what Lave and Wenger call the community of practice, or discourse community; peripheral, because participants are not central but are on the margins of the activity in question; and participation, because learners are acquiring the knowledge through their involvement with it” (p.  131). Knowledge is thus a process of enculturation, not a product. Through years of practice, apprentices internalize skills and knowledge. In other words, according to LPP theory, competence in writing and publishing English-language research articles is not only acquired in the classroom but also in the experience of interacting with the discourse community. According to Hyland (2007), apprenticeship in writing for publication “involves a careful negotiation with two principal audiences: the community of scholars who will read the finished paper and hopefully cite it and use it in their own research; and the journal gatekeepers (editors and reviewers) who will judge the paper as ready for publication” (p. 7). The published texts are actually the outcomes of interactions among academics engaged in a web of professional and social associations. Another important theory in EAP related to social constructivist theory is genre analysis (Swales, 1990). Swales (1990) defines genres as “communicative events” that are characterized both by their “communicative purposes” and by various patterns of “structure, style, content and intended audience” (p. 58). Genre analysis can be used to examine the global structure of empirical research articles, and the famous “CARS” (Create A Research Space) model is based on the move analysis of research article Introductions. Genre analysts proclaimed that genre-based applications could help non-native English writers to acquire the functions and linguistic conventions they need in their disciplines and professions (Hyon, 1996). Another concept in genre analysis proposed by Swales

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(1990) is the discourse community, which is quite similar to Kuhn’s (1962) scientific community. According to Swales, “a discourse community is a group of people who link up in order to pursue objectives that are prior to those of socialization and solidarity, even these latter should consequently occur” (p. 24). He lists six criteria for defining a discourse community: (1) common goals, (2) participatory mechanisms, (3) information exchange, (4) community-specific genres, (5) a highly specialized terminology, and (6) a high general level of expertise. As Flowerdew (2000) pointed out, the concepts of discourse community and legitimate peripheral participation are very important in understanding multilingual scholars’ problems involved in the process of their scholarly apprenticeship.

2.5 S  ocial-cognitive Framework of Writing for Publishing in English The process of writing for publication in English, unlike the general writing process, is not isolated from the scientific research itself. Instead, it is an inseparable stage of research. The goal of publishing is to share research findings with counterparts in the scientific community. Generally, the research process is not linear but, rather, a spiral and recurring one. Researchers acquire a novel idea from reading, working, or interacting with their peers or supervisors. Then they may go to past literatures and find how previous researchers deal with those ideas. After that, they may go back to discuss with their colleagues and figure out a newer idea. Next, researchers may work out a sound research design, and do the experiment or collect data before analyzing them. On the basis of innovative ideas, well-designed data collection and profound data analysis, researchers need to write up the results to produce a text with the potential to be published. In the process of writing, researchers may return to notes on their prior reading or catch up with the latest publications in the same direction of research. At the same time, they have to select journals which may accept their manuscript. Of course, the writing process is not a linear one either. As many guidebooks for writing for publications suggest, researchers first write the Results or Methods section, and only then

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attempt the article’s Discussion and Introduction (Cargill & O’Connor, 2009). The manuscript may be revised by researchers themselves, supervisors, convenient English teachers, and even their close friends. Once the manuscript is ready, they submit it to a journal for peer review. It usually takes three months or even longer to receive feedback. If they are lucky, they may be given the opportunity to revise their manuscript and resubmit it. Otherwise, they have to turn to another journal after revising their manuscript based on the reviewers’ suggestions. Sometimes, the reviewers’ requirements for revision are stringent. Researchers may be asked to complement the experiment or send their manuscripts for language editing. After several rounds of revision, it is highly likely that their paper will be published. Once it is published, scientists in any part of the world may replicate the research if it is innovative in methods or findings. On occasion a publication may be retracted for various reasons: Chunyu Han mentioned in Sect. 1.4 is a case in point. Hence, writing for publication is not a mere simple writing process. Research for ERPP needs to consider factors such as seeking new ideas, designing sound experiments, becoming familiar with the genre of a specific discipline, and mastering the skills to communicate with peer reviewers, as parts of the whole research process. In view of the special nature of multilingual academics writing for publication in English, we propose a new social-cognitive framework of writing for publications by drawing on the theories discussed in the preceding sections. Firstly, it is assumed that multilingual scholars are located in three communities: the disciplinary community, the national community, and the international community. These three communities have something in common. For example, they are usually composed of researchers or scientists who have been strictly trained in academic ­practice. Most of them research for the purpose of pursuing truth, justice, and fairness in the world. However, each of these communities has its peculiar culture and conventions. Take Chinese rhetoric as an example: the disciplinary requirements of Chinese national journals may be different from those of international journals (Hu & Wang, 2014). Comparison of English and Chinese academic discourse (e.g., Hu & Cao, 2011; Loi, 2010; Mu et  al., 2015) found that rhetorical moves and steps were employed less often in Chinese research article Introductions than in

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English-language ones, and that there were differences in linguistic features between the two languages. Disciplinary variation is also well documented (e.g., Kwan, 2009; Samraj, 2002; Yang & Allison, 2004). Burgess et  al. (2014) found that the differing degrees of internationalization between scholars in chemistry and those in business studies seemed to affect publication rates in different languages. Scholars in business studies are more likely to publish in the local language (in this case, Spanish) than those in chemistry. Hyland’s (1999) study also showed that “Writers in the humanities and social sciences employed substantially more citations than scientists and engineers, and were more likely to use integral structures, to employ discourse reporting verbs, and to represent cited authors as adopting a stance to their material.” (p. 341). Samraj (2008) found philosophy students created a much stronger authorial presence, but established weaker intertextual links to previous research, than biology students. Thus, multilingual academics need to be aware of the rhetorical conventions across languages and disciplines. Previous studies (e.g., Laso & John, 2017) indicate that it is important for academics to be acquainted with the formulaic language of their research field, since conforming to such conventions is considered to be “good style” and will maximize their chances of publishing in international scientific journals. Secondly, multilingual scholars’ writing for publishing in English is not a linear process but rather a spiral and circulating process involved with research practice. Since the motive for scholars writing for publication is to contribute new knowledge to their communities, they need to experiment to produce scientific results and revise their manuscript repeatedly to increase the “news value” of their research (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995). As Fig. 2.2 demonstrates, in this spiral process new ideas are generated from interaction with people from the disciplinary, national, and international communities, and from continual reading of materials related to the research topic. Furthermore, multilingual scholars need to familiarize themselves with this process of writing for publication and the writing and publishing conventions of their targeted international discipline. It is essential to be aware of the difference between national and international disciplinary rhetorical conventions. Thirdly, as is discussed in Sect. 2.3, writing for international publication requires a series of decisions to be made for success: for example,

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Fig. 2.2  Social-cognitive framework of writing for international publishing

deciding which language to write in, which ideas and data to include, which journal to submit the manuscript to, and how to communicate with the journal editor and reviewers. A research writer is both a strategist and a tactician. S/he needs to consider the research, writing, publishing, and communicating procedures as an integeral process, while at the same time invoking some micro-strategies (e.g., hedging and boosting in writing) to cope with emerging issues. Thus, a researcher (actually also a writer) needs to know how to manage the research (including writing) process, for instance, when to start and when to end. S/he is responsible for making a plan, selecting a target journal, and complementing work, if necessary, with additional experiments. This first process is the metacognitive process: the research and writing process is planned, monitored, and regulated. The second process is the cognitive process: relatively specific and direct. For example, one can generate innovative ideas by reading previous studies, attending academic conferences, and interacting

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with peers and supervisors. Manuscript revision can be done at a global level (structural change) or at a local level (grammatical change). The third process is the social process: a novice researcher or an apprentice socializes herself or himself into the central academic community as s/he moves in from the peripheral area (Lave & Wenger, 1991). For multilingual scholars, the choice of language is not only a linguistic decision but also a social and ideological one (Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008). As Curry and Lillis (2010) note, linguistic and rhetorical competence alone is insufficient to secure publication in English-medium journals. Rather, participation in academic networks plays a key role in international publishing. In an interview, John Flowerdew acknowledged that knowing journal editors personally is a very useful publishing strategy (Burgess, 2006). The fourth process is the affective process: the methods used to regulate emotions such as anxiety, despair, and depression likely to appear during the research, writing, and publishing process. As Hanauer and Englander (2011) noted, “sending a manuscript out for peer review always carries some level of anxiety” (p. 411). The participants in their study reported experiencing “anxiety when writing in their first language, but that anxiety jumps up 21% when writing in a second language” (Hanauer & Englander, 2011, p. 411). Although the pressure that multilingual scholars felt has been well documented (e.g., Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Cargill & O’Connor, 2006; Curry & Lillis, 2004, 2010, 2013; Farley, 2018; Flowerdew, 2015; Kent, Berry, Budds, Skipper, & Williams, 2017; Luo & Hyland, 2017; Tian, Su, & Ru, 2016), the strategies to overcome it are relatively rarely discussed in the literature. This pressure should not be neglected in the process of writing for international ­publishing because it is sometimes harmful to an academic’s health and to their research in the long term. The final process is the discursive process: mainly processes related to diction and discourse in writing (Kwan, 2009). The discursive problems of the multilingual academic are usually regarded as “ample evidence of their discursive/ academic incompetence” (Canagarajah, 1996, p. 436). While discursive competence (e.g., presenting oneself authoritatively) was considered to be acquired with experience (Hyland, 2015; Swales, 2004), it is significant to learn the “community-specific genre and highly specialized terminology” (Swales, 1990, p. 29). Awareness of cultural differences in rhetorical conventions

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across languages may also be helpful for multilingual scholars; different cultures have different value systems, essentially different communities’ differing regards as to wat is good or bad (Hyland, 2012). For example, the reproduction of a previous author’s ideas is acceptable as a sign of respect in Chinese writing, while in the Anglo-Saxon world it is individual expression of ideas that is valued (Bloch & Chi, 1995). The use of the first-person pronoun is largely unacceptable in the traditions of Asian cultures because of its association with individual rather than collective identity (Ohta, 1991; Scollon, 1994). Aware of these rhetorical differences, often unspoken in communications between one culture and another, multilingual scholars may consciously adopt their target  discourse community’s writing conventions instead of subconsciously transferring mother-tongue conventions. In summary, considering the intercultural and developmental nature of multilingual scholars, the social-cognitive framework of writing for international publishing in English proposed in this book seeks to situate them in three associated but different communities: international, national, and disciplinary. The process of writing for international publishing is considered as a spiral, nonlinear process, which is one of the indispensable stages of research practice. Any problems in the process of writing for publication need to be accounted for within the research process. As Mišak, Marušić, and Marušić (2005) pointed out, a manuscript can be revised and reorganized by language professionals or disciplinary experts who, however, cannot change the hypothesis, study design, methods applied, outcome measures, and data obtained. A submitted article cannot be saved from rejection if there is a fault in research design and the data collected are neither reliable nor correct. The only way, perhaps, is to redesign the study and re-collect the data  (Mišak et  al., 2005). In this respect, both research and writing are a spiral process. More importantly, we invoke five processes— metacognitive, cognitive, social, affective, and discursive— in the social-cognitive framework to cope with the challenges and difficulties that multilingual scholars encounter while writing for international publications in English. These five processes will be used to frame the strategies identified in previous studies, and in the present investigation will be our guide in analyzing the strategies that multilingual Chinese scholars use.

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References Arndt, V. (1990). Writing in First and Second Languages: Contrasts and Comparisons. Hong Kong: City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. Belcher, D. D. (1994). The apprenticeship approach to advanced academic literacy: Graduate students and their mentors. English for Specific Purposes, 13(1), 23–34. Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1987). The Psychology of Written Composition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition, Culture, Power. New York: LEA. Bloch, J., & Chi, L. (1995). A comparison of the use of citations in Chinese and English academic discourse. In D.  Belcher & G.  Braine (Eds.), Academic Writing in a Second Language: Essays on Research and Pedagogy (pp. 231–274). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Buckingham, L. (2014). Building a career in English: Users of English as an additional language in academia in the Arabian Gulf. TESOL Quarterly, 48, 6–33. Burgess, S. (2006). An interview with Professor John Flowerdew of City University Hong Kong. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 53, 95–103. Burgess, S., Gea-Valor, M.  L., Moreno, A.  I., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2014). Affordances and constraints on research publication: A comparative study of the language choices of Spanish historians and psychologists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 72–83. Canagarajah, A. S. (1996). “Nondiscursive” requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written Communication, 13, 435–472. Cargill, M., & Burgess, S. (2008). Introduction to the special issue: English for Research Publication Purposes. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(2), 75–76. Cargill, M., & Burgess, S. (2017). Publishing Research in English as an Additional Language: Practices, Pathways and Potentials. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. Cargill, M., & O’Connor, P. (2006). Developing Chinese scientists’ skills for publishing in English: Evaluating collaborating-colleague workshops based on genre analysis. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5, 207–221. Cargill, M., & O’Connor, P. (2009). Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

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Matsuda, P.  K. (2001). Voice in Japanese written discourse: Implications for second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 35–53. Matsuda, P.  K. (2003). Second language writing in the twentieth-century: A situated historical perspective. In B. Kroll (Ed.), Exploring the Dynamics of Second Language Writing (pp. 16–23). New York: Cambridge University Press. Matsuda, P. K., & Jeffery, J. V. (2012). Voice in student essays. In K. Hyland & C.  S. Guinda (Eds.), Stance and Voice in Written Academic Genres (pp. 151–165). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McKinley, J. (2015). Critical argument and writer identity: Social constructivism as a theoretical framework for EFL academic writing. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 12(3), 184–207. Mišak, A., Marušić, M., & Marušić, A. (2005). Manuscript editing as a way of teaching academic writing: Experience from a small scientific journal. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14, 122–131. Mohan, B. A., & Lo, W. A.-Y. (1985). Academic writing and Chinese students: Transfer and developmental factors. TESOL Quarterly, 19(3), 515–534. Mu, C. J., & Carrington, S. (2007). An investigation of three Chinese students’ English writing strategies. TESL-EJ, 11(1), 1–23. Mu, C., Zhang, L. J., Ehrich, J., & Hong, H. (2015). The use of metadiscourse for knowledge construction in Chinese and English research articles. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 20, 135–148. Mur Dueñas, P. (2011). An intercultural analysis of metadiscourse features in research articles written in English and in Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 3068–3079. O’Malley, J. M., & Chamot, A. U. (1990). Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ohta, A. S. (1991). Evidentiality and politeness in Japanese. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 2, 183–210. Raimes, A. (1985). What unskilled ESL students do as they write: A classroom study of composing. TESOL Quarterly, 19(2), 229–258. Riazi, A. (1997). Acquiring disciplinary literacy: A social-cognitive analysis of text production and learning among Iranian graduate students of education. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6(2), 105–137. Samraj, B. (2002). Introductions in research articles: Variations across disciplines. English for Specific Purposes, 21, 1–17. Samraj, B. (2008). A discourse analysis of master’s theses across disciplines with a focus on introductions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(1), 55–67. Scollon, R. (1994). As a matter of fact: The changing of ideology of authorship and responsibility in discourse. World Englishes, 13(1), 33–46.

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3 Controversial Issues in ERPP Studies

3.1 Overview Although ERPP is a relatively newly risen branch of EAP research, it has developed rapidly, with abundant past research, as noted in the first chapter of this volume. To find out what has been explored and how the researchers approached it, Chap. 3 reviews previous studies in the field of ERPP since the 1980s, focusing on the challenges EAL (English as an Additional Language) writers face, strategies for international publishing, and ERPP pedagogy. In particular, the controversial issues in ERPP should be recognized so that the perceptions and attitudes to such issues taken by Chinese multilingual scholars as members of the global academic community can be explored further. In addition, the major research questions are proposed in this chapter. In other words, the present research aims to investigate the challenges that mainland Chinese scholars face and the strategies they employ in the process of international publishing, to explore their perceptions on the controversial issues, and finally to propose some suggestions for further research.

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3.2 C  hallenges Faced by Multilingual Scholars The high rejection rate operated by prestigious journals has imposed great challenges and pressures on academics, including multilingual scholars. As LaPlaca, Lindgreen, and Vanhamme (2018) noted, “most of the leading journals in all fields routinely have rejection rates of 80%, 95% or even higher” (p. 202). Only those submissions that have contributed significantly to a field will be accepted by such journals. However, as Swales (1987) noted, up until the 1980s ESL (English as Second Language) instructors believed themselves to have neither responsibility for, nor confidence in teaching, the research paper to non-native graduate students and staff. No matter whether courses offer a current-traditional rhetorical approach or a process approach, the subjects of L2 writing instruction are undergraduates (Kroll, 1990; Matsuda, 2005) and so EAL writers encountered no place or person offering help, and the challenges faced by non-native graduate students and staff were not noticed. As a result, the voice of the academic from peripheral countries and regions was unheard (Belcher, 2007; Hanauer & Englander, 2013). St. John’s (1987) study is considered to be the first empirical investigation of multilingual scholars’ publishing experiences (Uzuner, 2008). She found that Spanish researchers had problems finding correct expressions in English, and 80% to 90% of their revisions were localized, involving word order and word choice. This indicated that they were more concerned with the precise expression of information than the discovery of meaning (St. John, 1987, p.  116). In Lei and Hu’s (2019) investigation, the most salient difficulty reported by all doctoral students interviewed is their limited English-language skills. Specifically, they have difficulties in paraphrasing a source text, and in diction and grammar. In addition to language problems, non-anglophone scholars were found to have greater difficulty in accessing up-to-date resources and networks that might facilitate English-language publication (Canagarajah, 1996; Hanauer & Englander, 2011; Li, 2013; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Mu & Zhang, 2018). Doctoral students have to juggle multiple competing demands such as attending coursework, or writing their thesis, apart from publishing international journal papers to meet graduation requirements (Gosden,

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1996; Ho, 2017; Kwan, 2009; Lei, 2019; Li, 2006a, 2006b). They were also found to be unfamiliar with publishing conventions such as journal selection and effective response to editors and reviewers in addition to choosing an appropriate theoretical framework and methodology design for their research (Lei & Hu, 2019). In her comprehensive literature review, Uzuner (2008) summarized the difficulties that EAL scholars faced while preparing research articles for international publications: (1) language problems, including poor English vocabulary, unclear modality, and inappropriate use of idiomatic expressions; (2) parochialism—inability to relate local research to the interests of core disciplinary communities; (3) unfamiliarity with the accepted conventions of English-language research reporting; (4) the time-consuming and tedious nature of writing for publication in English; (5) a lack of connections with members of the core academic communities; (6) facing potential bias against multilingual scholars’ submissions; and (7) a lack of sufficient funds to conduct research. Duszak and Lewkowicz (2008) found that Polish scholars faced a dilemma, having to choose “between becoming recognized in the wider academic world which has access to academic literature in English, and the need to publish in Polish, thus making one’s work better known locally and resisting the total dominance of English” (p. 108). In short, scholars, especially EAL scholars, encounter great difficulties and challenges in publishing research articles in international journals in English with regard to language and content, and even ideology. Salager-Meyer (2014) divided EAL scholars’ difficulties in publishing in English into two categories: (1) language-related and/or discourse-­related difficulties, such as a low level of basic academic writing skills, including rhetorical and argumentative skills; and (2) non-linguistic or non-­discursive difficulties (e.g. poor infrastructure, sporadic and intermittent internet connectivity, electricity outages, scarce or non-existent material and/or bibliographical resources, low wages, etc.). Borrowing her categories of classification of EAL writer’s difficulties, we attempt to summarize multilingual scholars’ difficulties mentioned in the literature in recent years (see Table 3.1). In short, it is important to explore these researchers’ publishing experiences and understand the challenges they face in advancing their field for knowledge construction and development with global audiences in mind.

Non-discursive and content-related difficulties Difficulties in employing academic translators (Flowerdew, 1999b) Few scientific writing courses (Lu, 2004) High rejection rate of their papers (Salager-Meyer, 2014) Investing vast resources of time and money (Flowerdew, 1999a; Salager-­Meyer, 2014) Lack of originality (Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014) Lack of procedural rigor (Mungra & Webber, 2010) Lack of resources and writing expertise (Hyland, 2016) Methodological shortcomings (Lei & Hu, 2019; Muresan & PérezLlantada, 2014) Parochialism (Flowerdew, 2001) Poor infrastructure, sporadic and intermittent internet connectivity, electricity outages, scarce or non-existent material and/or bibliographical resources, low wages (Salager-Meyer, 2014) Qualitative articles may be more problematic than quantitative articles (Flowerdew, 1999a) Use of relatively few references (Lu, 2004)

Discursive-related and/or language-related difficulties

Absence of authorial voice Nativized varieties of English problems of word choice and syntax (Flowerdew, 2001; Hyland, 2016) Complexity of grammar and syntax (Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014) Development of topic from sentence to sentence in a coherent way (Gosden, 1995) Making claims for their research with the appropriate amount of force (Flowerdew, 1999a; Gosden, 1995; Mungra & Webber, 2010) Do not indicate their contribution and limitation in the discussion (Lu, 2004; Mungra & Webber, 2010) Incomplete introduction/literature (Lu, 2004; Mungra & Webber, 2010) Interpreting the results and drawing a plausible conclusion (Mišak, Marušić, & Marušić, 2005) Intervention of or Influenced by their L1 (Braine, 2005; Flowerdew, 1999a) Introductions and discussions to scholarly article are particularly problematic parts (Flowerdew, 1999a) Less likely to adjust sentence length, insert cohesive devices, and adjust hedging (Burrough-Boenisch, 2003) Less logical and clear linking of sentences for the reader (Gosden, 1995; Li, 2005; Mišak et al., 2005) Limited/poor vocabulary (Braine, 2005; Flowerdew, 1999a) Lose focus/ frequently forget about basic questions that need to be addressed (Mišak et al., 2005) Low level of basic academic writing skills, including rhetorical and argumentative skills (Salager-Meyer, 2014) Paucity of expressions (Braine, 2005; Flowerdew, 1999a; Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014) Overcrowding the report with unnecessary data/Tending to mix up essential and nonessential information (Mišak et al., 2005) Restricted to a simple writing style (Braine, 2005; Flowerdew, 1999a) Rhetorical misplacement (Li, 2005) Surface errors (Flowerdew, 2001; Gosden, 1995; Hyland, 2016; Lei & Hu, 2019; Li, 2005)

Table 3.1  Summary of multilingual scholars’ difficulties in ERPP writing mentioned in previous studies

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Table 3.1 indicates multilingual scholars’ discursive or language-related difficulties ranging from lower-level surface problems such as diction and sentence arrangement to higher-level rhetorical problems such as hedging and authorial voice. The latter may be more problematic because the cause of rhetorical problems is rather complicated, involving culture, cognitive development, and educational background. Novice writers can enlarge their vocabulary and consult grammar books to remediate their lack of facility of expression and surface errors. However, the native writing conventions acquired in the long term by multilingual scholars may subconsciously intervene on their writing for the target journal. Notably, the ideological value of good or bad writing has been reported to influence second-language writers’ behavior (Hynninen & Kuteeva, 2017; Li, 1996). Thus, more exploration into rhetorical differences across languages and disciplines is needed to raise multilingual scholars’ intercultural rhetorical awareness. However, improvement of rhetorical awareness cannot be reached quickly, and multilingual scholars have to be patient, immersing themselves in their target discourse community. As for non-discursive and content-related difficulties, it is normal for the gatekeepers of a community to be rigorous in the matter of research design and require multilingual scholars to associate themselves with the target audience of the journal. What scholars can do in response to these requirements is to add complementary experiments or redesign their experiment. Perhaps ERPP research cannot solve problems such as low wages, or poor infrastructure and library resources, but these problems may be exposed to catch the attention of authorities.

3.3 S  trategies Employed by Multilingual Scholars Generally, in investigating multilingual scholars’ writing experiences for English-language publication, researchers will often call up and propose measures or strategies to cope with the scholars’ difficulties or problems. For example, St. John (1987) noticed that his participants compiled a list of useful expressions, built a jigsaw using other articles, wrote directly in their own English and then passed their draft papers to other people to

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read and comment on. The practice of language re-use to support the drafting of particular sections of an article is found to be a popular strategy used by both native and non-native English scientists and students (Buckingham, 2014; Li, 2006a, 2006b). Uzuner (2008) summarized writing strategies used by multilingual scholars in her comprehensive review paper: (1) patience and persistence; (2) collaboration and coauthorship with experienced researchers; (3) familiarizing oneself with the journal guidelines and conventions; (4) updating one’s knowledge of the relevant literature in one’s own research field. Many ERPP researchers (e.g., Braine, 2005; LaPlaca et al., 2018) assume that many potentially good manuscripts are rejected simply due to poor presentation and a lack of sophisticated writing skills. Cargill and O’Connor (2006) argue that there is considerable demand for access to skills and strategies for writing articles that are likely to meet the requirements of international gatekeepers. Hence, it is important to explore in depth the writing and publishing strategies that can improve multilingual scholars’ writing ability and proficiency. Unfortunately, however, the strategies reported in previous studies are scattered and sporadic. Few studies have attempted to refine these sporadic strategies and organize them in a more systematic way (Kwan, 2009). Based on the investigation of doctoral students’ publishing experiences in English, Kwan (2009) proposed a competence model for success in publishing internationally, including discursive competence (e.g., organizing the research article text), competence in strategic research conception (e.g., considering relevance with the international community, selecting an appropriate journal), competence in strategic management of research and publishing (e.g., schedule management), and competence in publishing the thesis-in-progress. As the focus of this model is only on doctoral students, it may not be appropriate to generalize to other scholars in a larger range. In addition, it does not mention strategies to overcome the anxiety and pressure that scholars experience in their writing for publication in international journals. On the basis of the discussions on English-­writing strategies and the social-cognitive framework in Chap. 2, one might well follow the five categories—discursive strategies, metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, social strategies, and affective strategies—to frame ERPP writing strategies. Discursive strategies mainly refer to the methods used to organize ideas in writing

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conventions acceptable to the target discourse community. Metacognitive strategies refer to the decisions made to plan and consciously control the writing and publishing process. For example, what language is chosen to write and publish the research results? Which journal will be targeted before submission? A schedule is drawn up to carry out the experiment and write up the manuscript. Cognitive strategies refer to the decisions made in the actual writing and publishing process. For instance, local or global revisions may be determined in the process of revising the manuscript. A decision is needed if and when the manuscript is rejected. Social strategies refer to the methods used by scholars to interact with others in the writing and publishing process. For example, scholars may have to decide whether to seek help from editing or translating services, or whether to attend conferences or seminars to construct a social network. Affective strategies refer to the methods used by scholars to regulate their emotions, motivations, and attitudes in the process of writing and publishing research articles in international journals. For example, how should scholars motivate themselves when their submissions being rejected again and again? With this ERPP writing strategy model, we organize those strategies mentioned in the previous studies into the following Table 3.2.

3.4 Controversial Issues in ERPP Studies While a large number of ERPP studies have emerged in recent years, research findings from international ERPP investigations are sometimes controversial or conflict with each other: it is, after all, a new field of research. In what follows, several controversial issues in ERPP studies are introduced to contextualize the current investigation in the international academic community. We will examine how multilingual Chinese scholars see these issues from their perspectives. The first controversial issue is the debate on the native or non-native nature of academic writers. While some researchers (e.g., Hyland, 2016, 2019; Swales, 2004) claim that the differences between native and nonnative English speakers have become blurred in academic writing because native English scholars also feel pressured and find it difficult to be pub-

Cognitive strategies

(continued )

Hedging (Burrough-Boenisch, 2005; Flowerdew, 1999b) Genre convention (Burrough-Boenisch, 2003; Uzuner, 2008) Awareness of textual level features (Cho, 2009) Using implicit knowledge of the “move” structure (discourse organization) of the key parts of the academic article (Flowerdew, 1999b) Structuring the argument appropriately (Flowerdew, 1999b) Negotiating the strength of scientific claims (Cargill & O’Connor, 2006) Translation into English of a text written entirely in Spanish/ Chinese (Burgess, Gea-Valor, Moreno, & Rey-Rocha, 2014; Li, 2005) Authors’ editing of a text written entirely in English (Burgess et al., 2014) Selecting areas of study (Cheung, 2010) Interpreting editors’ letters (Hyland, 2011) Aiming to enrich center theories (Li & Flowerdew, 2009) Considering the expectations of the target journal and readership (Li, 2007) Writing directly in English (Li, 2005; St. John, 1987) Deciding what is appropriate for publication in an internationally refereed English-language journal (Flowerdew, 1999b) Taking lessons from previous experience in writing research articles (Li, 2007) Use of core published texts as models (Buckingham, 2014; Burgess et al., 2014) Extensive reading in the field (Buckingham, 2014; Li, 2013, 2014) Various textual borrowing practices (Buckingham, 2014; Cheung, 2010; Flowerdew, 2007; Flowerdew & Li, 2007; Li, 2005, 2012) Revision (deletions, reshuffling, altering of modality, addition of technical detail and the superficial polishing of text) (Flowerdew & Wang, 2016; Gosden, 1995) Imitation (Cargill & O’Connor, 2006; Cargill, O’Connor, & Li, 2012) Using L1 to sharpen the meaning (Li, 2007) Collecting useful expressions as one reads and compiling a list of them (St. John, 1987)

Discursive strategies

Metacognitive strategies

Micro-strategies

Macro-strategies

Table 3.2  Taxonomy of writing strategies mentioned by multilingual scholars in previous studies

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Knowing the editors personally (Burgess, 2006) Cooperating with discipline specialists (Flowerdew, 1999b; Li, 2014) Editorial service (Cho, 2009; Li, 2014; St. John, 1987; Uzuner, 2008) Seeking assistance from their dissertation supervisors (Cheung, 2010; Flowerdew, 1999b) Attending workshops on writing research papers or conferences (Cheung, 2010) Following recommendations from more powerful gatekeepers such as journal editors and peer reviewers (Flowerdew & Wang, 2016) Using a native-speaking mentor or colleague as co-author (Flowerdew, 1999b) Relying on their students or overseas personal connections for access to full-text medical literature (Li, 2013) Seeking textual mentorship (Li, 2007) Research visits abroad (Martín, Rey-Rocha, Burgess, & Moreno, 2014) Allocation of responsibility for writing up research papers within the research team Use of ‘language brokers’ (Lillis & Curry, 2006; Pérez-Llantada, Plo, & Ferguson, 2011) Relating to the anticipated audience (Flowerdew, 1999b; Li, 2007) Impressing referees (Li, 2007) Authorial persistence (Belcher, 2007) Motivations for international publishing (publishing pressure, desire for reputation) (Li, 2014) Patience and persistence (Uzuner, 2008)

Social strategies

Affective strategies

Micro-strategies

Macro-strategies

Table 3.2 (continued)

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lished in higher-ranking journals, others (e.g., Burgess et al., 2014; Cho, 2009) argue that multilingual scholars “face a number of additional hurdles to publication that first language users of English do not confront with the same frequency or to the same degree” (p. 72). Non-anglophone scholars may spend more time and economic resources producing a similar number of publications to their anglophone counterparts (Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Cho, 2009). In Flowerdew’s (1999a) investigation, 68% of his sample population of 585 Hong Kong scholars felt at a disadvantage compared with native English speakers in publishing their research. Almost 80% of the mainland Chinese doctoral researchers in Li’s (2002) survey similarly felt disadvantaged in competition with “their nativeEnglish-­speaking international counterparts” (p.  186). In addition, in Hanauer and Englander’s (2011) study, Mexican scientists perceived EAL writing as 24% more difficult than writing in their native language, and their EAL writing process generated 11% more dissatisfaction and 21% more anxiety. Flowerdew (2000) argues that non-native-speaking scholars are in a more difficult position when it comes to the international publication of their research because they have had little exposure to English and few opportunities for peripheral participation. However, applied linguists like Swales (2004) and Hyland (2015) argue that native English-speaking academics also experience difficulties in writing research articles and “academic English is no one’s first language” (Hyland, 2015, p. 57). Hyland (2016) maintains that native speaking scholars may not necessarily be able to succeed in publishing even in an English-dominated publication world. As a matter of fact, linguistic knowledge may be less important than the knowledge of disciplinary discursive practices (Payant & Belcher, 2019). Ammon (1990) found that 55% of the surveyed German scientists reported no sense of disadvantage in writing Englishlanguage research articles, and 63% of Muresan and Pérez-Llantada’s (2014) informants considered themselves to be more advantaged than disadvantaged by the use of English in academic communication because it gave them access to international recognition, mobility, success, and prosperity though they “agree that the dominance of English gave an advantage to native-speaking academics” (pp. 61–62). In fact, both native and non-native speakers need to develop advanced academic literacy to

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publish in prestigious English journals. For some non-native speakers, English may become their native scholarly language (Flowerdew, 2000; Payant & Belcher, 2019). As Matsuda (2014) has narrated, her academic Japanese is much weaker than her academic English; the latter is a stronger language for scholarly activities. As Benfield and Feak (2006) noted, “at least 50% of the publications in many of the best peer-reviewed journals are contributed by EIL (English as an international language) authors” (p.  1728), and the acceptance rates between native and nonnative speakers are essentially the same. It is also argued that writing for research publication purposes is a skill that can only be acquired through lengthy formal education (Ferguson, Perez-Llantada, & Plo, 2011). It seems there is still disagreement about this issue in the relevant studies. Hence, Chinese multilingual scholars are expected to state their attitudes to the above issue in the present investigation. Another controversial issue in ERPP research is the debate between globalization and localization of publications. The number of refereed academic journals published in English listed in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory has almost tripled to 77,218  in 2018 from 25,864  in 2009 (McDowell & Liardét, 2019). The consequence for international academic publishing is a trend of “hegemonic Englishization” (Korotkina, 2018; Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014), raising concerns over issues of knowledge dissemination and national language domain loss (Ferguson, Pérez-Llantada, & Plo, 2011; Zheng & Gao, 2016). It is noted that Spanish awarding system encourages scholars to publish their results in English instead of Spanish and many high-quality Spanish journals have turned to publishing papers in English-language (Pérez-Llantada et al., 2011). Some peripheral journals in Mexico, Russia, Serbia, Iran, South Korea, and Brazil have also been observed to switch to English (SalagerMeyer, 2014). However, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) for academic publishing is considered by many to be a double-edged sword because the standardized “rules of the game” have made academic competition more transparent and fair, while ELF also threatens standard, idiomatic English as a means of scientific communication, just as other languages and cultures are threatened (Bocanegra-Valle, 2014; Li & Flowerdew, 2009; McKinley & Rose, 2018; Popova & Beavitt, 2017). While many leading

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European and Japanese journals have been observed to switch to publishing in English (Hyland, 2007; Swales, 2004), researchers (e.g., Martín et  al., 2014) noticed that the academic genre gradually disappeared in Finland and the Scandinavian countries. To protect national periodicals and to counterbalance the dominance of English in academic publishing, a policy was introduced requiring that Nordic languages and English should be used as languages of science, and knowledge dissemination in local languages is rewarded in Nordic countries (Kuteeva & Mauranen, 2014; McGrath, 2014). However, policy may not always be in accordance with practice. For example, publishing in English is still encouraged in Spain (Martín et  al., 2014). Scholars feel pressured to publish both in international journals for worldwide recognition and in national journals for social networks (Duszak & Lewkowicz, 2008; Huang, 2010). Li and Flowerdew (2009) found their humanities and social sciences participants were in an awkward situation: they have to publish in English due to the status attached to publishing in internationally indexed journals, but they also show their resistance to the academic assessment system by publishing in Chinese to serve their local or regional audiences. In short, it seems that, in the peripheral countries or regions of the world, there is still a controversy as to the balance of globalization and localization of academic publishing. Multilingual scholars who fail in their efforts to publish their work in international journals may complain that the editors or reviewers have a bias against submissions from non-anglophone authors. As He and Gan (2008) noted, many Chinese biomedical researchers have received such comments as “this manuscript must be carefully reviewed and corrected by a native English speaker or edited by a native English editor before it can be considered for publication” (p.  189). However, the findings from previous investigations as to whether international journal editors or reviewers have a bias against non-native speakers are controversial and sometimes even conflicting. According to Hyland (2016), there is little evidence to show that there is a widespread, systematic bias against non-native speakers in the process of peer-reviewing. He found that the non-native status of authors or language quality has never been the decisive factor in rejecting a submitted manuscript. He

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argued that the simple dichotomy of native versus non-native is not helpful: “demoralizing for novice writers and offensive to the many reviewers, editors, and mentors who seek to support non-Anglophone authors in getting p ­ ublished” (Hyland, 2016, p. 66). He listed several studies that showed that the reviewers paid more attention to research design and the acceptance of claims. In addition, Flowerdew’s (2001) and Corcoran and Englander’s (2016) investigations of editors’ attitudes indicate that international journal editors treat all submitted manuscripts equally. In reality, however, many submissions may be directly rejected due to language problems before they are ever sent off for peer review. Some investigations confirm the existence of this kind of bias. For example, a professor in accounting in Feng, Beckett, and Huang’s (2013) study chose to co-author with Hong Kong scholars for fear of anglophone journal editors’ bias against (mainland) Chinese scholars’ data. Ernst and Resch (1994) testified to “the existence of a reviewer bias based on referees’ personal publication record” in their survey study (p. 181). Reviewers may construct an author’s identity by deciding whether the author is a disciplinary newcomer or not (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007; Tardy & Matsuda, 2009). In Li’s (2006a) interview, a professor mentioned that “the Chinese experimentalist is easy to be doubted” (p. 470). Interestingly, Cho (2009) has found a mixed result that a student who had published three English journal papers assumed no bias against his paper due to his poor English while a professor who had published about 200 papers in English-language journals strongly felt the reviewers’ bias against non-native speakers of English. Unfortunately, Cho did not explain the reasons why the two interviewees had such ­different perceptions of the reviewing process. Flowerdew (2001) also remarked that it was unlikely for editors to admit to a bias against nonnative speakers even if it existed. As peer review is the cornerstone of academic publishing, and only those works considered worthy of publication by the fellow members of the field can be published (Paltridge, 2013), it would be helpful for all scholars if the reviewing process was fairer and more transparent. Thus, it is worth exploring multilingual scholars’ attitudes towards the reviewing process and seeking to explicate where their perceptions spring from.

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3.5 Summary and Research Questions In this chapter, an extensive review of literatures in the field of ERPP has been conducted to find the extent to which previous studies have explored multilingual scholars’ experiences in writing for publication in English. Evidentially, the challenges and pressures that academics experienced from a variety of disciplines in the whole world, including both central and peripheral countries and regions, have attracted the interest and attention of applied linguists. For both native and non-native English speakers, academic publishing is not an easy task. They have to be trained to acquire not only discursive but also non-discursive competence: for instance, conceptualizing a research topic, designing procedures rigorously, and responding to the editors or reviewers effectively. However, it seems that, even though their productivity is not necessarily less than that of their native-speaker counterparts, multilingual scholars face additional difficulties due to their lack of necessary language proficiency. The literature makes it clear that academic publishing, specifically the fierce competition felt by scholars, has become a global issue. In other words, academics from every corner of the world are struggling to publish in elite, higher-ranking international (actually English-language) journals as an essential factor in attaining academic positions, renewing contracts, and securing tenure. However, the types and degrees of difficulty academics encounter differ according to context. While there exist some studies investigating Chinese scholars’ writing and publishing experiences in English (e.g., Li, 2007, 2013, 2014; Lei, 2019; Lei & Hu, 2019; Tian, Su, & Ru, 2016; Zheng & Guo, 2018), many of them take a qualitative approach to focus on doctoral students or their supervisors. In reality, frustration and disappointment are not only encountered by doctoral students but also by experienced scholars in their career development (Belcher, 2007; Lee, 2014; Payant & Belcher, 2019). In addition, junior and more experienced researchers may need different types of assistance with paper writing (Cargill & O’Connor, 2006). Thus, in seeking to promote better academic communication it is necessary to understand the difficulties and needs of the whole range of multilingual scholars. That is why

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we explore academics’ experiences of writing for publication in English for Chinese multilingual scholars from different academic ranks, genders, and universities with both quantitative survey and qualitative case studies. As scholarly publishing is the fundamental measure of scholarly output, researchers and other authors will continue to feel the pressure to publish, and publishers will continue to see an increase in the overall number of submissions they receive. Publishers will also face regional and cultural challenges in effectively processing and selecting the best submissions from regions with which they are relatively unfamiliar. Mainland Chinese academics are such a group. Therefore, the research findings of our study may contribute to the discourse community’s knowledge base about the writing practices of Chinese scholars, responding to Flowerdew’s (2015) call for more studies to understand, and respond to, EAL academics’ particular situations. The research in this book can also be expected to have pedagogical implications for EAP writing and curriculum design in teaching and learning contexts both within and beyond the anglophone center (Curry & Lillis, 2004). Based on the review of previous studies in ERPP research, to address the issues outlined above, and to fill the gaps in previous research, the current study was designed to answer the following research questions: 1. What challenges and difficulties do Chinese multilingual scholars face in the process of writing for publishing in international journals in English? 2. What strategies do they report using while writing for publishing in English? 3. How do they perceive their positions as multilingual scholars when competing with international counterparts for publishing in English? 4. How do they balance their academic publishing between globalization and localization? What are their perceptions about international publication in English? 5. How do they perceive the editors and reviewers’ decisions and comments in the manuscript reviewing process?

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4 An Ethnographic Case Study Design

4.1 Overview The aim of this book is to present an account of the ways in which Chinese multilingual scholars improve their prospects of publishing in higher-ranking international journals in English. This chapter first justifies the selection of an ethnographic case study approach and then introduces the research setting, participants, data collection procedures, data analysis, and instruments, including the questionnaire and the interview outline. It then explains the choice of Shanghai as the research site and the criteria for the selection of participants from 18 higher education institutions. It describes the process of making the questionnaire and drafting the interview outline and examines the validity and reliability of the research design in accordance with the requirements of the ethnographic case study approach. The ethical issues associated with the research are also discussed.

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4.2 J ustification for Ethnographic Case Study Design As noted in Chap. 2, the study of second-language writing or academic writing research moved from a text-driven approach in the 1960s to a context-driven approach at present. The reasons why the importance of context has been recognized are that the communication situations around the world are complex and the geopolitics governing writing for academic publication has been realized (Gollin-Kies, 2014; Lillis, 2008). These controversial issues, and the unclear, complicated phenomena in ERPP studies seem to be suitable for ethnographic and naturalistic case inquiry rather than experimental and quasi-experimental design (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984). Thus, an ethnographic case study approach is considered to be the appropriate method to answer the research questions posed at the end of Chap. 3. Ethnography is an approach that can be used to “explore the feelings, beliefs, and meanings of relationships between people as they interact within their culture or as they react to others in response to a changing phenomenon” (Fusch, Fusch, & Ness, 2017, p. 923). The key concepts of ethnography are context and pattern (Fife, 2005). According to Watson-Gegeo (1988), there are six principles underlying ethnographic work: (1) focusing on the behavior of groups while studying the lived experience of individuals and their personal reflections on it; (2) a behavior being described and explained in relation to the whole system; (3) being powerfully informed by theory; (4) gaining access to the cultural member’s own or emic perspectives; (5) particularizability or abstract comparability/ generalizability; and (6) language learning through social interaction. The case study design actually evolved from ethnographic design, which is “exploratory, explanatory, or descriptive and may involve one organization and location or multiple organizations and locations for a comparative case study design” (Yin, 2014). Both ethnographic and case study designs aim to capture some of the complex uniqueness that characterizes every cultural scene by means of “thick description” (Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999). Although an ethnographic case study design appears to be a qualitative approach, it is in practice a mixed-method approach including elements of both ­qualitative

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and quantitative methods (Yin, 2014) for triangulation purposes (Holloway, Brown, & Shipway, 2010). Thus, such an approach may be a preferred strategy to answer how, what, or why questions (Stake, 2010; Yin, 2014). Furthermore, an ethnographic case study design “allows researchers to explore causality links, which is not typical for ethnographies” (Fusch et al., 2017, p. 926). Ethnographic research, writing about people (LeCompte, Preissle, & Tesch, 2008), is an approach used to describe the lifestyle of a group of people in a natural way and explain the phenomenon from the perspective of culture (Watson-Gegeo, 1988). It emphasizes collecting data from a “real world” context rather than through the application and analysis of experimental conditions. It focuses on a particular site and gets participants to speak for themselves. Data analysis involves qualitative interpretation as the major route to understanding, with quantitative and statistical means subordinate (Lillis, 2008). According to Lillis (2008), ethnographic research should be understood at three levels: (1) at the method level, researchers are concerned with the writers’ perspectives about texts as well as the written texts themselves, with the interview as the major method; (2) at the methodology level, researchers explore and track the dynamic and complex meanings of writing with multiple data sources; (3) at the epistemological and ontological level, text and context should be integrated to expound writers’ behavior in academic writing. Ethnographic research as a methodology requires a wide range of rich data to “build rich descriptions and understandings of the particular material conditions in which people live and work” (Lillis, 2008). Within ethnography “thick description and thick participation can help move the researcher towards emic perspectives and towards analytic lenses that help foreground what is significant to writers from their specific socio-­ historical perspectives” (Lillis, 2008). The ethnographic perspective will lead researchers to regard writing as a social activity and reject the propositions that language and culture/ content, and text and context, are separate and dichotomized. In English-language academic writing for publication, both language/ discursive-related issues and design/ content of research need-related problems are to be taken jointly into account. From a scientific research perspective, innovative ideas and rigorous design of research are as important as presenting results in writing for

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potential publishing. Mur Dueñas (2012) adopted Lillis’s ethnography as a method of analyzing her participants’ “text history” to reveal how multilingual scholars revise their manuscripts for successful publication. Ethnographic research can identify the different writing processes that scholars use in specific cultural contexts (Flowerdew, 1999b, 2000; Kourilova, 1998; Mur Dueñas, 2012). The ethnographic case study design has been extensively used in ERPP studies. For example, Flowerdew (2000) applied an ethnographic approach in his exploration of a Hong Kong scholar’s experience in publishing an article in an international refereed journal on his return from doctoral study in the United States. Curry and Lillis (2010) investigated the network participation of four scholars from Hungary, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain. The ethnographic researcher, Paul Prior, has collected many kinds of data for his research: classroom observations, professor and student interviews, questionnaires, written documents (including student texts and curricular materials), writing process logs, and audiotaped classroom sessions (cited in Ramanathan & Atkinson, 1999). As Hirano (2009) noted, an ethnographic study may help to understand why Chinese scholars choose to publish in English and how they overcome barriers in the process of writing for publishing in English. Furthermore, we may learn how Chinese multilingual scholars manage the “loyalties” and “jugglings” that come with writing in different languages for (possibly) different discourse communities (Casanave, 1998). We use an ethnographic case study approach to gain an in-depth and holistic understanding of Chinese multilingual scholars’ writing experience for publishing in English. In keeping with a tradition of this approach, we aim for thick descriptions of the individual cases, while also attempting to identify some general trends and significant patterns among them. Achieving these goals requires triangulation of multiple methods, data sources, and viewpoints (Fusch et  al., 2017; Goetz & LeCompte, 1984). The present book attempts to document Chinese multilingual scholars’ thoughts and feelings about writing and publishing in English over an extended period of time, revealing a taxonomy of ERPP writing strategies. All were interviewees with a minimum of five years’ research experience, who had agreed to express their opinions,

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thoughts, and concerns about writing and publishing experience in English. An “ethnographic textual history approach” (Curry & Lillis, 2004; Mur Dueñas, 2012) was adopted to analyze the participants’ manuscript-­revising process and their communications with the journal “gatekeepers.” The questionnaire was used to elicit respondents’ demographic information and attitudes towards writing for international publication in English.

4.3 R  esearch Setting and Participant Selection Scholars in Shanghai universities were chosen as the subjects of the present investigation based on a number of considerations. Firstly, Shanghai was selected as the research site mainly for reasons of convenience. The author of this book, who is also the principal investigator of a large-scale project investigating multilingual scholars’ publishing experiences in China, is relatively familiar with the overall situation of teaching and research in Shanghai having worked in one of the city’s universities for over 20 years. Secondly, as one of the largest cities in China, Shanghai is home to 64 higher education institutions including 39 universities (mainly providing four-year undergraduate or postgraduate programs) and 25 colleges (mainly providing two- or three-year post-secondary and vocational training programs). Generally, scientific research is a feature of universities rather than colleges, though all the faculties in these institutions require staff to publish internationally or nationally to secure a position or win promotion. In practice, most international publications are produced by university academics. Thirdly, as a metropolitan city, Shanghai has attracted a large number of talents, especially highly productive scholars from all over the world in recent decades. This has resulted in fairly fierce competition among scholars. The publication-­oriented assessment regime further stimulates scholars to publish in elite higher-ranking international journals. “Publish or perish” is an accurate summary of academic life in Shanghai universities, so Shanghai scholars may be seen as representative of Chinese multilingual scholars writing for publishing in English. Fourthly, to date, no

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investigation has been carried out on the writing and publishing experiences of academics from Shanghai universities. Do they share the same difficulties with scholars in other parts of the world? What are their specific difficulties and challenges? How do they overcome those difficulties? What are some of the difficulties which they need outside help to overcome? These are all issues worthy of in-depth exploration. There is a wide range of universities in Shanghai, and they may be divided into four categories: (1) nine “211 project” universities (referring to over 100 universities among nearly 3,000 higher education institutions in China, set up by the Chinese government since 1993 to meet the anticipated needs of the twenty-first century)—Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Tongji University, East China Normal University, East China University of Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai University, Shanghai International Studies University, and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; (2) four “985 project” universities (in May of 1998, the Chinese government initiated a project to build over 30 first-class universities in China based on the “211 project”): Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Tongji University, East China Normal University; (3) eleven “Old” universities (providing bachelor’s degree programs for fifty years at least); (4) nineteen “New” universities (offering bachelor’s degree programs since 2000) (Li, Xue, Wang, & Feng, 2011). While this categorization of Shanghai universities is controversial, it indicates that the aims, funding, infrastructure, library resources, faculties, and requirements vary widely. For example, the “985 projects” and “211 projects” universities put more stress on research and international publications than the “Old” and “New” universities. Of the Shanghai universities, 30 are public universities and nine are private “New” universities, funded by private entrepreneurs or cooperatively associated with overseas universities like New York University–Shanghai. Since the private “New” universities are not mainstream universities in China, we sampled our participants mainly from the 30 public universities  in Shanghai. Then, ten schools, including a variety of disciplines such as natural sciences, engineering, humanities, and social sciences, were selected from each of the 18 public universities comprising four “985 projects” universities, five “211 projects” universities, four “Old” universities and five “New” universities. In each school,

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five participants were chosen with varied professional ranks and gender, including professors, associate professors, lecturers, and assistant lecturers. We researched participant information such as their educational background, publication list, and e-mail addresses from their university webpages, although some universities did not publish faculty e-mail addresses. Finally, we obtained around 800 academics’ e-mail addresses used in the questionnaire survey. In sum, considering Shanghai’s international influence and important position in China, the diversity of the hierarchical distribution of Shanghai colleges and universities, and its status as a place that attracted floods of Chinese scholars, we decided to select our research samples from Shanghai universities, and to investigate Shanghai university teachers’ experiences in English writing and the publication of international journal papers. This work has significance for university academics in other parts of China and in the rest of the world: it reflects the perplexity and difficulties of Chinese scholars publishing in English and has positive significance for the promotion of the reform of teaching English-language academic writing in Chinese universities. It will also help multilingual scholars in the world to improve their English writing ability and publishing productivity.

4.4 Instruments and Procedures As Fusch et al. (2017) and Goetz and LeCompte (1984) have pointed out, an ethnographic case study design can employ a wide range of methods to collect rich data for the purpose of triangulation. Thus, we designed a questionnaire to elicit Chinese multilingual scholars’ attitudes towards international publishing, to identify difficulties they encountered in their writing process and publishing experience, and to record and analyze the strategies they used to overcome these difficulties. We also carried out interviews with some participants to learn how they communicated with the “gatekeepers” and “brokers” (Lillis & Curry, 2006) in the process of writing and publishing in English. In addition, many and various documents were collected, including copies of the participants’ personal webpages, their revised manuscripts, and their communications with journal

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editors and reviewers. In what follows, the process of questionnaire making, the interview outline and the documents are introduced one by one.

4.4.1 Online Questionnaire Survey The questionnaire survey is one of the major methods widely used to elicit scholars’ experiences in writing for international publications in ERPP studies (Flowerdew, 1999a; Hanauer & Englander, 2011, 2013; Li, 2002; Moreno, Rey-Rocha, Burgess, López-Navarro, & Sachdev, 2012). Since one of our research purposes was to learn Chinese multilingual scholars’ perceptions about publishing in English, a questionnaire survey seemed to be a good tool to collect the opinions of a large group of people. The design of our online questionnaire in Chinese was based on previous similar survey studies (e.g., Burgess, Gea-Valor, Moreno, & Rey-Rocha, 2014; Fernández Polo & Cal Varela, 2009; Hanauer & Englander, 2013) and our observations of Chinese scholars’ English writing experience. Where journal papers (e.g., Fernández Polo & Cal Varela, 2009) giving an account of questionnaire-based research did not publish the questionnaire, we wrote to the authors asking for a copy. Fortunately, they responded positively and swiftly. Fernández Polo and Cal Varela’s (2009) questionnaire was written in Galician, so we managed to translate it into English. Professor Ana Moreno encouraged us to download her published translation of the questionnaire (Moreno, Burgess, Sachdev, López-Navarro, & Rey-Rocha, 2013) from the ENEIDA website. In the first round of our questionnaire design, there were 23 questions. Questions 1–11 were used to elicit information on the participants’ background and the English training and activities they were involved in. Questions 12–16 were about their attitudes to publishing in English. Questions 17–18 asked about the number of their international publications. Questions 19–20 were about their experiences of manuscript reviewing in international publishing. Questions 21–23 asked about the challenges the participants had experienced. Questions 8, 10, and 17–19 were revised based on Fernández Polo and Cal Varela (2009), and questions 1–4, 13, and 21–23 were based on Moreno et al. (2013). Questions 14–16 and 20 were based on our own observations in the Chinese

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a­ cademic context. The first draft of the questionnaire was sent out for suggestions to five experts in the fields of linguistics, applied linguistics, bibliometrics, and chemistry. The experts considered the subject of the questionnaire from a variety of disciplines; they suggested adding questions concerning reading, and adjusting the order of questions. The revised questionnaire, now consisting of 25 questions, was piloted at a Shanghai university. Here, we selected 50 participants from ten schools— merchant marine, ocean science, marine materials science, computer science, logistics engineering, transportation, mathematics, economics, law, and foreign languages. We sent the questionnaire to participants’ offices and asked them to fill it on site. However, some of them promised to complete it later and we went to collect it at an appointed time. Finally, we collected 39 completed questionnaires, a return rate of 78%. The pilot study confirmed that the questionnaire could be used to investigate a larger group of scholars in Shanghai after adding a question to learn about participants’ affiliated institutions. See Appendix A for the English translation of the questionnaire. Next, the questionnaire was recreated on Wen Juan Xing (a free platform for creating a Chinese questionnaire, similar to Survey Monkey). In the introduction of the questionnaire, we told the participants the length of time it would take to complete it, and its purposes. We included a promise to protect their privacy and our contact information. We emailed requests to 800 scholars selected from 18 Shanghai universities at the end of August and early September 2015, with a link to Wen Juan Xing, asking them to complete the online questionnaire. Around 40 participants who were interested in our research wrote reply emails commending our investigation as valuable research and looking forward to reading our findings. Some of them asked to collaborate on a project with us or further discuss the issues related to English writing and publishing. One respondent, working in the field of law, wrote that it was unnecessary for him to take advantage of English-language resources and he had no intention of publishing Englishlanguage articles related to his research. Therefore, he did not complete the questionnaire. We replied to all these emails showing our earnest appreciation and respect. By mid- November 2015, we sent out a second round of requests seeking more feedback. Finally, we collected 118 completed questionnaires, a response rate of 15%, which is low but acceptable

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Table 4.1  Background information of the participants in the survey Category Gender Degree

Academic rank

Working years

Disciplinea

Type of institution

International publicationsa

Number Percentage Male Female Bachelor Master Doctorate Lecturer Associate professor Professor Less than 5 years 5–10 years 10–20 years More than 20 years Natural Sciences Engineering Humanities & Social Sciences “985 Project” University “211 Project” University “Old” University “New” University Less than 5% 5%–25% 25%–50% 50%–75% More than 75%

65 53 1 14 103 27 59 32 24 29 35 30 31 29 56 16 22 61 19 62 33 11 4 8

55.1 44.9 0.8 11.9 87.3 22.9 50 27.1 20.3 24.6 29.7 25.4 26.3 24.6 47.5 13.6 18.6 51.7 16.1 51.7 27.5 9.2 3.3 6.7

Two missing data

a

in ERPP studies (Cho, 2009; Fernández Polo & Cal Varela, 2009; Muresan & Pérez-Llantada, 2014). Table 4.1 is a summary of information about the survey’s respondents.

4.4.2 Semi-structured Interview The interview is one of the most important methods in an ethnographic case study design (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984). It is used in this study because one of our purposes is to understand Chinese multilingual scholars’ personal, private, and distinctive experiences in writing for international publication in English (Zhu, 2004). Although a questionnaire survey can collect data from a large group of people, the questions in it

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are limited and the participants may not be able to express their opinions thoroughly. Thus, with a semi-structured interview, the investigator and the interviewees can have a face-to-face in-depth discussion about their challenges and strategies in writing and publishing in English. Before we started interviews, an interview guide was prepared, designed to elicit discussions about language practices in the disciplines, with particular focus on writing practices. The use of interview guides ensured comparability, i.e. specific themes were covered in all interviews. The interview guide in Chinese was adapted from Flowerdew (1999a, 1999b) and the author’s observations of Chinese scholars’ publishing experience. From Flowerdew’s (1999b) interview questions, we deleted such questions as: Do you see any change after 1997? If so, what sort of change? Instead, we asked the following questions intended to find out about their understanding of the rhetorical differences between English and Chinese writing: What are the similarities and differences between English and Chinese writing in your opinion? Why? Drawing on Li (2006a, 2006b) and Curry and Lillis (2004), we mainly asked the following seven types of questions: (1) What language do they prefer while writing academic papers for publication purposes? Why do they prefer writing research articles in English or Chinese? (2) Ask about their first experience in writing for publication in English and their personal difficulties in writing in English; (3) What strategies do they use in the process of writing and publishing in English? (4) How do they respond to the editors or reviewers when they receive the feedback from the gatekeepers? (5) What differences have they been aware of in the process of writing in English? (6) How can one improve the rate of submission acceptance and article citations? However, the actual interview was not confined by the interview guide (Lei & Hu, 2019; Li, 2012). We kept the conversation natural, and pursued the interesting questions further with “why” questions. See Appendix B for an English translation of the interview guide. We started contacting the interviewees while doing the pilot study to test the questionnaire. Unfortunately, only 8 of 39 participants who responded to our pilot questionnaire agreed to be interviewed. The reasons why Chinese multilingual scholars would not volunteer to take part in an interview concerning writing for publication in English are rather complicated. Many were busy and would not spend additional

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time on such research activity. Also, writing is a personal and private experience. As Flowerdew (2008, 2009) pointed out, EAL scholars may be stigmatized to some extent. They may have a psychological barrier that inhibits their sharing experiences in publishing in English (Bazerman, Keranen, & Encinas, 2012). In the later stage of the survey study, we obtained another seven interviewees’ agreement. Thus, we have 15 interviewees in total (see Table  4.2). Pseudonyms were used to protect the interviewees’ privacy. The interview took place in the offices, meeting rooms or through social media like WeChat. Each interview was conducted in Chinese for the convenience of communication, and usually lasted between half an hour and two hours. All interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed verbatim and anonymized. Then we sent the interviewees the transcription of the recordings for confirmation. The interviews have been translated into English by the author. The translations have been kept as literal as possible, and repetitions, unfinished utterances, and corrections by the interviewees have been included so that the translations resemble the style of the original as closely as possible. Whenever there were unclear issues, clarification was made through e-mail. Table 4.2  Background information of the interviewees Namea

Gender

Degree

Academic rank

Specialties

Sheng Bing Li Hong Zhang Hua Chen Feng Yang Yang Hua Min Qian Fang Feng Wei Zhao Jie Wang Hong Li Jun Zheng Fei Zhou Peng Wu Ling Ma Li

Male Female Male Female Male Female Female Male Male Female Male Male Male Female Female

MA PhD PhD PhD MA PhD PhD PhD PhD PhD PhD PhD PhD PhD PhD

Professor Associate Professor Associate Professor Associate Professor Associate Professor Lecturer Lecturer Lecturer Professor Associate Professor Lecturer Associate Professor Associate Professor Lecturer Lecturer

Law Linguistics Translation Studies Rhetoric Linguistics Computer Science Marketing Economics Chemical Engineering Language Testing Pattern Recognition Biological Informatics Image Processing Biological Informatics Visual Design

Respondents’ names have been changed throughout

a

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4.4.3 Documents To triangulate the data, a third approach, “text-oriented ethnography,” was adopted to complement questionnaires and interviews. Lillis and Curry (2006) define this approach as collecting and analyzing a variety of ethnographic and text data to explore the production of texts in their contexts. Apart from the semi-structured interviews, data include personal webpages, e-mail discussions, observations, and institutional and historical documentary data. Key data sources are drafts of scholars’ manuscripts, text-focused discussions around such manuscripts, and communications with editors and reviewers (Mur Dueñas, 2012). The specific data-collection procedures of the four cases in this book are detailed in Chap. 6 through 9 respectively. For example, we have collected eight drafts of one successfully published research article from Professor Zhao Jie, as well as his personal profiles and blog articles. It is helpful to analyze these documents for understanding the process of this group of Chinese scholars’ writing and publishing in English.

4.5 Data Analysis As there are three types of data, we employed a mixed-methods approach to data analysis, with quantitative analysis (using SPSS version 16) to explore the survey respondents’ perceptions of their difficulties writing and publishing papers in international journals, and with qualitative analysis (using NVivo 10) of interview transcriptions and documents to explore why Chinese scholars choose to publish papers in English and how they succeed in publishing international journal papers in English. Cronbach’s alpha for the online survey was 0.941, indicating high reliability for statistical analysis to identify significant associations in the responses. The questionnaire data imported into SPSS from Wen Juan Xing were analyzed in two groups: single-response items and multiple-­ response items. The frequencies of responses to all items were calculated (see Table 4.1 for the descriptive statistics of participants’ demographic information). Table  4.1 shows that the participants in the survey are ­balanced in gender and working years. Most of them (87.3%) possess

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doctoral degrees, but a majority of them published less than 25% of their papers as international journal articles in the last ten years. Half of the participants are from the “Old” universities and have associate professorship. For the single-response items (7, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21), the significance of the difference was chi-square tested at the levels of gender, degree, academic rank, working years, discipline, and affiliated institutions. For the multiple-response items (8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26), the data were imported into SPSS by the method of dichotomies (Yockey, 2010) and the significance of the difference was chi-square tested at the levels of gender, degree, academic rank, working years, discipline, and affiliated institutions as well. The transcribed interview data were imported into NVivo 10 and analyzed by the author, following the procedures of analytic induction (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984) and constant comparison (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Themes related to language choice and the difficulties as well as strategies of writing papers for publication in international journals were identified and coded as nodes in NVivo 10. Bearing in mind the theoretical framework established in Chap. 2, we adopted both bottom-up and top-down analysis methods. The keywords used in the interview were firstly coded as nodes in the process of repeated reading. We obtained 72 nodes from our coding. The nodes related to difficulties and challenges were divided into discursive/ language-related and non-discursive/ content-­related categories. The nodes related to writing and publishing strategies were categorized into discursive, metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective strategies. The documents, particularly the different drafts and the published article provided by each interviewee, were compared to see the changes that were made. Genre analysis and cohesive analysis were also employed in the process of data analysis. The specific methods of document analysis are introduced in Chaps. 6, 7, 8 and 9. Communications between the interviewees and their papers’ editors/ reviewers were analyzed to show how they responded to the gatekeepers’ comments. The document data were also used as objective evidence to support or negate what the interviewees reported in the interview. In Chap. 5, we mainly report the results of the quantitative analysis of the questionnaire survey in combination with interview data analysis, but in Chaps. 6, 7, 8 and 9 we present four

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cases of successful scholars, characterizing their processes of writing and publishing international journal articles with “thick description” by analyzing their interview data and the documents they provided.

4.6 R  eliability, Validity and Role of the Researcher Qualitative-oriented studies are often challenged for their generalizability and sampling size, including the reliability and validity of data analysis (LeCompte & Goetz, 1982; Marshall & Rossman, 1999; Miles & Huberman, 1994). Since there are millions of Chinese academics who are competing for publishing in English with their international counterparts, the challenges and strategies reported by our participants may not be generalizable to that large group of people. However, as Goetz and LeCompte (1984) point out, “ethnography is one of the few modes of scientific study that admit the subjective perception and biases of both participants and researcher into the research frame” (p.  95). Particularizability rather than the generalizability is emphasized in the present study. The principal goal of our ethnographic case study is to “create a vivid reconstruction of the phenomena studied” (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984, p. 190). We hope our investigation is heuristic to the multilingual scholars in peripheral countries and regions in the world when they attempt to write in English for international publication. According to Goetz and LeCompte (1984) and LeCompte and Goetz (1982), reliability in ethnographic research depends on solving both external and internal design problems in advance. For the external design, the researcher needs to make sure other independent researchers would discover the same phenomena or generate the same constructs in the same or similar settings. External reliability can be enhanced by coping with the following five problems: “researcher status position, informant choices, social situations and conditions, analytic constructs and premises, and methods of data collection and analysis” (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984, p. 214). Internal reliability means that the constructs generated in the study can be used by other researchers in the same way as the original

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researcher did. “Ethnographers commonly use any of five strategies to reduce threats to internal reliability: low-inference descriptors, multiple researchers, participant researchers, peer examination and mechanically recorded data” (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984, p.  214). This principle of ethnographic reliability requires the researcher to record the procedures of data collection and analysis in detail and explain the constructs used in the study clearly. That is why we present in detail the way in which we created the instruments of the investigation and how we collected the data, so that other researchers may replicate the research if they wish. The five constructs of discursive, metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective strategies have been replicated by other researchers or extensively used in second-language learning studies (e.g., Counsell, 2011; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Teng & Zhang, 2016). Validity also includes internal and external validity, with the former requiring scientific observations and measurements to be authentic representations of some reality and the latter requiring that such representations can be compared legitimately across groups (LeCompte & Goetz, 1982). Since the participants in the present study are academics in Chinese higher education institutions, what they reported may be regarded as authentic for writing international publications in the real world. We also collect data from different institutions (sites) to cover a larger range of people and places related to the research questions. The ethnographic qualitative case study design is often considered subjective because of researchers’ bias in collecting and interpreting the data (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006). To minimize potential prejudice, we collected a variety of data to provide triangulated evidence for our arguments (Flowerdew, 1999a, 2000; Patton, 2002). In the questionnaire survey, the Cronbach’s alpha (0.941) was at a relatively high level, indicating the reliability of the questionnaire. We purposefully selected our participants to be representative of Chinese scholars, considering their gender, academic rank, working experience, and affiliated institutions. During the interview, the researcher, as a listener, seldom interrupted the speakers and let the interviewees express their opinions as adequately as possible. By means of asking “why” questions, the researcher elicited the interviewees’ more in-depth understanding of their writing and p ­ ublishing experiences. As one of the academics in this specific group, the researcher

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has his own advantageous experience in writing for international publication in English. As an “insider” or emic writer, I could understand the difficulties and pressures they experienced. However, as a researcher (etic observer), I could hardly steer the conversation and share my own views or attitudes to the controversial issues in ERPP studies. Data analysis relied entirely on interpretations based on interviewees’ narrations and the documents that they provided. Through all these means, the arguments and findings proposed in the present study could be seen to be reliable and valid.

4.7 Summary In this chapter, we have argued for an ethnographic case study approach exploring the difficulties and challenges experienced by Chinese multilingual scholars, and analyzing the strategies they used in the process of writing and publishing international journal papers in English. We would prefer to construct rather than generalize Chinese scholars’ writing and publishing experiences to all multilingual scholars in other parts of the world. However, this construction of Chinese academics’ experience is heuristic to all multilingual scholars of the world. The reconstruction of the real experience and the in-depth exploration of a complex issue demands an ethnographic case study design. We also introduced an account of the way that we created the tools to collect data. Our questionnaire design owed much to the previous studies in ERPP research, the field that has developed rapidly in recent years and may continue to grow in the future. The procedures of semi-structured interviews and document collection have been presented in detail in the interests of demonstrating the transparency, reliability, and validity of the research. Based on the detailed description of the methods, other researchers may replicate the present research by following the same procedures. We also discussed the role of the researcher: the double identity as emic writer and etic researcher may make the investigation complicated, but the reasoning researcher needs to be aware of the conflicting identities, remind him- or herself not to intervene in the participants’ interpretations, and allow the data from the participants to present the original phenomenon. On the

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basis of the methods of data collection and analysis, we will present the result of the questionnaire analysis before portraying four cases of Chinese scholars succeeding in publishing in English.

References Bazerman, C., Keranen, N., & Encinas, F. (2012). Facilitated immersion at a distance in second language scientific writing. In M. C. Badia & C. Donahue (Eds.), University Writing: Selves and Texts in Academic Societies (pp. 235–252). London: Emerald. Burgess, S., Gea-Valor, M.  L., Moreno, A.  I., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2014). Affordances and constraints on research publication: A comparative study of the language choices of Spanish historians and psychologists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 72–83. Casanave, C. P. (1998). Transitions: The balancing act of bilingual academics. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7(2), 17–203. Cho, D. W. (2009). Science journal paper writing in an EFL context: The case of Korea. English for Specific Purposes, 28(4), 230–239. Counsell, J. (2011). How effectively and consistently do international postgraduate students apply the writing strategies they have been taught in a generic skills-based course to their subsequent discipline-based studies? Journal of Academic Language & Learning, 5(1), A1–A17. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2004). Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: Negotiating interests, demands, and rewards. TESOL Quarterly, 38(4), 663–688. Curry, M.  J., & Lillis, T.  M. (2010). Academic research networks: Accessing resources for English-medium publishing. English for Specific Purposes, 29, 281–295. Fernández Polo, F. J., & Cal Varela, M. (2009). English for research purposes at the University of Santiago de Compostela: A survey. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 152–164. Fife, W. (2005). Doing Fieldwork Ethnographic Methods for Research in Developing Countries and Beyond. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Flowerdew, J. (1999a). Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 243–263. Flowerdew, J. (1999b). Writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 123–145.

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5 Challenges Faced by Chinese Multilingual Scholars While Publishing in English

5.1 Overview Chapter 5 reports the challenges and difficulties the participants of the present study have encountered while writing and publishing in English. Firstly, although 92.4% of respondents acknowledged English as a lingua franca in academic communication, only 25.4% of them preferred writing research articles in English, while 51.7% were inclined to write research articles in Chinese. In other words, most of the Chinese scholars in our investigation were pressured to write and publish in English for the purpose of surviving academic evaluation. Secondly, 65% of participants reported that they had to spend much more time and effort on writing research articles in English than in Chinese. Thus, their lower-level English-language proficiency has inhibited their productivity of international publications. Thirdly, 61.4% of the participants reported that their submissions were rejected for having research content inappropriate for the journal; 44.7% and 34.2% of them for identified unreliable research design and writing problems (redundant sentences, complex paragraphs, and grammatical mistakes), respectively. This means that publication in

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higher-ranking journals demands original and innovative research content as well as a strong presentation. Fourthly, the participants ­ reported that the most difficult sections of research article writing are the Discussion and the Introduction, followed by communication with reviewers. Fifthly, research resources are distributed unevenly across different levels of higher education institutions in China. A majority of Chinese universities lack funding and cannot afford access to the databases necessary for research, and large numbers of scholars have to conduct research with limited resources, without the funds to pay a proof-reader. Lastly, the participants in the present study reported that they had limited experience with language editorial services and academic writing/ publication skills training. In what follows, we report the challenges of the multilingual scholars in our investigation in more detail.

5.2 L anguage Choices for Research Publication Although 92.4% of the respondents accepted English as a lingua franca in academic communication (Q13), only 25.4% of them preferred writing research articles in English, while 51.7% of them were inclined to write research articles in Chinese (Q17). In a semi-structured interview, Zhang Hua was asked whether he preferred writing in English or Chinese. He replied: Certainly I feel more comfortable writing in my mother tongue. To write in English, I have to consider diction and whether the expressions I use are appropriate for English conventions most of the time. However, I don’t need to consider such things so much, as Chinese is, after all, my native language. (Abridged from the interview with Zhang Hua)

Therefore, writing in EAL tends to impose pressure on Chinese scholars. As Hanauer and Englander (2011) reported, the experience of writing a scientific research article in English as a second language is significantly different from the experience of writing in a first language. However, pressured by the institutional academic assessment system and seeking greater international visibility as well as better chances of

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promotion and success with grant application success, multilingual scholars submitted their most original, scientifically robust, and groundbreaking papers to English-language journals with a high impact factor (whether for pure research or in practitioner-oriented work) (Flowerdew, 2000; Lillis & Curry, 2006; Salager-Meyer, 2014). Chinese scholars who have been trained in English-speaking countries, however, may prefer writing in English for publication. Such was true for one of our interviewees: I went to the United States for a master’s and doctoral study after graduating from a Chinese university. I did not have any experience in writing and publishing Chinese academic papers. Thus, I prefer writing English-­ language papers, though I came back to work in China. (Abridged from the interview with Wang Hong)

Our survey results showed that Chinese scholars’ preferred language for publication also differed by discipline. Sixty percent of respondents in humanities and social sciences (HSS) preferred writing research articles in Chinese, while 16.7% of respondents in natural sciences (NS) and 23.3% in engineering preferred writing in Chinese. In contrast, only 12.5% of respondents in HSS preferred writing research articles in English, while 48.4% of respondents in NS and 24.1% in engineering preferred writing in English. The disciplinary differences in preferred publishing language are related to disciplinary differences in publishing in international journals. Table  5.1 shows that the number of international publications by scholars in HSS is significantly lower than that of scholars in NS. These results support Flowerdew and Li’s (2009) finding that Chinese scholars in HSS have achieved far less international visibility than their colleagues in NS and engineering. This disparity does not mean, however, that Chinese scholars in HSS have less training in English-language writing. More participants in HSS received training in English-language writing during their doctoral program (43.8%) than those in NS (27.1%) and in engineering (29.2%). In addition, more respondents in HSS (45.2%) evaluated themselves as competent in writing English-language research articles related to their field than those in NS (26.9%) and engineering (28%). It seems, then, that the preference for writing articles in English for international ­journals

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Table 5.1  Chi-square test of the number of international publications in three disciplines Quantity of international publications 75%

Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage Number Percentage

Disciplines NS (A)

Engineering (B)

HSS (C)

Comparison

3 9.7 3 9.7 3 9.7 2 6.5 20 64.5

5 17.2 6 20.7 4 13.8 5 17.2 9 31

24 42.9 20 35.7 5 8.9 3 5.4 3 5.4

C > A

A > C

χ2 = 50.670, df = 15, p  300 °C). The O2 He, Y Teraoka, Appl. Catal. B 75 (2007) 167. 2. W Zou, P F Xie, W M Hua, Y D Wang, D J Kong, Y H desorption profiles were very difficult to fitted into two peaks Yue, Z Ma, W M Yang, Z Gao, J Mol Cat A 394 (Figure below). CZ-1 possesses more Cu-dimers, so more (2014) 83.] This is the best choice we can make, adsorbed oxygen is in the form of atomic extra-lattice oxygen (ELO). Therefore, the desorption oxygen amounts of CZ-1 is less. just to play it safe.

Response drafted by the student

Reviewer #3’s comment: Finally how do the authors account for the O2 desorption (see table 5)? The amount of desorbed oxygen is 2–3 × the total amount of Cu. Is this O2 coming from Cu-oxide particles and/or from the lattice?

Table 6.1  Comparison of the response letter drafted by the student and revised by Professor Zhao

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the originator. Professor Zhao has demonstrated his authority by using such expressions as “we think the O2-TPD data themselves are correct” and “the best choice we can make”. In short, cohesive devices are very important because they can link “separate clauses, sentences, and paragraphs into connected prose, signalling the relationships between ideas and making obvious the thread of meaning the writer is trying to communicate” (Zamel, 1983, p. 22). Additionally, writers may establish their identity and have their voice heard by proper use of cohesive devices that can play rhetorical roles as well as semantic and syntactic roles in English writing.

6.3.3 A  wareness of Rhetorical Difference Across Languages Contrastive rhetoric (now called as intercultural rhetoric, see Connor, 2011, and Chap. 2 of the present book) studies have identified the rhetorical differences between languages. Hinds (1987) claims that English rhetoric is writer-responsible (i.e., writers have the responsibility to make their text clear to readers) while Japanese and classical Chinese rhetoric is reader-responsible (i.e., readers are responsible for understanding what writers have intended to say). Both Clyne (1987) and Mauranen (1993) share the same argument with Hinds: in English-speaking countries it is writers’ duty to make their writing readable, while in Germany and Finland implicit rhetoric is considered as a writing strategy to show writers’ respect and politeness to readers. Kachru (1983, cited in Noor, 2001) found that ellipsis or zero anaphora is preferred in Indian writing while “pronominalization is the dominant device for anaphoric references in English” (p. 260). The comparison of L1 and L2 English writing found that L2 writers used more conjunctive ties but fewer synonyms and exhibited less variety in the use of lexical cohesion (Silva, 1993). Recent studies (e.g., Hu & Cao, 2011; Loi & Lim, 2013; Mu, Zhang, Ehrich, & Hong, 2015) found Chinese academic discourse differs from English academic discourse in its use of metadiscourse features. Such kinds of difference were reported to have a negative influence on EAL research writing (Cao & Xiao, 2013; Connor, 2001; Lorés-Sanz, 2011). As an experienced

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English writer, Professor Zhao is aware of the differences between English and Chinese writing. He claimed while both English and Chinese scientific articles were composed of Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRD) in surface structure, the discussion section in English research article was usually much longer than that in Chinese articles addressing the same topic. He explained: There are two major reasons: first, Chinese journals are usually strict with the length of the article, so the writer cannot discuss the result in sufficient length. Second, in Chinese academic traditional convention, you cannot discuss the result beyond the experiment if you are not certain. Otherwise, you will be seriously attacked by your colleagues. This is the general rule for publishing in Chinese journals. However, Western journals prefer discussion among colleagues. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

He argued that the Discussion in international journals meant clearly telling readers what could be learned from the experiments as well as how to advance the science, or the implications and applications of the research. However, Chinese scientists, at least as reflected in Chinese journal articles, are very prudent in discussing with colleagues, let alone criticizing each other. Professor Zhao’s understanding of the rhetorical differences in the discussion section between international Englishlanguage journals and local Chinese journals supports to some extent the argument proposed by the specialist on China, John King Fairbank. Fairbank (1982) commented on the different understandings of criticism between Chinese and Western peoples as follows: Criticism is not nice in China. It is indulged in against the background of personal relationships that hold together the social fabric, and so it is taken personally, rather than as an expression of difference of opinion. This is part of the face complex—if one lacks the confidence of others, one soon lacks the confidence of a lot of other people also; loss of others’ confidence is a direct threat to the person, whether he is a government official or a merchant or a ruler, because most positions in Chinese society are maintained on the basis of confidence, usually personal confidence. So if you criticize, it at once becomes a question whether you still have confidence.

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The correspondent who really lets fly at some part of the Chinese situation is likely to be persona non grata. The evil in this situation is that we in the West don’t understand it, or give a damn, and believe in progress by criticism. The Chinese cannot bring themselves to put out any criticisms, which would be worse than an obscene exhibitionism. (pp. 255–256)

Fairbank’s observation of Chinese customs has exposed the regime under the surface of Chinese rhetoric. Influenced by Chinese culture, Chinese writers seldom criticize or discuss to each other. However, Western rhetoric encourages discussion or criticism to facilitate the development of science and technology because Western people “believe in progress by criticism” (Fairbank, 1982, p. 256). Awareness of such rhetorical differences across languages is helpful for multilingual scholars, as the competent multilingual writer, Professor Zhao, has confirmed.

6.4 Metacognitive Strategies Metacognitive strategies refer to the planning, controlling and modulating strategies that multilingual scholars can use while writing and publishing international journal articles in English. These are usually macro strategies in the process of writing for international publications. The following strategies were identified from Professor Zhao’s data.

6.4.1 Language Selecting Strategies For multilingual scholars, the selection of language for publishing their findings is sometimes a complex issue, discussed to some extent in Sect. 3.4 of this book. It is complicated because multilingual scholars have to take into account many social, cultural, economic, and ideological factors such as academic assessment, awarding system, writing purposes, and target journals. In the present system of academic evaluation in China, it is evident that international English-language journal articles count much more than local Chinese journal articles. Among Professor Zhao’s 165 research articles there are 157 articles in English. He presented two reasons for his preference in writing and publishing in English:

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On the one hand, it may be easily recognized by the international scientific community if Chinese scholars publish in English. It is self-satisfaction. On the other hand, I like writing blog essays in Chinese, but I don’t like writing research articles in Chinese. I feel I cannot express myself clearly when writing research articles in Chinese, but in English, my ideas can be expressed more fluently and coherently. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

Like Matsuda (2014), English has become Professor Zhao’s scholarly language, the means by which he can involve himself in one of the major academic activities—writing and publishing in English. Unlike Aya Matsuda in the United States, the center of the English-speaking circle, Zhao is living in an outer region of the expanding circle, but he can still be very productive in international publications. It seems that the boundary between the circles proposed by Kachru (1985) has become blurred in the age of globalization of scientific academic activities. Moreover, Professor Zhao’s case suggests that English perhaps could be a lingua franca appropriate for scientific communication, at least from his point of view. However, localization has become an issue when high-quality research articles are submitted to the higher-ranking international journals in English. Particularly, the quality of Chinese local national journals has become a concern among Chinese scientists. Professor Zhao acknowledged the outflow of high-quality research articles resulting in the deterioration of Chinese national journals. Nevertheless, he mentioned some measures taken by some Chinese national journals to improve their qualities: Some of our journals have taken some good strategies. Firstly, they changed the editorial board. In the past, all members of the board are Chinese, but now they have invited some foreigners. Some of the editors are foreigners as well and the reviewers are also internationalized. Secondly, editors clearly require that the quality of the accepted article must match with that of those published in journals with an impact factor above 2.0. For once they sent me an article for peer review because in the first round of reviewing one reviewer offered positive comments while the other gave a negative evaluation. The editors told me the rule I just mentioned when they asked me to make a final decision. Thirdly, the editors may ask you to cite at least

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two articles in their past issues to improve the impact factor of their journals. In this way, the journals may attract more high-quality articles because academics would submit their articles to those journals with a high impact factor. Fourthly, some experienced scholars like members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering may be invited to organize a special issue for the journal so as to attract more highquality research articles. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

In summary, language selection for publications is closely associated with the requirement of official academic assessment. Multilingual scholars who are frequently involved in international academic activities may have acquired ELF (English as Lingua Franca) as their scholarly language, which may be an advantage in their career development.

6.4.2 Planning Strategies A planning strategy is a metacognitive strategy used by scholars to work out an outline or a “blueprint” (abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao) before writing. It is not uncommon for novice researchers to feel at a loss how to write up an article based on the data from their experiments. Professor Zhao introduced a “scenario planning” strategy: Firstly, transform the experimental data into several figures potentially to be used for article writing. Then, print them out and make a “scenario planning” on the desk. The so-called “scenario planning” means that the figures may be rearranged to see whether any additional data should be complemented. With the figures as the outline, you can start writing by cutting the conclusion into several different sections. (Abridged from L1)

In this strategy, it is crucial to have the figures as outline-planning in metacognitive strategies. “Rearranging the figures to see whether any additional data should be complemented” is actually the controlling and modulating strategy. What Professor Zhao reported in the interview has confirmed this strategy: Scientific writing is not only an issue related to English grammar but also needs some skills. Writers have to understand what should be included or

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excluded and what data should be placed before some other data in the research article. It is like the arrangement or deployment of moving military forces in war. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

What is critically exposed by Professor Zhao is that writers need not present all that they know about the data in their research article. Rather, they have to select the content that can answer the readers’ questions that the writers expect. In the first draft provided by the student there are ten figures in total, but in the second revised manuscript four tables were added, one figure was moved from eighth position to fourth, and Figures 9 and 10 were combined. Obviously, in the eyes of the experienced scholar, the first selection of figures alone could not sufficiently answer the research question, so the four tables were required to complement the earlier draft. However, Figures 9 and 10 were combined for the purpose of condensing the article. This change of the manuscript demonstrates the disparity between the novice doctoral student and the experienced supervisor. The latter had a holistic plan or blueprint or outline when he approached article writing, while the former only attempted to present what he knew in the article.

6.4.3 Monitoring and Modulating Strategies In response to question 20 of the survey, 80% of the participants reported that their submitted manuscripts have never or seldom been accepted without any further revisions in the last ten years. Actually, the peer review process is the “universally recognized procedure for evaluating academic contributions and controlling for quality” (Flowerdew, 2015, p. 251). Scholars have to revise their manuscripts according to reviewers’ suggestions to improve the quality of articles. During the process of revision, it is sometimes requested that some additional experiments have to be undertaken and the results incorporated in a new draft. However, Professor Zhao believes that it is crucial to pay most attention to holistic organization in the process of writing an article and modulation is just like “disinfecting the wound”: The structure of an English research article looks like a spittoon or hourglass. The organization of the introduction section, like the head of a

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dragon or an inverted pyramid, goes from general to specific. The shape of the result section is like pig tripe including the main findings of the research. The structure of the discussion section, like the tail of the Phoenix, moves from specific to general explicating the implication and application of the research. If you can organize your article as I said, you only need to revise it like patching a coat or disinfecting the wound when you receive the reviewers’ comments. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

From the seven drafts that Professor Zhao provided, it is possible to see how he and his co-authors “patch or disinfect” the article. In the sixth draft, they added more data resulting from their new, complementary experiment in response to the reviewers’ suggestions. In addition, to further clarify their intention, they added a sentence at the end of the Introduction: “The reason for our observation was studied via detailed characterization.” And they rewrote two paragraphs in the Results section and one long paragraph in the Discussion. In the response letter to the editor, they provided seven figures and three tables clarifying the process of their experiments. In the seventh revised manuscript, responding to a second round of reviewing comments, they updated the content of the tables, deleted the third paragraph from the end of the Methods sections 2.3 and 3.6 reference to XPS that they had added in the sixth revision (when I asked him to examine this draft chapter, Professor Zhao explained his rearrangement of the content in that one of the reviewers considered it inaccurate to represent copper species with XPS). At the same time, a new author was added to this seventh revision (Professor Zhao explained that the new author’s name was added to the article because he did a new experiment to answer the reviewer’s question. However, the result of that experiment was not included in the published article). The above-described revisions were completed under the monitoring of the reviewing process. The scholars “patched or disinfected” the manuscript working on the premise that the research was well designed and the article was well organized. The monitoring and modulating strategies, that is, the “patching and disinfecting” strategies, we argue, may be acquired from long-time training and practice of scientific research writing. On the one hand, scholars have to be familiar with the research field and the disciplinary conventions. They can be conscious of the shortcomings of their research on the basis of their understanding of the position of their

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research and previous studies. On the other hand, the comments from the reviewers play not only the role of “patching or disinfecting” but also upgrade the research. The rigid reviewing process is one of the major functions of the scientific community (Kuhn, 1962).

6.5 Cognitive Strategies While metacognitive strategies in the process of writing for international publications are macro strategies, cognitive strategies are micro strategies, mainly comprising the strategies of revising manuscripts and responding to reviewers. In what follows, we try to summarize and compare the cognitive strategies Professor Zhao and his students used in the writing and publishing process.

6.5.1 Revising Strategies As mentioned above, we received seven drafts and one finally published article from Professor Zhao. The tracks left in the manuscripts are very helpful for recognizing how the writers revise the article from the first draft to the final product. In the first draft, a student only wrote the Methods and Results sections. In the track-changes first draft, Professor Zhao wrote the Introduction section but asked the student to complete the literature review. The second draft is a complete research article including the title, authors’ name, affiliated institution, corresponding author’s contact information, Abstract, Introduction, Experimental, Result, Discussion, Conclusion, and References, with four tables and ten figures. Professor Zhao did not revise much in the third draft but asked the student to add several more references to the article. After the three rounds of revision, they submitted the manuscript to the journal, but very soon the editor of the journal sent back their manuscript and asked them to revise the language and some mechanical problems. In the fifth draft, they refined the language of the manuscript. The sixth draft was revised based on the three reviewers’ comments and the seventh draft was revised according to the second round of reviewing suggestions. In the

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following we analyze Professor Zhao’s revising strategies by comparing the successive revised drafts and the published article. 1. Revising the structure of the article globally After comparing the drafts, we found Professor Zhao paid much attention to revising the structure of the article. For example, he moved forward to the last paragraph of the third sub-section in the Method section and changed the whole of sub-sections 3.6 to 3.2 when he revised the first draft written by his student. In revising the second draft we noted that the positions of two sentences in the Discussion had been changed, revisions that made the article more coherent and flow more logically. English composition and ESL writing studies (e.g., Flower & Hayes, 1981; Raimes, 1985; Zamel, 1982) found that competent skilled writers paid more attention to global revision in the writing process while unskilled writers focused more on local revisions such as word choice and grammatical revision. The purpose of global revision is to sharpen the argument, reorganize the logic and make the writing more appealing. Professor Zhao reported that he had learned this skill from his doctoral supervisor in the United States: He (Professor Zhao’s supervisor) circled the section of the paragraph and asked me to move it to the next section. This is a structural modification. He usually gave me some general comments. For instance, he explained to me how to draw a figure and how to write the introduction section. Then he sent me back the draft for further revision. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

2. Revising the language for conciseness and accuracy Language is indeed a big barrier for multilingual scholars who write for international publications in English (Flowerdew, 2015). As mentioned above, the journal editor asked Professor Zhao to revise the language of the article as soon as they submitted the manuscript: In its current state, the level of English throughout your manuscript does not meet the journal’s desired standard. Please check the manuscript and refine the language carefully. (Abridged from the journal editor’s email)

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It appears that it has become conventional for international journals to ask multilingual scholars, in particular, to revise the language before sending the manuscript out for peer review (He & Gan, 2008; Martínez, 2003). In the fifth draft, it is noted that Professor Zhao deleted the definite article and added a keyword “catalytic” in the title to make it more intelligible. More interestingly, Professor Zhao deleted “In the initial stage of research and development,” and added “in previous research” to the first sentence of the second paragraph in the Introduction, so the sentence goes like this: “Little attention was paid to the influence of crystal size of ZSM-5 in catalytic performance in previous research.” In the original sentence, “In the initial stage of research and development” is ambiguous in meaning perhaps because it was transferred from Chinese expression “在研究和发展的最初阶段” and it occupies the topic position. In the revised sentence, “little attention” is placed in the topic position and the focus becomes clearer. Furthermore, the sentence is more concisely and precisely used as the topic sentence for the literature review in the second paragraph. In addition, it is noted that Professor Zhao deleted the sentence “Therefore, the difference in the activity of Cu-ZSM-5 samples is not due to the Cu content” that he had added at the end of the third sub-section of the Results in the third draft. He explained that while revising the fifth draft he realized the subjectiveness of that sentence would be more appropriate placed in the Discussion than in the Results. It can be seen that the process of revising research articles is a circulating and spiral process. In addition to language revision, Professor Zhao had been required to modify the keywords used in the article. Keywords are the identity of an article and also the clue for colleagues to recognize the research from a sea of studies in the field. They are also important for the scholars to be accepted by the disciplinary community. Thus, Professor Zhao revised the keywords selected from the web page the journal editor provided. 3. Revising with appropriate use of hedging in writing Hedging (e.g., could, may, can) is a strategy that may be used in academic discourse to mitigate the forcefulness of the claims and moderate the responsibility of the writer so as to increase the acceptance by the

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disciplinary community (Hyland, 1994; Salager-Meyer, 1994; Sheldon, 2009). It can be seen how Professor Zhao properly used hedging to communicate with reviewers when he revised his student’s response letter to the reviewers (Table 6.2). Comparing the student’s draft letter and Professor Zhao’s revision, we can find that Professor Zhao has qualified the tone of the response letter to reduce the distance between the writer and the reader. For example, in the second sentence, he added a concessional clause introduced by “even Table 6.2  Comparison of the response letter drafted by the student and revised by Professor Zhao Reviewer #3’s comment: Now that the authors have provided numbers I am able to assess this paper in a better way. Here is my problem. With 2.0–2.4 wt% Cu the loading of the ZSM-5 samples is 0.314–0.377 mmol Cu/g. This is in excess of the CEC which I calculated to be 0.265 mmol/g. The amount of monovalent Cu is 0.161–0.2146 mmol/g (Table 4), far below the CEC and the total loading of Cu. The letter drafted by the student

The letter revised by Professor Zhao

①The theoretical CEC value (0.265 ①The theoretical CEC value (0.265 mmol/g) is right which calculated by mmol/g) calculated by the reviewer is reviewer. ②But in the ion-exchange correct. ②But in the ion-exchange produce, it is unavoidable that there produce, it is unavoidable to have must be some Cu species residue on some residual Cu species on the the ZSM-5. ③So, the actual Cu ZSM-5, even if the samples were loading is higher than the washed by water. ③So it is possible theoretical CEC value. that the actual Cu content is slightly ④Experimental error of ICP might be higher than the theoretical value. ④In another reason for the higher Cu addition, the broad peak β in the content. ⑤The broad peak β can be H2-TPR profiles can be assigned to the assigned to the reduction of isolated reduction of isolated Cu2+ to Cu+ or Cu2+ to Cu+ and the reduction of the reduction of CuO to metallic Cu according to the literature. ⑤In the CuO to metallic Cu.⑥ In the previous version of manuscript, we manuscript, the peak β be totally assumed the first scenario (the assigned to isolated Cu2+ to Cu+. ⑦Accordingly to reviewer comments, reduction of isolated Cu2+ to Cu+), and we are sorry make a mistake. ⑧So, it obtained relatively smaller Cu+ values. may be more accuracy that the peak ⑥Now we assumed the second β be assigned to the reduction of scenario and obtained more CuO to metallic Cu. ⑨The revised reasonable Cu+ values, as updated in Table 4 is shown below. Table 4.

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if ” to provide the condition for the affirmative statement before it, withholding the writer’s full commitment to the content of the claim (Hewings & Hewings, 2002). In the third sentence, he added the qualifiers such as “it is possible” and “slightly” to spare some space for negotiating with the reviewer. Although the student used “might” in his draft, the supervisor deleted that whole sentence because Professor Zhao explained that it might misguide the reviewer as a “reason for the higher Cu content” in his confirmation with the current chapter. In the last two sentences, the supervisor used the hedging verb “assume” to explain the difference between the previous version of the manuscript and the current one. In short, Professor Zhao’s revision with hedging devices as a politeness strategy makes his statement more effective for provisional and pending acceptance (Myers, 1989; Salager-Meyer, Alcaraz Ariza, & Pabón Berbesí, 2007).

6.5.2 Responding Strategies Peer review is a critical process regarded as a cornerstone for academic publishing because it is the symbol of objectivity and fairness as well as a quality control mechanism (Cargill & O’Conner, 2009; Li, 2011; Paltridge, 2013). More importantly, feedback or suggestions from reviewers were reported to help multilingual scholars to improve the quality of their articles (Braine, 2005; Li, 2005). As an experienced reviewer, Professor Zhao has reviewed over 400 articles for over 100 academic journals. He proposes four rules for responding to reviewers: First, being polite and professional; second, trying to complement the experiments required by the reviewers; third, improving the quality of your article even if the reviewers misunderstood you; fourth, do not just say “Having revised according to the reviewers’ suggestions”, but point out where you have revised (which paragraph and which page). It would even be better for you to reiterate the content of your revision in the response letter. (Abridged from L1)

The following responding strategies were identified from the analysis of Professor Zhao’s response letter to the reviewers:

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1. Being polite To maintain the high standard of the scientific community, some respectable reviewers volunteer to “take the time to compose well-considered, constructively critical and collegial reviews” (Belcher, 2007, p. 19; Uzuner, 2008, p. 260). It is not abnormal for writers to show their respect for the reviewers’ free services as Professor Zhao wrote at the beginning of his response letter: We thank you and the reviewers very much for helpful suggestions and for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript ‘Effect of the crystal size of Cu-ZSM-5 on the catalytic performance in N2O decomposition’ (MATCHEMPHYS-D-15-00222). (Abridged from A1)

In addition, Professor Zhao first expressed his appreciation before explaining how he revised when he responded point-by-point based on the reviewers’ suggestions. 2. Clarifying and rebutting Going through the first round of reviewers’ comments, we found that it was not easy to respond to the reviewers, though Professor Zhao had been given the opportunity to revise the manuscript. Here are the reviewers’ general comments: Reviewer #1: The main drawback of the manuscript is only limited discussion of the results of catalytic studies and their correlation with catalysts characterization. Discussion of the obtained results is not deep enough. (Abridged from R1) Reviewer #2: However, the explanations that the authors put forward are not really convincing. (Abridged from R2) Reviewer #3: This manuscript has the potential to become a nice piece but it is not yet at that point. It is too vague and internally inconsistent. (Abridged from R3) It is evident that the reviewers have some questions with their article by using such expressions as “not deep”, “not really convincing” and “too

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vague and internally inconsistent”. Besides these general comments, the reviewers also pointed out the specific points they challenged in the article. To respond to these points, Professor Zhao acknowledged the shortcomings before explaining the new experiments that they have done according to the reviewers’ suggestions. For example: Thank you for reminding. We did the TPR experiments again, and the new profiles are shown in the revised Figure 8. The data calculated based on the H2-TPR profiles were verified and listed in the revised Table  4. (Abridged from A1)

When Professor Zhao commented on the current chapter, sent to him for confirmation, he called this strategy “offering the reviewer a step”—a face-saving strategy. He explained that the fault was admitted and the required new experiment completed so that the reviewer would offer the writer a step in return. However, he did not accept all of the reviewers’ suggestions but rebutted some of them. For example: Sorry for not making it clears [sic]. …We have added one sentence in Section 2.3. … are shown in Figure below. Previous studies [...] have attributed the absorption …. Figure below shows that …. However, the peak assignments in the literature are not conclusive, and we have other methods that can better characterize the dimeric Cu (CO-IR, H2-TPR), we choose not[sic] report the preliminary UV-Vis data at this time, just to keep it safe. (Abridged from A1)

From this response, it can be seen that Professor Zhao did not simply refuse the reviewer’s requirement for doing a UV-Vis experiment. He explained that his methods “can better characterize the dimeric Cu (COIR, H2-TPR)” while, from the evidence of previous studies, the UV-Vis data cannot. Furthermore, he explained that he chose not to “report the preliminary UV-Vis data” because they are doubtful. (This explanation comes from his scrutiny of the draft of this chapter that I sent him.) 3. Avoidance Avoidance does not mean evading the reviewer’s questions. On the contrary, Professor Zhao has meticulously answered each one. His efforts

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have been commended because he and his team have done a new experiment based on the reviewer’s suggestion and they answered the questions in detail with new figures and tables: The authors have done a considerable effort to respond to the reviewers’ comments. I can, therefore, recommend the revised version for publication. (Abridged from R2)

However, for some questions, authors could directly say that they would be answered in the next article if they considered it unnecessary to answer in the present paper: Thank you for your reminding. …. These are our tentative explanations that should be studied in more details[sic] in the future. (Abridged from A1)

6.6 Social/Affective Strategies As mentioned in Chap. 3, writing for publishing international journal articles in English is a social as well as an individual act. Specifically, scientific publications in the discipline of chemistry usually need the cooperation of a team. It is found that the team plays a critical role in Professor Zhao’s international publications. However, it is impossible to construct a scientific team in  a day. Rather, it is long-term training that creates confidence in the minds of the team. In what follows, we look at how Professor Zhao sets up and trains a team for international publishing in English.

6.6.1 Training Academic Team We have calculated the number of Professor Zhao’s publications at the stages of masters’ study, doctoral study, post-doctoral working and working in the current Chinese university (see Table 6.3). The number of his publications (115, 70%) during the nine years working in the Chinese university is over twice the number of his publications (50, 30%) during the ten years from the period of his masters study to the period of his

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Table 6.3  Number of Professor Zhao’s publications at the different stages

Stages Master’s study (1999–2001) Doctoral study (2002–2006) Post-doctoral (2007–2009) Working in China (2010–2019) Total

As Number of Number As first corresponding of English Chinese Number articles author author of articles articles 12

9

3

8

0

13

12

1

11

1

25

25

0

11

1

115

111

4

14

72

165

157

8

44

74

postdoctoral work, indicating the important role of the research team he set up when he returned to China in 2009. Furthermore, there are 30 first-author articles (68%) from his master’s study period to his postdoctoral working period while there are only 14 first-author articles (32%) during his time in the Chinese university from 2010 to 2019. In contrast, there are only two articles (3%) from his master’s study period to his postdoctoral working period in which he was named as the corresponding author, while 72 articles published during his time in the Chinese university from 2010 to 2019 name him as the corresponding author. The change of his major identity to corresponding author from first author suggests that once he set up his research team in China he mainly supervised his team’s or his postgraduate students’ writing rather than wrote by himself. However, setting up a research team is much easier than training the team to do good research. The following paragraph from Professor Zhao’s personal web page may show his attitude towards training his team: I make all my efforts to guide my students into the community of chemistry research and improve their academic competence by the training procedures of literature study, thesis confirmation, experimental design, data collection, and analysis, using related software, writing and revising research articles, mid-term assessment, thesis writing, and final oral defense. Each member of the team is required to be rigorous with his or her research and everybody needs to do all one can. (Abridged from Professor Zhao’s personal web page)

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It takes much of his efforts and time to train his students to be good academics, and he is especially strict with them. His experience of being strict with his team members was even reported in a popular newspaper in an article entitled “I would rather be your adversity to help you  to transform your novice academic life” (Abridged from Professor Zhao’s personal web page and translated into English by the author of the book). It can be seen from the changed track of the first draft of the article he provided that he asked the student to confirm the type and specification of the equipment. From the track of the third revised manuscript, it is noted that he changed “Experiment” used by the student as the title of the Methods to “Experimental” and he warned the student not to make the same mistake again. It is worth noting that he spent much time telling his students how he revised the manuscript and why he revised in that way: In fact, it is impossible for most of the supervisors to teach their students how to write a research article. Usually, the supervisor may revise the students’ writing. As to my students, they may spend at least one or two months writing up a draft. With the draft, I can tell them how to revise. It is not a lesson taken place in the classroom. I wrote a lot of comments in their drafts to explain why I made a change. It is very time-consuming because the manuscript drafted by the student may usually be revised for five times at least or even for fifteen or sixteen times. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

As a matter of fact, not all supervisors would spend so much time in training their students. For example, Li (2012) has expressed her concern in her case study of a supervisor who “chose not to explain to his students about his revision” of the potentially copied text because the novice researchers may not “fully grasp the rhetorical intentions behind the changes” (p. 68). Professor Zhao reported that he sometimes intentionally rewrote one paragraph or one section based on the student’s draft: My purpose is to train my students to write in English even though I know their writing may be awful. But they have to practice their English writing. Then they can compare my rewriting and their own initial text so that they can make rapid progress. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

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He also reported that he explained to the students how to write and revise a research article from the perspective of a reviewer. Fortunately, his efforts have produced satisfactory results: My training is proved effective because the students have really improved their English writing competence. Generally, a novice English writer may improve his or her writing ability after publishing four or five international journal articles. However, only a few students can publish four or five articles in English before their graduation. Most of my doctoral students can publish three international journal articles during their study here, but some can publish five articles because they have acquired my strategies and they know what I prefer to include or exclude in writing. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

It is, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that his rigidity and his welltrained academic team has contributed to the large number of high-quality publications he achieved. As commander-­in-chief, he works as a planner, guider, idea conceive, and problem solver in the team, while his students are practitioners to implement his plans and ideas, and they work out the experimental data and write up the very first draft of the article. Such a team needs cooperation and understanding with each other for a common goal—to innovate scientific technology and publish the new findings. In this team, novice researchers as legitimate apprentices learn how to design research, do experiments, analyze the data, write the research article, select the target journal, and respond to reviewers’ comments under the supervision of experienced researchers (Curry & Lillis, 2010; Lave & Wenger, 1991).

6.6.2 Being Confident As Hyland (2015) noted, academic English writing is not easy for anyone, and writing a research article in a foreign language makes it more complicated. It needs long-term training and great effort. In fact, Professor Zhao had such a never-to-be-forgotten experience when he wrote his first international journal article in English:

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My first English-language article is a two-page article submitted to Chemistry Letters published in Japan. I was a masters student at that time. After doing a lot of experiments, I began to write my article based on the data I obtained. I spent a whole month in writing that two-page article and I felt exhausted in that month. Since my principal supervisor went to the United States to take care of her child, my associate supervisor helped me to revise the article for another month. During that period, I was very anxious and felt a lot of pressure. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

It is evident that it is extremely difficult for a novice researcher using English as a foreign language to write an English-language journal article, even when they spend much time and energy in writing that two-page article. Professor Zhao said that the editor of the journal asked them to make a major revision. Before starting his doctoral study in the United States, Professor Zhao as the first author has published six research articles in English. And he thought he had made great progress in English writing. However, the first article that he wrote during his doctoral study and he felt satisfied with was subjected to a large-scale revision by his supervisor. Through revision his supervisor taught him how to write a research article: He revised it five or six times. In the first revision, he gave some general comments and taught me how to draw a figure and how to write the introduction section. Then he sent me back the draft and asked me to revise it. I thought the article might be submitted after my revision. However, he made a large-scale revision in red again. Like this, we revised the article five or six times. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

After over half a year’s repeated revision, their article was submitted and was fortunately accepted with minor revisions. Professor Zhao reported that his English writing ability was really improved only after he had published another five or six articles. As Moreno, Rey-Rocha, Burgess, López-Navarro, and Sachdev (2012) found, an EAL writer may not feel excessive difficulty in English writing when s/he has published on average at least 37 research articles as the corresponding author in Englishmedium journals over a period of ten years. At the time of writing, Professor Zhao has published 74 articles as the corresponding author, so he has become rather confident in English writing:

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I cannot say it is a piece of cake for me, but I feel English writing is not that difficult for me now. I told my students that they would become more confident after they have written and revised at least ten articles under supervision. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

Therefore, every successful and competent writer must experience long-term training and practice and then become confident in themselves. With confidence, writers may present their ideas clearly and express themselves well (Hyland, 2002). It is highly likely that a novice researcher may become a confident and successful writer provided s/he persists in writing for a certain period of time (Cargill, O’Connor, & Li, 2012; Flowerdew, 1999b). Such confidence can bring multilingual scholars fruitful publications, as it did Professor Zhao.

6.7 Summary As a successful young scholar, Professor Zhao is a prolific writer, publishing not only 157 research articles in English but also 155 essays about postgraduate education in dozens of Chinese popular newspapers and magazines over the past 20 years. He is also a scientist with a sense of social responsibility. He accepted interviews discussing the relationship between students and supervisors from various social media and gave general knowledge talks about environmental protection in middle schools. All these experiences have contributed to his success in research and publishing in English because his self-reflection about the relationship between students and himself consolidates his research team, and his sensitivity to social issues sharpens and deepens his thinking. In this chapter, we ascribe his success in publishing in English to his training of his research team in addition to his talent in writing. As he mentioned, English-language proficiency is not the only condition necessary for multilingual scholars to succeed in publishing internationally in English: To write publishable English-language research articles, novice researchers need to consider the following aspects for improvement: first, checking whether your writing is logical or not (a reasonable structure of your arti-

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cle, the inner logic of each paragraph and the transforming of ideas from one to another); second, checking whether your research design and your data meet the disciplinary requirements or not; third, checking whether you are aware of the conventional and unsaid rules in your discipline or not (e.g., don’t echo other’s words, how to cope with your results differing from other researchers’, what articles can be cited in yours, how to target the potential journal matching with your article). (Abridged from L1)

Therefore, many writing and publishing strategies have to be summarized and understood from one’s personal training and practice. Although the strategies introduced by other researchers may be helpful, one has to involve oneself in the practice. Like learning to swim, one has to jump into the pool even though one has been taught a lot of skills. It is usually not a short-term business for novice scholars to master writing and publishing strategies, but the strategies summarized by successful scholars may help newcomers to gain more confidence in writing for publishing in English. In the next chapter, the strategies used by an algorithm scientist are presented on the basis of the analysis of his data.

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7 Dr. Zheng—A Faithful Co-operator

7.1 Overview This chapter reports the strategies Dr. Zheng, a computer scientist, adopts while writing and publishing research articles in English. It attempts to explore how he cooperates with his colleagues and how he deals with the language editing required by the journal. Dr. Zheng is an associate professor in the field of computer science, but he is more interested in the research of bioinformatics and application of machine-learning algorithms into chemical function prediction and genetic prediction related to disease. At the age of 37, he had published 138 research articles, all in English, in 12 years. Of those articles, there are only two published individually; the rest are co-authored by him and his colleagues or students. He is the first author of 67 publications. Obviously, he is a prolific writer of English-language research articles as a young scholar. I was introduced to him by my colleague’s husband, who is Dr. Zheng’s colleague. We had a half-hour interview and communicated with each other through emails later on. He provided me with 34 documents including his submitted manuscript for peer review, the revised

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manuscript, the proof of the accepted article, the reviewer’s comments and his responses, his l­anguage-­editing certificate and the emails between him and the editor of the journal. Unfortunately, he did not keep the first draft and the other revisions before the first submission because he reported that he gave up the habit of keeping the record of the manuscripts at different revision stages, being too numerous and burdensome for him. He is the fourth of the five authors of the article he sent me, but he is one of the three corresponding authors. The strategies summarized in the following sections are based on an analysis of the interview transcript and the documents provided by Dr. Zheng.

7.2 Discursive Strategies 7.2.1 Organization Like most of the empirical research articles in the discipline of natural sciences, the article provided by Dr. Zheng comprises Title, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, References, and Supporting Information. The article was submitted on November 1, 2016, and published on January 11, 2017— it only took a little over two months from submission to publishing. The crucial reason for its rapid success for publication, of course, lies in its novelty in the article as the reviewer pointed out in his or her comment: By using a shortest-path based algorithm, xxx proposed a few novel genes associated with breast cancer metastasis to bone. The shortest-path algorithm was applied to search possible genes in a protein network and the obtained genes were screened out by three rules. Eighteen putative genes were accessed. Authors further gave their analysis on them to elaborate they are related to bone metastasis from breast cancer. It is a quite interesting study. The new found genes may provide an opportunity to understand the process of bone metastasis from breast cancer and uncover the mechanism of this process. Furthermore, this study can give new insights for investigation of tumor metastasis. (Abridged from the reviewer’s comment)

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The reviewer’s comment is rather positive for the innovative methods used and the new genes identified in the article because s/he used such affirmative expressions as novel, quite interesting, new insights. Although the innovative content of an article is salient for its publication, the organization of the content in the article is no less important. In what follows, we attempt to recognize the moves in the sections of Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, and Results and Discussion in Dr. Zheng’s article by using Hoey’s (1983) problem–solution pattern and Swales’ (1990) genre analysis theory. Let us first look at the Abstract: ①Tumor metastasis is defined as the spread of tumor cells from one organ or part to another that is not directly connected to it, which significantly contributes to the progression and aggravation of tumorigenesis. [Situation] ②Because it always involves multiple organs, the metastatic process is difficult to study in its entirety. [Problem] ③Complete identification of the genes related to this process is an alternative way to study metastasis. ④In this study, we developed a computational method to identify such genes. ⑤To test our method, we selected breast cancer bone metastasis. ⑥A large network was constructed using human protein–protein interactions. ⑦Based on the validated genes related to breast and bone cancer, a shortest-­ path algorithm was applied to the network to search for novel genes that may mediate breast cancer metastasis to bone. ⑧In addition, further rules constructed using the permutation FDR, the betweenness ratio, and the max–min interaction score were also employed in the method to make the inferred genes more reliable. ⑨Eighteen putative genes were identified by the method and were extensively analyzed. [Response] ➉The confirmation results indicate that these genes participate in metastasis. [Evaluation] (Abridged from Dr. Zheng’s manuscript)

According to Hoey (1983), the problem–solution pattern consists of four elements: (1) situation, which is optional and provides the context; (2) problem or “aspect of a situation requiring a response” (Hoey, 2001, p. 124); (3) response to the problem; (4) evaluation of the result (positive or negative). Unlike the general organization method of IMRD (Introduction–Method–Result–Discussion) in the abstract of research

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articles (Swales, 1990), Dr. Zheng’s article abstract is organized ­coincidentally consistent with Hoey’s pattern. The first sentence provides the context of tumor metastasis. The second sentence proposes the problem that it is hard to study the metastatic process due to its involvement in multiple organs. Against this problem, some solutions like computational method and further rules were proposed to identify eighteen genes. The last sentence suggests a positive evaluation of the solution, which means that the computational method is effective in identifying the genes related to tumor metastasis. This organizing pattern of the abstract is appealing and eye-catching to the readers who can recognize the novelty of the article at first sight. Next, we will analyze the Introduction of Dr. Zheng’s article on the basis of Swales’ (1990) CARS (Create a Research Space) model. Swales (1990) argues that the Introduction of an empirical research article is generally composed of three moves: establishing a territory; establishing a niche; occupying the niche. Each of these moves may include some steps such as claiming centrality, making topic generalization, and reviewing previous items of research in the first move; counter-claiming, indicating a gap, question-raising and continuing a tradition in the second move; outlining purposes, announcing present research, announcing principal findings and indicating the structure of the research article in the third move. The three moves are the compulsory elements of the Introduction of a research article, but the steps are optional. Regarding Dr. Zheng’s research article, there are four paragraphs in the Introduction. The first three paragraphs are talking about the importance of the research topic. As the most common type of breast cancer is ductal carcinoma, likely to involve bone metastasis, resulting in more than 70% death, the study of bone metastasis from breast cancer is very significant. More importantly, it is necessary to identify those genes that contribute to the process of breast cancer bone metastasis. Although the research gap has not been explicitly pointed out in the fourth paragraph of the Introduction, it is implied that it is novel to use the shortest-path (SP) algorithm to discover genes in breast cancer and bone cancer. At the end of the fourth paragraph, the major findings are announced: eighteen putative genes playing important roles in breast cancer metastasis were recognized. Therefore, the structure of the Introduction of Dr. Zheng’s article could

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be summarized as follows: Move 1, establishing a territory (claiming ­centrality); Move 2, establishing a niche (continuing a tradition); Move 3, occupying the niche (announcing their principal finding). Regarding the section of materials and methods, the structure is rather clear-cut because there are three sub-sections elaborating the materials and methods, the constructed network and the SP methods respectively. In other words, the Method section consists of three moves: describing the data collection procedure, describing the experimental procedure and describing the data analysis procedure (Nwogu, 1997). The detailed description of methods is conducive for peers’ replication as well as strengthens the reliability of the research. As the focus of the article is on identifying genes that mediate breast cancer metastasis to the bone, in the first move of Methods, the size and the source of bone cancer-related genes and breast cancer-related genes were introduced respectively. In the second move of Methods, the article justified why and how the network using PPIs (protein–protein interactions) was constructed. In the third move of Methods, the use of the short-path algorithm was justified for the current study and the criteria for screening genes that mediate breast cancer metastasis to the bone were proposed. Let us analyze the Results and Discussion section of the article. There are two moves in this section: (1) describing the results; (2) interpreting the results. In the first move, the article explains how the shortest-path genes are refined from 930 to 198 then to 18 putative genes that may mediate breast cancer metastasis to the bone with high probability. The second move of the results and discussion section includes six steps of which each interpreted the 18 putative genes in six groups by referring to the latest publications in the field. The six groups are Wnt signaling-­ associated genes, oncogenes, genes associated with transcriptional regulation, genes associated with cell cycle regulation, genes associated with GTPase regulation, and other genes. Hence, the structure of the Results and Discussion section is clear-cut and well-organized. The Conclusion of Dr. Zheng’s article is rather short, including two moves: summarizing the major findings and stating the implications of the research. The organization strategies of Dr. Zheng’s article are summarized in Table 7.1.

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Table 7.1  Structure of Dr. Zheng’s article Abstract Problem–solution pattern Introduction Move 1 Move 2 Move 3 Materials and Methods Move 4 Move 5

Move 6 Results and Discussion Move 7 Move 8 Conclusion Move 9 Move 10

Situation–problem–response–evaluation Establishing a territory by claiming centrality Establishing a niche by continuing a tradition Occupying the niche by announcing their principal findings Describing the data collection procedure by introducing the size and source of the data Describing the experimental procedure by justifying why and how the network using PPIs was constructed; Describing the data analysis procedure by justifying the method and criteria for data analysis; Describing the results Interpreting the results by comparing it with the latest publications Summarizing the major findings Stating the implications

7.2.2 Use of the First-person Pronoun Authorial first-person pronouns like I, we, us play an important role in constructing writer identity in English-language academic writing (Tang & John, 1999).They are considered as important rhetorical strategies allowing researchers to perform different discourse functions in the article, “through which they construct a convincing argument that persuades readers of the validity and novelty of their claims and of their own competence.” (Luzón, 2009, p.  192) In analogous terms, Tang and John (1999) argue that the first-person pronouns can play the role of representative, guide, architect, recounter, opinion holder and originator from the least to the most powerful voice. We have identified 21 “we” and 11 “our” in Dr. Zheng’s manuscript. There are 2 “we” and 1 “our” in the Abstract, 1 “our” in the Introduction section, 14 “we” in the Methods section, 5 “we” and 8 “our” in the results and discussion section, and 2 “our” in the conclusion section. From the sentence “In this study, we developed a computational method to identify such genes” in the abstract, it can be

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seen that “we” plays the function of originator, indicating their claiming the novelty of the research. However, most of “we” used in the sections of methods and results play the role of recounter, for instance, we (collected, obtained, counted, calculated, adopted). The agents are emphasized here to demonstrate the authors’ authority. “Our method,” “our prediction list,” “our prediction,” and “our identification,” in the results section imply that they claim the novelty of the methods and the new genes that mediate breast cancer metastasis to the bone.

7.2.3 Hedging Devices It is necessary to adopt an appropriate level of hedging when making original claims and critiquing others’ ideas (Botelho de Magalhães, Cotterall, & Mideros, 2019; Hyland, 1994). With hedging devices, the writer may be “less than fully committed to the certainty of the referential information given” (Hyland, 1994, p. 240). It is possible for writers to avoid direct personal responsibility for their statements. Salager-Meyer (1994) also identifies hedges as “understatements used to convey (purposive) vagueness and tentativeness, and to make sentences more acceptable to the hearer/reader, thus increasing their chance of ratification and reducing the risk of negation” (p. 150). Hyland (1996) claims that hedging has three functions: (1) allowing writers to express propositions with greater precision, recognizing the impossibility of exactly quantifying the world; (2) allowing writers to anticipate possible negative consequences of being proved wrong; (3) helping writers to develop a relationship with the reader, addressing affective expectations in gaining acceptance for claims (pp. 478–479). According to him, epistemic modalities like may, might, could, are central rhetorical means of gaining adherence to knowledge claims and to present them as opinion rather than as fact. Other hedging devices include nouns (claim, evidence…), verbs (suggest, indicate…), adjectives (probable, possible…) and adverbs (apparently, hardly…). In addition to lexical items, some syntactic expressions such as conditional clauses, embedding or contrast markers, or formulaic ­expressions can be used as hedging devices as well (Hyland, 1996, p. 480). The most common hedging items in Hyland’s (1996) corpus are indicate, would, may and suggest.

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Dr. Zheng’s article uses hedging devices extensively: lexical verbs such as indicate or indicating (21 occurrences), suggesting (six occurrences); modal verbs like can (17 occurrences), may (15 occurrences); adjectives like likely (seven occurrences); adverbs like mainly (three occurrences), slightly (once); nouns like claim (twice), evidence (nine occurrences) and syntactic expressions such as if and only if (once), it has been widely reported/demonstrated that… (13 occurrences), as mentioned above (seven occurrences) and it is easy/clear/known that… (five occurrences). The syntactic expression “it has been widely reported/demonstrated that…” (12 occurrences) is mainly used in the Results and Discussion section because the authors of the article tried to compare their results with the previous studies. For example: Example: RAF1, a functional oncogene that contributes to the Ras signaling pathway, has been widely reported to contribute to the metastasis process of breast cancer, including breast cancer bone metastasis (78). (Abridged from Dr. Zheng’s manuscript)

RAF1 is one of the oncogenes identified by the authors of the article, which mediate breast cancer metastasis to the bone. The hedging expression in this example sentence helps the writers to gain readers’ acceptance of their findings. The modal verbs can (12 occurrences) and may (11 occurrences) are mainly used in the introduction section and the results and discussion section in that the hedging devices could avoid “face-­ threatening” (Myers, 1989) in case their claims are negated in the future. Similarly, the lexical verbs such as indicate (nine occurrences) and suggest (five occurrences) mainly appear in the Results and Discussion section because they can “cover themselves against the embarrassment of categorical commitment to statements that later may be shown to be wildly inaccurate” (Hyland, 1996, p. 479).

7.2.4 A  wareness of Rhetorical Differences Between English and Chinese As Moreno (1997) noted, there is significant intercultural variation in the rhetorical preference of national cultures though “a relative uniformity of research articles is imposed by the requirements of the genre” (p. 161). It

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is natural for a multilingual scholar to compare the rhetorical conventions across languages. Dr. Zheng reported the existence of rhetorical differences between English and Chinese in our interview: Zheng:

I found Chinese may be more appropriate to be used to describe general things or ideas, but, for me, I can present more specific descriptions in English. Sometimes I know how to express myself in English, but in Chinese, I feel at a loss how to select the proper words and phrases. Interviewer: Perhaps you have been accustomed to writing research articles in English for a long time because you have published over one hundred English articles. So you may not have any difficulties in using the English language or organizing English articles? Zheng: I don’t have any difficulties in organizing English research articles, but I still have language problems because I am usually unaware of many English idiomatic expressions I should use in my own writing. Since I’m a non-native speaker, I feel amazed that some native English speakers use the expressions I believe quite strange. However, that’s what they use in their English writing. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng) This conversation indicates that multilingual scholars may be conscious of the language differences and dodge the disadvantage of their mother tongues in publishing their research findings. Of course, there are other reasons for his behavior in academic activity: the articles published in higher-ranking international journals count more than those in national journals, in current China at least, so Dr. Zheng benefits more from his English-language publications; language differences between English and Chinese inhibit him switching from English to Chinese in writing research articles. As Li (1996) pointed out, the audiences for Chineselanguage articles may differ from those who are from English in academic writing. The former prefer flowery and imaginary language while the latter appreciate reasoning and rational language. Dr. Zheng’s understanding of the differences between English and Chinese seems to be consistent

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with Li’s (1999) claim that “American teachers’ constant demand for more specifics was just as peculiar as the Chinese teachers’ unfailing delight in nature-related images” (p.  52). Their audiences are slightly different.

7.3 Metacognitive Strategies 7.3.1 Language Selection As mentioned in Sect. 7.1, all of Dr. Zheng’s 138 articles were written and published in English. He reported that he had never written research articles in Chinese except for his doctoral graduation thesis. As he explained in Sect. 7.2.4, he felt he could express himself more precisely in English. When he was asked whether he felt much easier writing research articles in English than in Chinese, he denied it. He reported that his affiliated institution preferred him to publish the research results in the international journals rather than in the national journals. Thus, he was motivated to choose to write research articles in English. He has insisted on writing research articles in English for nearly ten years and succeeded in publishing around 14 articles per year. It appears that both Dr. Zheng and Professor Zhao (Chap. 6) prefer writing research articles in English, which has actually become their academic language. As Matsuda (2014) noted, it would be hard for one who has been immersed in scholarly activity in English for a long time to be involved in the activity in his or her mother tongue. Even though these international scholars are non-­ native English speakers, they have acquired English as their academic language and felt more comfortable communicating with their ­counterparts in the world in English. They not only extend the international reach of their academic communication but also achieve a higher degree of self-satisfaction in their career. Multilingual scholars like Dr. Zheng and Professor Zhao read and write in English and have become part of the international scientific community. However, it is worth noting that Dr. Zheng has always studied and worked in China; his curriculum vitae shows he has not been educated in English-speaking countries. That is to say, it is not necessarily for a multilingual scholar to be trained

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in an anglophone country in order to publish in English. Multilingual scholars could improve their English writing proficiency if they insisted on writing more in English. However, Dr. Zheng’s specialty may contribute to his language acquisition and his large number of English publications as well, because the discipline of computer science is closely associated with the English language. In the process of learning computer science, he acquired English more easily than those in other disciplines such as physics, mathematics, or Chinese history. In short, in pursuit of success in publishing in international journals in English, multilingual scholars must be inclined to select English language as the medium for publishing their novel findings.

7.3.2 Journal Selection It is usually difficult for novice researchers to select the proper journal as a channel for their maiden submission. Dr. Zheng mentioned in the interview that he had been rejected by an editor to whom he sent his submitted manuscript for peer review because the content of his manuscript was considered not to be within the scope of the journal. As Cargill and O’Connor (2009) suggested, it would be helpful to develop a publication plan that fit a particular journal to publish in from the beginning of the research because selection of the right journal would improve the chance of getting published easily and quickly. Shaikh (2016) also pointed out that picking the right journal for a submitted manuscript could both improve the chance of acceptance and ensure it reached the target audience. Regarding journal selection, Dr. Zheng recommended: First of all, you need to select those journals closely related to your specialty. Second, it is said there are some kinds of web-based journal-selection tools that can use a paper’s abstract to draw up a list of the top ten most appropriate target journals from a pool of more than 10,000. However, I have not tried that. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

As an experienced scholar publishing a large number of articles in English-language journals, Dr. Zheng, with his co-authors, is undoubtedly adept in choosing the right journal for his manuscript submission. It is

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noted that the impact factor of their chosen journal is 3.95 for the manuscript analyzed in the present book. It appears that the editor of the journal was happy to accept their article on condition that they made a minor revision in response to a reviewer’s comments: I would be pleased to consider further for publication a revised manuscript that addresses the reviewer’s concerns. Reviewer’s comments are enclosed at the bottom of this letter, along with format to use for your responses. Include a highlighted version of your paper with changes made as “Other file for Editor only”. (Abridged from the editor’s letter)

Hence, the successful and quick publication of their article confirms the importance of selecting the right journal for manuscript submission.

7.3.3 Writing Directly in English It is reported that, due to their limited English-language proficiency, many multilingual scholars may first write up research articles by themselves in their mother tongue and then either rely on someone else to translate their work or undertake the task themselves (Chan, 2016; Gosden, 1995; Kuteeva, 2013; Li, 2006; St. John, 1987). Hanauer and Englander (2013) reported that a Mexican scientist who had a submitted manuscript returned because of language problems rewrote the entire manuscript in Spanish and then employed a translator to put it into English. However, such translations tend to prove unsatisfactory (St. John, 1987). In Li’s (2005) case study, she explained the reason why the interviewee Fei wrote the paper directly in English was that he was ­concerned that translation of his articles from Chinese to English would produce mistake-ridden sentences. In our present questionnaire survey, 74.4% of the respondents reported writing research articles in English directly. Based on his own writing experience, Dr. Zheng recommended: When writing an English research article, don’t write it in Chinese firstly and then translate it into English. Just write it in English directly. It is normal and doesn’t matter even if you write awfully for the first time. We all have to experience it. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

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7.4 Cognitive Strategies 7.4.1 Imitation Strategies It is a common strategy for multilingual scholars to take a previously published article as a model. Li (2005) summarized it as “drawing a tiger by looking at a cat” in her case study. Dr. Zheng has also adopted an imitation strategy, though a long time ago. He recalled his first experience publishing in an international journal in English: Perhaps my case is a little bit special because my research interest was in algorithm design in the beginning years of my academic career and later I turned to bioinformatics. The requirements of these two research areas are totally different in terms of English writing. I feel different disciplines have different requirements for English writing. Specifically, the requirement for English writing is not that high in the field of algorithm design. Thus, I wrote my own article by imitating a previously published reference. I found no problem in writing that article in English. I succeeded in completing the article by imitating the terms used in the reference. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

Dr. Zheng is lucky in publishing his first research article in English because he started his research career in a field not requiring a relatively higher language proficiency to write in English. As he reported, he “only imitated the language from the reference paper, but filled in the novel content of my own”. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng) As Cargill and O’Connor (2009) argued, for science writing there is a divide in the way people think about the content—the science—and the way they think about the language used to express their content. The originality of the work is seen most to reside in the content: the data and their analysis and interpretation. This situation differs somewhat from that pertaining to the writing in the humanities and social sciences, where the language is seen to form the argument, and therefore the content of the writing. (p. 105)

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Hence, imitating may mean quite different things in different disciplines. In particular, it is highly possible that the imitation of language or “language re-use” in the field of humanities and social sciences may break the rule of “textual plagiarism” (Flowerdew & Li, 2007). Even within the field of natural sciences, as Dr. Zheng said, bioinformatics had a much higher requirement for English writing than the discipline of the algorithm design. We will return to discuss this point in the following section. Even though “language re-use” is still controversial in applied linguistics, imitating is a primary strategy that novice researchers may choose. Additionally, this strategy may be rooted in a traditional belief that Chinese writers hold, which is that one who has read through 300 Tang poems can at least intone even if s/he cannot write.

7.4.2 Writing More As McGrail, Rickard, and Jones (2006) noted, only a minority of academics are active in publishing in reality, and writing generates fear and anxiety in a significant number of academics, particularly those academics who are early in their writing careers and lack confidence in their ability. This is true for writers no matter whether they are native or non-native speakers. However, it is acknowledged that lack of English-language proficiency requires EAL writers to devote more time and economic resources to producing publications than their anglophone counterparts (Burgess, Gea-Valor, Moreno, & Rey-Rocha, 2014; Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Cho, 2009). Hanauer and Englander (2011) even quantified the difficulty that Mexican scientists felt: they stated it was 24% more difficult writing in English than in their native language. More specifically, the Introduction and Discussion sections were regarded as the most problematic parts for EAL writers (Cargill & O’Connor, 2006; Flowerdew, 1999, 2001; Gea-­ Valor, Rey-Rocha, & Moreno, 2014; Lu, 2004; Mišak, Marušić, & Marušić, 2005). Similarly, Dr. Zheng confirmed the Discussion was the most difficult part of his process of writing English research articles: Relatively, the Discussion is difficult to write. As for the other sections like the Methods, what you are required is to narrate clearly what you have

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done in the experiment. However, when coming to the Discussion, in which you are given relatively free play, it is rather troublesome to organize the ideas and pieces of evidence with proper words and expressions though you have the freedom to say what you want to say. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

To solve this problem of writing the Discussion, Dr. Zheng suggested writing more: To increase the acceptance rate of manuscript submission, all we can do is write more and observe how other academics write research articles. If you write only one or two English articles, you may learn nothing from your experience and change nothing in your writing competence. You should write more. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

It is evident that writing more English-language research articles is one of the important strategies to improve English writing competence. This result is in accordance with the finding of Moreno, Rey-Rocha, Burgess, López-Navarro, and Sachdev’s (2012), that Spanish scholars felt more confident in English writing when they “have published on average at least 37 research articles as corresponding authors in English-medium journals over the last ten years” (p. 157). Furthermore, Dr. Zheng has improved his writing competence in such numerous processes of writing English-language articles, and learned how to revise his articles: I carefully observe how the editing agencies or other people revise my manuscript. I scrutinize their revisions and accumulate bit by bit. Next time when I run across the same expressions, I just write by following what they have done. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

Thus, writing more does not mean writing without being aware of learning from the more experienced writers. It is reported that some multilingual scholars are seldom motivated to really improve their English writing ability and language proficiency, and they hardly scrutinize other people’s revisions merely choose to accept them entirely (Burrough-­ Boenisch, 2003; Huang, 2010; Karimnia, 2013; Li & Flowerdew, 2007). Some others turn to “RA (research article) mediators” (Luo & Hyland,

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2019) for translating their mother tongue text into English for publication and hence lose the chance to improve their English writing skills in the long term (Okamura, 2006). Therefore, the strategy of writing more English research articles needs to be combined with learning lessons from the editors or reviewers’ corrections to genuinely improve English writing skills.

7.4.3 Point-by-point Responses to the Reviewer As mentioned above, both the editor of the target journal and the reviewer were highly interested in Dr. Zheng’s manuscript. The only reviewer, in fact, listed six questions in the email to the editor. It is noted that the authors of the article answered those questions point by point. After the analysis of their responses, it is found that they have adopted two main strategies: (1) clarifying and (2) adding more information. The first two questions asked by the reviewer are his or her doubts about the methods of the research, so Dr. Zheng and his coauthors tried to clarify what they had done in the experiment  (see Fig. 7.1): Q2. PPIs in STRING were used to construct the network. Which version of STRING was used in this study? And what are the advantages of PPIs in this database comparing[sic]to other networks, e.g., gene co-expression networks. [sic] It is very important because their accuracies can directly influence the utility of the method. R2. We used the PPIs in STRING with version 9.1. It has been pointedout in the revised manuscript. Please see the second paragraph of Section 2.2. The PPIs reported in STRING are derived from several aspects of proteins and can widely measure the association between proteins. The co-expression information is also considered in these PPIs. We have given a detailed analysis in the revised manuscript. Please see the second paragraph of Section 2.2.(Abridged from Dr Zheng’s response to the reviewer)

Fig. 7.1  Dr. Zheng and his colleagues’ response to the reviewer’s comments

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From the response, it can be seen that the authors distinguish their responses from the reviewer’s comments by highlighting in different colors. They explained that they used the PPIs in STRING with version 9.1 and pointed out where they had revised the manuscript. To illustrate their analysis of the advantage of PPIs, they added a short paragraph to the manuscript: In fact, this score integrated several evidence[sic] that indicate the associations between two proteins, such as conserved neighbourhood evidence, co-occurrence evidence, fusion evidence, co-expression evidence, database evidence, experimental evidence, text mining evidence (54). Compared to the PPIs derived from single evidence, PPIs in STRING can widely measure the associations between proteins. A network built based these PPIs contains comprehensive information and can provide more opportunity for mining useful hidden information. (Abridged from the revised manuscript)

This is the only relatively longer revision that can be found when comparing their first submitted manuscript, the revised manuscript and their published article. In addition, they accepted the reviewer’s suggestion to combine the supplementary materials I and II, and they added the sources of each of the 603 bone cancer-related genes and the 369 breast cancer-­ related genes. They also complemented the description of genes and “the references that shown [sic] the relationship between the corresponding genes and breast cancer bone metastasis processes” (abridged from Dr. Zheng’s response) in Table 1 of the manuscript.

7.5 Social/Affective Strategies 7.5.1 Extensive Cooperation It is not unreasonable to attribute Dr. Zheng’s high productivity of research articles to his extensive cooperation with his colleagues and students. We found that he published only two articles (1.5% of all his publications) as the single author. There are 54 authors who have co-­ authored at least two articles with him and 12 authors who have co-­ authored more than ten articles with him. He has long-term cooperation with two authors, and they co-authored 86 and 72 articles respectively. However, it is notable that he has published 66 articles (47.8% of

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his publications) as the first author. This indicates that he wrote or drafted nearly half of his publications, if it is generally acknowledged that the first author usually writes up the manuscript. In other words, he played the role of a participant in about half of his publications or at least he was not the major writer of those articles. As Dr. Zheng remarked, he had to cooperate with his colleagues in the field of biosciences because he has never been educated in biological science. However, his strength in computer science could be applied in many other areas of research. From the abstract being analyzed in this chapter, it can be seen that he contributed the short-path algorithm to research in which 18 novel genes related to breast cancer bone metastasis were identified. Hence, his superiority in computer technology facilitated and consolidated his long-term and steady cooperation with the experts in the field of biosciences. However, it is not easy to develop a good relationship in cooperation, even though teamwork may generate more publications. When Dr. Zheng was asked how to cope with the relationship between authors, he mentioned that all the authors involved in publishing the article should frequently exchange ideas with each other, and all authors should be informed and scrutinize the manuscript before its submission. In addition, he talked about the arrangement of the order of the authors: This (who should be the first author or corresponding author) is a rather sensitive and subtle issue in cooperation. Generally, what we have done is to make the arrangement before cooperation. For example, we may estimate how many articles we could produce in our co-working project and promise that each of us can be the first author or corresponding author of half of the publications. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng)

Scientific cooperation is not easy particularly in the current system of academic assessment in China because it is not only related to one’s fame and copyright but also to huge economic profits. It is said that the two best-known Chinese scientists, Nobel Prize co-winners in physics, Chen-­ ning Yang and Tsung-dao Lee, parted later partly because of the order of authors presented in their articles (Zhong, 2009). It is clear that Dr. Zheng is adept in cooperating with other scholars because he co-authored 86 articles with one of his colleagues; his strategies could be helpful for other academics who would co-work with their colleagues in a project.

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7.5.2 Seeking Help from Language Editing Services As discussed in Chap. 3, international publishing is a social cognitive practice involving collaborative work by a network of professionals (Koyalan & Mumford, 2011; Lillis & Curry, 2010). Since multilingual scholars have difficulty in writing English articles, they often turn to seek help from the language editing services, called “literacy brokers” by Lillis and Curry (2006, 2010) or “RA mediators” by Luo and Hyland (2019). However, multilingual scholars were found to complain that it was hard to find a broker who is fluent in both languages and has expertise in a certain discipline (Luo & Hyland, 2019; St. John, 1987). Thus, editing services were considered useful in revising surface grammatical errors, but not in the improvement of matters of substance (Flowerdew, 1999). While language editing services are not so satisfactory, it appears that scientists sometimes have to send their manuscript to a designated e­ diting service before submission. Dr. Zheng told of his experience in our interview: The content of my very first published article has no relationship with what I am studying now. (He reported that the language requirement of that article was not so high by the journal.) The articles we are writing now have much higher requirements for English language level. We usually ask native English speakers or professional companies (i.e. commercial language editing services) to revise our manuscripts before submitting to the journal. Otherwise, we do not dare to submit our manuscripts because the journal editor may directly return them and ask us to edit the English language first. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng. The content in parentheses is added by the author of the book.)

Therefore, it has become a strategy for Dr. Zheng and his co-authors to have their manuscripts to be edited before submission; they felt there was nothing else they could do. It is interesting they usually obtain a certificate (see Fig.  7.2) from the editing services when the editor asks them to revise the language. He (editor of the journal) is really concerned with what you have done in your research after your English language has been accepted. However, I

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Fig. 7.2  Editorial certificate

assume some (international) journals have a little bias against Chinese scholars because they make no effort to go through the manuscript and would insist on considering the language of our manuscript unacceptable even though we have had it edited. I cannot understand this. It may be an international convention. Or perhaps we Chinese scholars are indeed very vulnerable in this (English). Actually, the editor of the journal may be weak in English, but in any case, he would say “your language unacceptable.” In this case, we would provide him with a certificate of the revision which would keep him silent immediately. Since we have consulted the professional company for the English language, it would be too picky if he persists in rejecting our submission using an excuse about language problems. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zheng. The content in parentheses is added by the author of the book.)

Though with some complaints indicated in the above quotation, Dr. Zheng and his co-authors would seek help from editing services in editing language before submitting their manuscripts. Hence, the language

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problems they encountered in publishing in English have been concealed. In his recent publication, in support of Swales (2004), Hyland (2019) argued that “framing publication problems as a crude Native vs. non-­ Native polarization demoralizes EAL writers and ignores the very real writing problems experienced by many L1 English scholars” (p.  13). Certainly, Hyland and Swales are right in weighing against the simple or crude division between native and non-native writers, but we may not ignore the linguistic bias of the editor or reviewers that Dr. Zheng mentioned in cases where multilingual scholars’ submissions have been rejected due to language problems before being sent out for peer review, and language problems in their manuscripts have not been exposed in the reviewing process. That is the reason that in ERPP literature there are two contradictory findings: some scholars reported EAL authors’ perceptions of editors’ prejudice on the language of their manuscripts (Flowerdew, 1999, 2008; Li, 2002) while others only found the editors and reviewers’ critical comments on the content and methodology rather than the quality of the language in EAL writers’ manuscripts (see also Sect. 3.4 in this book). Hyland’s (2019) argument that the difficulties experienced by EAL writers are due to lack of broader discourse practices is reasonable, but his viewpoint that linguistic disadvantage is less  relevant at the advanced level of academic writing may not necessarily very convincing. It is generally recognized that the factors influencing second language writing are rather complex. The quality of English as a second language is surely one of the most important elements deciding whether multilingual scholars’ submissions can be accepted by a journal. If the linguistic disadvantage that multilingual (non-Native) scholars experience is less relevant to the success of international publications, it is just because the multilingual scholars depend on language editing or translating services to solve the linguistic problems in their manuscripts. Their linguistic problems have not been sufficiently exposed in the reviewing process.  It is concerned that multilingual scholars may give up attempting to improve their English-language proficiency and entirely depend on editing services, which have been commercially brought up by enormous demands of international publications. It may be unfair for authors of submissions with original ideas but who lack the resources to afford the heavy fees for manuscript editing or translating. Therefore, from a long-term perspective, multilingual scholars should be encouraged to be trained in English

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writing skills rather than give up seeking to improve their language proficiency in despair, and become obliged to rely on language editing/ translating services.

7.6 Summary This chapter summarizes Dr. Zheng’s strategies in writing and publishing international journal articles in English based on the analysis of interview transcripts and documents including Dr. Zheng and his co-authors’ manuscripts, the published article, and the communications from reviewers. As Dr. Zheng pointed out in the interview, the novelty of scientific content is the most important element leading to the publication of a manuscript. Like Professor Zhao, Dr. Zheng did not talk much about his research. However, as experienced researchers, they have prudently designed their research and have had something really important and publishable to say when they write up manuscripts (Bocanegra-Valle, 2014; Hyland, 2015, 2016; Wilcox & Jeffery, 2015). It can be seen from their feedback that both journal editor and reviewer appreciated Dr. Zheng’s research. Hence, there are few changes imposed on the basis of the reviewer’s comments because the novel content of the manuscript has been accepted by the editor and the reviewer. As Cargill and O’Connor (2009) point out, good science must be clearly understandable. Our discourse analysis of Dr. Zheng’s article shows that the IMRD structure meets the requirement of the target discourse community and the problem–solution organization of the abstract can easily pull readers’ attention to the novelty of the research. Furthermore, the authors of the article make use of first-person plural pronouns showing their identities and voices when proposing their new findings. They also employ hedging devices to negotiate with the audience about their research results. In addition, Dr. Zheng’s awareness of the rhetorical differences between Chinese and English may be one of the reasons prompting him to choose to write all his research articles in English because, as he explained, he could write articles more precisely in English. It seems he has become very confident in writing English because he has succeeded in publishing a large number of international  English-language journal articles.

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However, he and his co-authors usually send their manuscript to editing services for language polishing before submitting it to a journal, and secure a certificate of English-language editing in case the editor of the journal asks them to edit the language of the manuscript before sending it out for peer review. The pre-editing of the manuscript by a professional language service may be another reason for the rapid publication of their submission. Unlike some other scholars who have no desire to improve their English writing ability (Bazerman, Keranen, & Encinas, 2012; Huang, 2010; Okamura, 2006), Dr. Zheng reads carefully, and pays close attention to, the revisions of his manuscripts by editing services so that he can imitate the better expressions in his own writing. Furthermore, his perseverance in writing English articles does not only help him to improve his writing skills but also enables his high productivity of publications. Finally, it is worth mentioning his strategy of cooperation with colleagues. He has established a long-term relationship with his co-authors in research and this sort of relationship has facilitated his publication success in English. In short, a social network plays an important role in Dr. Zheng’s productivity in terms of his large number of international journal publications in English (Curry & Lillis, 2010; Hyland, 2011; Zheng & Guo, 2018). As so far, the cases reported in this volume are the scholars with a professional rank of at least associate professor. They are experienced in writing and publishing international journals in English. The case in the next chapter is an associate professor as well, but one who is as yet relatively inexperienced in publishing in English. However, his successful experience in international journal publication may be more instructive for novice multilingual scholars who desire to write and publish in English.

References Bazerman, C., Keranen, N., & Encinas, F. (2012). Facilitated immersion at a distance in second language scientific writing. In M. C. Badia & C. Donahue (Eds.), University Writing: Selves and Texts in Academic Societies (pp. 235–252). Bingley, UK: Emerald.

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Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2014). ‘English is my default academic language’: Voices from LSP scholars publishing in a multilingual journal. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 65–77. Botelho de Magalhães, M., Cotterall, S., & Mideros, D. (2019). Identity, voice and agency in two EAL doctoral writing contexts. Journal of Second Language Writing, 43, 4–14. Burgess, S., Gea-Valor, M.  L., Moreno, A.  I., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2014). Affordances and constraints on research publication: A comparative study of the language choices of Spanish historians and psychologists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 72–83. Burrough-Boenisch, J. (2003). Shapers of published NNS research articles. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(3), 223–243. Cargill, M., & Burgess, S. (2017). Publishing Research in English as an Additional Language: Practices Pathways and Potentials. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. Cargill, M., & O’Connor, P. (2006). Developing Chinese scientists’ skills for publishing in English: Evaluating collaborating-colleague workshops based on genre analysis. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 5, 207–221. Cargill, M., & O’Connor, P. (2009). Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Chan, L. T. (2016). Beyond non-translation and “self-translation”- English as lingua academica in China. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 11(2), 152–176. Cho, D. W. (2009). Science journal paper writing in an EFL context: The case of Korea. English for Specific Purposes, 28(4), 230–239. Curry, M.  J., & Lillis, T.  M. (2010). Academic research networks: Accessing resources for English-medium publishing. English for Specific Purposes, 29, 281–295. Flowerdew, J. (1999). Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 243–263. Flowerdew, J. (2001). Attitudes of journal editors to nonnative speaker contributions. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 121–150. Flowerdew, J. (2008). Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s “Stigma” tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. Flowerdew, J., & Li, Y. (2007). Language re-use among Chinese apprentice scientists writing for publication. Applied linguistics, 28, 440–465. Gea-Valor, M. L., Rey-Rocha, J., & Moreno, A. I. (2014). Publishing research in the international context: An analysis of Spanish scholars’ academic writing needs in the social sciences. English for Specific Purposes, 36, 47–59.

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Gosden, H. (1995). Success in research article writing and revision: A social-­ constructive perspective. English for Specific Purposes, 14, 37–57. Hanauer, D.  I., & Englander, K. (2011). Quantifying the burden of writing research articles in a second language: Data from Mexican scientists. Written Communication, 28, 403–416. Hanauer, D. I., & Englander, K. (2013). Scientific Writing in a Second Language. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Hoey, M. (1983). On the Surface of Discourse. London: George Allen & Unwin. Hoey, M. (2001). Textual Interaction: An Introduction to Written Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Huang, J. C. (2010). Publishing and learning writing for publication in English: Perspectives of NNES PhD students in science. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9(1), 33–44. Hyland, K. (1994). Hedging in academic writing and EAP textbooks. English for Specific Purposes, 13(3), 239–256. Hyland, K. (1996). Nurturing hedges in the ESP curriculum. System, 24(4), 477–490. Hyland, K. (2011). The presentation of self in scholarly life: Identity and marginalization in academic homepages. English for Specific Purposes, 30(4), 286–297. Hyland, K. (2015). Genre, discipline and identity. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 19, 32–43. Hyland, K. (2016). Language myths and publishing mysteries: A response to Politzer-Ahles et al. Journal of Second Language Writing, 34, 9–11. Hyland, K. (2019). Participation in publishing: The demoralizing discourse of disadvantage. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice Writers and Scholarly Publication: Authors Mentors Gatekeepers. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Karimnia, A. (2013). Writing research articles in English: Insights from Iranian university teachers’ of TEFL. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 901–914. Koyalan, A., & Mumford, S. (2011). Changes to English as an Additional Language writers’ research articles: From spoken to written register. English for Specific Purposes, 30(2), 113–123. Kuteeva, M. (2013). Graduate learners’ approaches to genre-analysis tasks: Variations across and within four disciplines. English for Specific Purposes, 32, 84–96. Li, X. M. (1996). “Good Writing” in Cross-Cultural Context. Albany, NY: State University of New York.

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Li, X.  M. (1999). Writing from the vantage point of an outsider/insider. In G.  Braine (Ed.), Non-native Educators in English Language Teaching (pp. 43–55). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Li, Y. (2002). Writing for international publication: The perception of Chinese doctoral researchers. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 12, 179–194. Li, Y. (2005). Multidimensional enculturation: The case of an EFL Chinese doctoral student. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 15, 53–70. Li, Y. (2006). A doctoral student of physics writing for publication: A sociopolitically-­oriented case study. English for Specific Purposes, 25, 456–478. Li, Y., & Flowerdew, J. (2007). Shaping Chinese novice scientists’ manuscripts for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 100–117. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars interactions with literacy brokers in the production of English-­ medium texts. Written Communication, 23, 3–35. Lillis, T., & Curry, M.  J. (2010). Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge. Lu, J. (2004). Scientific publication in China: An overview and some thoughts on improvement. Science Editor, 27, 120–121. Luo, N., & Hyland, K. (2019). “I won’t publish in Chinese now”: Publishing, translation and the non-English speaking academic. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 39, 37–47. Luzón, M. J. (2009). The use of we in a learner corpus of reports written by EFL Engineering students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8(3), 192–206. Luzón, M.-J. (2018). Constructing academic identities online: Identity performance in research group blogs written by multilingual scholars. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 33, 24–39. Matsuda, A. (2014). Beyond the native speaker: My life as an NJS, NNES, and bilingual user of Japanese and English. NNEST Newsletter: The Newsletter of the TESOL NNEST Interest Section. Retrieved from http://newsmanager. commpartners.com/tesolnnest/issues/2014-09-09/2.html McGrail, M. R., Rickard, C. M., & Jones, R. (2006). Publish or perish: A systematic review of interventions to increase academic publication rates. Higher Education Research & Development, 25, 19–35. Mišak, A., Marušić, M., & Marušić, A. (2005). Manuscript editing as a way of teaching academic writing: Experience from a small scientific journal. Journal of Second Language Writing, 14, 122–131. Moreno, A. I. (1997). Genre constraints across languages: Causal metatext in Spanish and English RAs. English for Specific Purposes, 16(3), 161–179.

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Moreno, A.  I., Rey-Rocha, J., Burgess, S., López-Navarro, I., & Sachdev, I. (2012). Spanish researchers’ perceived difficulty writing research articles for English medium journals: The impact of proficiency in English versus publication experience. Ibérica, 24, 157–184. Myers, G. (1989). The pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 1–35. Nwogu, K.  N. (1997). The medical research paper: Structure and functions. English for Specific Purposes, 16(2), 119–138. Okamura, A. (2006). Two types of strategies used by Japanese scientists, when writing research articles in English. System, 34(1), 68–79. Salager-Meyer, F. (1994). Hedges and textual communicative function in medical English written discourse. English for Specific Purposes, 13(2), 149–170. Shaikh, A. (2016). 7 steps to publishing in a scientific journal. Retrieved April 22, 2019, from https://www.elsevier.com/connect/7-steps-to-publishingin-a-scientific-journal St. John, M.  J. (1987). Writing processes of Spanish scientists publishing in English. English for Specific Purposes, 6, 113–120. Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. (2004). Research Genres: Exploration and Applications. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Tang, R., & John, S. (1999). The ‘I’ in identity: Exploring writer identity in student academic writing through the first person pronoun. English for Specific Purposes, 18, S23–S39. Wilcox, K.  C., & Jeffery, J.  V. (2015). Adolescent English language learners’ stances toward disciplinary writing. English for Specific Purposes, 38, 44–56. Zheng, Y., & Guo, X. (2018). Publishing in and about English: Challenges and opportunities of Chinese multilingual scholars’ language practices in academic publishing. Language Policy, 1, 1–24. Zhong, M. (2009). Why the greatest Chinese scientists Chen-ning Yang and Tsung-dao Lee were parted? Retrieved April 27, 2019, from http://www. china.com.cn/book/txt/2009-12/29/content_19147729.htm

8 Dr. Zhou—A Strong-willed Writer

8.1 Overview Less than 30 years old, Dr. Zhou worked as a lecturer, obtaining his Ph.D. from a Chinese university in Shanghai only two years before he was interviewed in April 2017. He focused his research on pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. By 2019 he had published 26 SCI research articles in English, among which he is the first author of 16 articles, indicating he has written the first drafts of at least those 16 articles by himself. He has recently been promoted to associate professor. In the interview he reported that the very first international journal research article he wrote during his doctoral study had left a profound impression on his mind because it took him over two years from starting writing the manuscript until it was finally published: I cannot forget how I wrote my first English-language research article at the time when I finished writing code and doing the experiment. You know, as a scholar in the field of engineering, I have to write the manuscript after the experiment. So it was in early 2012 that I began to write the first draft. This was the very first time I wrote an English-language research article by myself. Indeed, I had a lot of difficulties in organizing my ideas and vocabulary choices. © The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8_8

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With great effort, I finally completed the manuscript, but it was rejected by several journals continually due to language problems. The editors of those journals replied that there were too many grammatical mistakes in the manuscript though they were not dissatisfied with the novelty of our submission. Yes, all of their comments were related to the grammatical problems in my writing. I know I’m poor in English grammar, so I have to revise the manuscript again and again. In this way, it took me two years to have this manuscript published finally in 2014. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou)

However, Dr. Zhou has learned a lot from this experience. He reported that since his first publication he wrote up and published four or five research articles in English within eight months before finishing his doctoral study. Hence, to some extent, he is a successful scholar in publishing in English and his experience may be helpful for multilingual scholars, particularly for novice academics in the field of computer science. After the interview, Dr. Zhou sent me all the documents he had saved in regard to his first English-language publication, including six emails between the editor-in-chief and his supervisor (in Chinese academic convention the supervisor is usually regarded as the corresponding author of doctoral students’ publications), six manuscripts and five responses to the editor and the reviewers. This chapter reports Dr. Zhou’s first experience in publishing in English. The challenges and strategies are discussed in detail, based on an analysis of his communications with reviewers and successive drafts of his manuscript.

8.2 Discursive Strategies 8.2.1 Organizing Strategies Comparing Dr. Zhou’s primary manuscript submitted for peer review and the published article, it is found that the holistic structure of his article remained unchanged, although content and language were radically revised (The revision issue will be discussed in the later sections.), indicating that Dr. Zhou has adopted organizing conventions in line with the

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expectations of his target discourse community (see the following abridged section titles of his manuscript). 1 . Introduction (16 paragraphs) 2. Related work (13 formulas)

2.1. HK classifier 2.2. MHKS 2.3. MatMHKS 2.4. MultiV-MHKS 2.5. RMultiV-MHKS

3. Double-fold Localized Multiple Matrixized Learning Machine (DLMMLM) (27 formulas) 4. Experiments 4.1. Experimental setting

4.1.1. Parameter setting 4.1.2. Reshaping an original pattern to a new one 4.1.3. One-against-one classification strategy 4.2. Synthetical data 4.3. UCI data 4.4. Image data 4.5. Further discussion 4.5.1. Influence of the number of matrices 4.5.2. Influence of the Parameters C and c 4.5.3. Convergence analysis

5 . Rademacher complexity analysis (8 formulas) 6. Conclusions and future work (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s manuscript) As Dr. Zhou mentioned in the interview, it seems that he did not have any difficulty in organizing the structure of his article by imitating his colleagues’ published journal papers. Furthermore, the moves and steps in the introduction section of his article could be recognized throughout the

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two-year process, although the language changed greatly from the first draft to the final published article. For example, the very first sentence of the Introduction of the article explained the importance and necessity of his research, that is, he was occupying the territory (Swales, 1990). Choosing an appropriate representation for patterns [7] was necessary for dealing with problems at hand. (Abridged from the first manuscript submitted for peer review by Dr. Zhou) Choosing an appropriate representation for patterns [11] is necessary for dealing with problems at hand. (Abridged from the revised manuscript based on the reviewers’ comments by Dr. Zhou ) It is necessary to choose an appropriate representation for patterns in terms of pattern classification [11]. (Abridged from the published article by Dr. Zhou)

Clearly, the move of occupying the research territory has been kept in all the three versions of Dr. Zhou’s manuscript, though the sentence has been revised by the final version. More importantly, the salient move of the Introduction , i.e. identifying the gap, was stated in the very first version of his manuscript: This processing brought three potential problems [23], [30], [17]:… In these machines, there was a problem that the classification performances of these machines were matrixization-dependent, i.e. heavily relying on the reshaping ways from the original (vector or matrix) pattern to (another) matrix. Thus, it was difficult to determine which reshaping way was fittest to classification [25]. But in these solutions, there was a serious shortcoming that the prior knowledge or local information of data was not made full use, especially in the processing of multiple matrixized learning machines. (Abridged from the first manuscript submitted for peer review by Dr. Zhou)

The above sentences have pointed out the problems or shortcomings of previous studies and prepared the argument for the necessity of his

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own research to fill the gap. Against this background, he proposed his solution for these problems, that is, occupying the territory. For example: In fact, there are double folds of local information of data should be introduced in the design of multiple matrixized learning machine. …The effective multiple matrixized learning machine with double folds of local information from data is named Double-fold Localized Multiple Matrixized Learning Machine (DLMMLM). The advantages of the proposed DLMMLM are highlighted as follows: … (Abridged from the first manuscript submitted for peer review by Dr. Zhou.)

Although the above sentences have been improved in the final version, the move has actually been laid out thoroughly. Moreover, Dr. Zhou told his audience the organization of his article at the end of the Introduction, and this was retained through all drafts and in the published article: The rest of this paper are[sic] organized as follows. In section II, we review the related work about the family of the Ho-Kashyap algorithms and gating model which is the base model for the pattern-depended function. Section III gives a description of the proposed algorithm DLMMLM. In section IV, the experimental results show the feasibility and effectiveness of DLMMLM.  The experiments about Rademacher complexity analysis is showed in section V. Finally, both conclusion and future work are given in section VI. (Abridged from the first manuscript submitted for peer review by Dr. Zhou)

The above genre analysis shows that Dr. Zhou was clear about the structure of his research article through imitating prior articles in his research field. Due to the important moves that characterized his work and his manuscript for peer review, the article passed through a rigid reviewing process after many cycles of revision. It can be seen that he was aware of the organizing strategies in writing the Introduction, which he acknowledged in the interview to be the most difficult section in writing an English-language research article. Interviewer: Which section do you think the most difficult part of writing an English-language research article?

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Introduction. In the introduction section, I need to make preparations for my own research with regard to the content and methods by summarizing the methods used by other researchers, briefly clarifying the progress of the research topic and pointing out the gap of the research. I have to select the most relevant content from the large number of papers I’ve read. It is hard for me to choose from so many studies concerning a method. Another difficulty for me is to make my description of the previous studies concise because the journal forbids redundant narration of other scholars’ research. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou)

This conversation shows that Dr. Zhou understands the organization of English-language research articles in his field very well. His real difficulty in English-language writing does not lie in organization but in language expression.

8.2.2 A  wareness of Rhetorical Differences Between English and Chinese Although Dr. Zhou has only published one research article in Chinese, he subconsciously compared the rhetorical differences between English and Chinese. He appears to realize the difference in organization between a research article in English and in Chinese. Relatively speaking, I think, English-language journals in my field do not have absolute requirements for organizing a research article. As the first author, I have published a Chinese article in my affiliated university journal which has a rigid requirement for organization and gives clear instruction on the potential content of each section of an article (He did not place the title of that Chinese article on his personal webpage.). I feel I’ve been restricted by such a so-called eight-legged writing style (a classical stereotyped Chinese writing pattern including 破题 po ti (opening the topic), 承 题 cheng ti (receiving the title), 起讲 qi jiang (preliminary discourse), 起股 qi gu (opening limb), 续股 xu gu (minor), 中股 zhong gu (middle limb), 后 股 hou gu (back limb), 大结 da jie (grand conclusion), mainly used for civil

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service examinations since the middle of the 14th century but now abandoned in China). In contrast, not all English-language journals require you to place the Introduction in the first section of the article. Sometimes I directly write the Methods section at the beginning of the article. For the SCI journals I submit my manuscript to, the most important thing is to tackle the problem and explain clearly how you solve it. They do not intend to confine you in a stagnant style. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou, the content in parentheses added by the author of the book.)

Dr. Zhou’s explanation of the rhetorical differences seems beyond the general expectation for the IMRD (Introduction–Method–Results– Discussion) prototypical model of scientific research articles. However, it is true that the prestigious journal Cell requires the methods section to be put at the end of the article (Cargill & O’Connor, 2009). It may be inferred that different disciplines or even different journals vary in regard to the organization of research articles. Thus, multilingual scholars who attempt to submit their manuscripts to a certain journal need to familiarize themselves with its conventions.

8.3 Metacognitive Strategies 8.3.1 Writing Directly in English Similarly to the earlier two cases in the present book, Dr. Zhou claimed that he had chosen to write his manuscript directly in English. In this way, he asserted that he could retain his original ideas in English. However, as he stated, he thought about the research questions in Chinese, which played a higher cognitive role in his English writing. Zhou:

I write the manuscript in English, but I think about the research issues in Chinese. I write the manuscript in English quite naturally without the translation process at all. Interviewer: Are there any advantages of writing directly in English? Zhou: I think I can retain my own primary ideas writing directly in English. In contrast, the English translations provided

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by Google Translator or Baidu Translator are usually unnatural and cannot meet my standards. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou) Like the participants in Li’s (2005, 2007) studies, Dr. Zhou put down his thoughts directly in English to keep the logical flow of his writing. Writing directly in English as a metacognitive strategy was reported by participants in some previous studies. Li’s (2005) participant insisted on writing directly in English because he was concerned with the “harmful” consequence of translating his mother tongue into English. However, the participant in Lei and Hu’s (2019) study believed that “writing in English directly would hinder ‘clear thinking’ and/or lead her to wander off the topic” (p. 70). Thus, she gave up the strategies of translating and writing directly in English and turned to textual borrowing and patching writing by incorporating the wording from her readings into her own writing (Lei & Hu, 2019). However, it is highly risky to use a textual borrowing strategy in drafting a manuscript because it is easy to cross the border of plagiarism (Flowerdew & Li, 2007).  In brief, for multilingual scholars, writing directly in English means avoiding writing a manuscript firstly in their native languages and then translating it into English. Its advantage is that the English text may be less interfered with the source language through translation, but the premise is that the writer needs to be competent enough writing in English. Otherwise, the writer, like the case in Lei and Hu’s (2019) study, may not keep focusing  on his or her ideas consistently.

8.4 Cognitive Strategies This section mainly reports how Dr. Zhou responded to editors and reviewers by revising the content and language of his manuscript. The changes he made between the first version of his manuscript, the revised version, and the final published article will be compared. The strategies used to revise content will be presented before the strategies for revising the language of his manuscript.

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8.4.1 Revising the Manuscript Again and Again It is not uncommon for scholars’ submissions to be rejected by the higher-­ ranking journals, but novice researchers may be disheartened and give up the further revision of their manuscript when they receive reviewers’ critical comments (Hyland, 2007). In the interview, Dr. Zhou said that several journals had rejected his submissions due to too many language problems in his manuscript. However, he figured out a good way to make progress by learning from such failures. Some scholars may continuously turn to another journal without any revision immediately after their submitted manuscripts were rejected. However, unlike them, I would read the reviewers’ comments carefully and revise my manuscript according to their suggestions. Repeated revision is my strategy. I submit the revised manuscript and again receive a lot of comments. Then I continue to revise it according to those comments so as to improve the manuscript. In this way, I have made great progress in writing English on the one hand and familiarized myself with the structure of research articles in my field on the other hand. I summarize some strategies from these failures, which I apply to write new articles much more efficiently. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou)

Thus, for Dr. Zhou, rejections did not discourage him. On the contrary, he improved his manuscript and English-language writing skills by absorbing and applying the reviewers’ critical comments. It is important for multilingual scholars to review editors’ suggestions even though their work may have been rejected, and revise the manuscript before submitting it to another journal.

8.4.2 Rearranging the Content After around five months’ anxious waiting, Dr. Zhou and his co-authors received the editor’s decision—major revisions and three reviewers’ comments. Luckily, the three reviewers expressed interest in the manuscript. However, it seemed that they were not satisfied with the presentation of the novel content of Dr. Zhou’s manuscript. One of the reviewers even doubted the novelty of his research.

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Actually, there is not algorithm novelty in this paper. The authors only proposed a new method for the setting of weight values, which has the effects of regularizing double folds of local information, i.e., the matrix representation level and pattern level. Indeed, DLMMLM has only one more fold of local information compared with RMultiV-MHKS. I think the contributions is limited and not enough for a journal paper. (Abridged from reviewer #1’s comment in the first round of review)

A lack of novelty is a lethal shortcoming in a manuscript aiming to be published by a higher-ranking international journal. However, luckily for Dr. Zhou, the other two reviewers recognized the novelty of his research, as they commented in their emails. I think the paper contains a novel contribution to the context of matrixized learning machines together with interesting experimental results. In my opinion, a minor revision is required before its publication. (Abridged from reviewer #3’s comment in the first round of review) The major auhors [sic] have been working in this area for years. This work is interesting, which is an improvement to their previous works. (Abridged from reviewer #4’s comment in the first round of review)

However, as reviewer # 4 pointed out, “It is not easy to grasp the main ideas of the paper. The description is not clear. ” This comment pointed out the poor presentation of Dr. Zhou’s manuscript. Being aware of this, Dr. Zhou has adjusted the presentation of the content, which may be demonstrated from the comparison between the abstract he submitted for peer review and the final version of the abstract (see Table 8.1). In Table 8.1, the italicized parts in the first version of the abstract and the final version of the abstract are changes made on the basis of the reviewers’ comments. Clearly, the major content of the two versions differs little apart from the minor modification of the language. However, the order of the five advantages of the proposed DLMMLM has been changed: the positions of the first two advantages have been exchanged and the last advantage has been advanced as the third advantage. This adjustment of the placement of the five advantages is very important because the novelty of the research has become immediately apparent, in particular with such expressions as “for the first time” and “new”.

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Table 8.1  Comparison between the first version of the abstract and the published abstract Submitted abstract

Published abstract

The characteristic of the proposed The characteristic of the proposed DLMMLM is making use of the double DLMMLM is that it possesses double folds of local information from data. folds of local information from data. The first fold lies in the whole The first fold is lying in the whole representation space which consists of space consisting of different matrix different matrix representations. It is representations. It is known that each known that each pattern can be pattern can have different matrix representations and different matrices represented by different matrix can play different discriminant roles in representations. The matrices have their respective representation classification. From the viewpoint of information and can play different the whole representation space, each discriminant roles in the final kind of matrix representation has its classification. Therefore from the own local information. The second viewpoint of the whole representation fold is that in each matrix space, each matrix has its own local representation learning, different information. The second fold is that in patterns represented with the same each matrix representation learning, matrix can carry different different patterns represented with information. Therefore in the the same matrix representation can pattern space with the same matrix representation, the local information carry different information. Therefore in the pattern space with the same of different patterns should be matrix size, local information of introduced into classifier design different patterns should be learning. The advantages of the introduced into the classifier design. proposed DLMMLM are: a) adopting On the whole, the advantages of the double-fold local information in proposed DLMMLM are: (i) establishing both the representation and the a pattern-depended function in the pattern space; b) firstly establishing matrixized learning so as to realize a pattern depended function in different roles of patterns for the first matrixized learning, which can time; (ii) adopting the double-fold realize different roles of matrix local information in both the patterns; c) getting an empirical representation space and the pattern tighter generalization risk bound than other related learning machines space; (iii) proposing a new nonlinear classifier that is different from the in terms of the Rademacher state-of-the-art kernelization one; and complexity; d) achieving a (iv) getting a tighter empirical statistically superior classification generalization risk bound in terms of performance to those base classifiers the Rademacher complexity and thus without the introduction of double-­ achieving a statistically superior fold local information; e) proposing classification performance than those a new nonlinear technique that is classifiers without the introduction of different from the state-of-the-art the double-fold local information. kernelization.

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Therefore, it is the presentation rather than the content that persuades the audience to believe that the research has contributed something new.

8.4.3 Rewriting the Content As mentioned in Sect. 8.4.2, reviewer #1 challenged the novelty of Dr. Zhou’s manuscript, which placed this potentially publishable article at risk. The reviewer argued that the contribution made by Dr. Zhou’s manuscript was limited because the method proposed “has only one more fold of local information compared with RMultiV-MHKS” (Abridged from reviewer #1’s comment in the first round of review). To rebut this argument, Dr. Zhou expanded the Introduction and rewrote the content of the second half of the section. As he responded, he clarified the difference between his proposed DLMMLM and the previous RMultiV-­ MHKS and highlighted the advantages of RMultiV-MHKS. Thanks a lot for this valuable comment. The proposed method DLMMLM is based on the RMultiV-MHKS as the reviewer said. But the DLMMLM is supposed to be significantly improved. Here we give the relationship between DLMMLM and RMultiV-MHKS.  On the one hand, both of them combine multiple different matrixized sub-classifiers into a joint learning process. In a joint matrixized learning, a classifier derived from a corresponding matrix representation is named as a matrixized sub-­classifier. The generation process of one matrixized sub-classifier is also named as one matrix representation learning. So both DLMMLM and RMultiV-MHKS are multiple matrixized learning machines. On the other hand, there are some differences between them, which are given as following. (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s response letter after the first round of peer review)

Although he mentioned the advantages of his new method in the Introduction before the reviewing process, he elaborated on those four advantages in the revision. This expansion of the content of the Introduction is very important because it stresses the novelty and contribution of his research. Reviewer #3 commented in the second round of review: I am convinced with the revised version of the manuscript. The paper has been revised carefully corresponding to the reviewers’ comments. The motivation of the paper as well as the differences with previous methods have

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been clarified. Furthermore, the exposition has been overall improved. (Abridged from reviewer #3’s comments in the second round of review)

Although reviewer #1 still challenged “the parameters, the order of features and the way of determining the number of matrices” in Dr. Zhou’s manuscript, he did not mention the concern of the novelty of the research again. And reviewer #3’s positive comment provides evidence for Dr. Zhou’s effort justifying his claim for the novelty of his research.

8.4.4 Language Revising Strategies Apart from revising the content of the manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments, Dr. Zhou made a much greater effort in language revision as well. As he reported in the interview, several other journals had rejected his submission due to language problems before the present journal offered him the opportunity for major revisions. In the first round of the peer review, two of the reviewers pointed out the language problems in his manuscript. There are a number of poorly constructed sentences, especially in the Introduction. Some examples are: “Furthermore if patterns in a matrix representation and the matrix itself have much local information, and then the weight of a matrixized sub-classifier derived from this matrix becomes larger.”; “The proposed algorithm is a new nonlinear technique method which is introduced double folds of local information.” All the sentences in the revised version of the manuscript should be checked carefully. (Abridged from reviewer #3’s comment in the first round of peer review) The English writing is not good. Grammatical errors can be found here and there. For example, (1) the second line from the bottom on Page 8: “This weight setting might not been fit for those data with some”. (2) The second line above Eq. (17): “are showed as follows.” (3) The line above Eq (30): “In order to simple the equations”. (Abridged from reviewer #4’s comments in the first round of peer review)

Although the three reviewers accepted his revisions after the second round of peer review, the editor-in-chief was not yet satisfied with the

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linguistic quality of the manuscript and asked him to revise it another three times. The linguistic quality needs improvement. It is essential to make sure that the manuscript reads smoothly—this definitely helps the reader fully appreciate your research findings. Consult a professional. Show all changes made to the revised manuscript. (Abridged from the editor-in-chief ’s second email) The linguistic quality needs improvement. It is essential to make sure that the manuscript reads smoothly- this definitely helps the reader fully appreciate your research findings. Consult a professional. Show all changes made to the revised manuscript. More editing is required. Do not repeat the same sentences. (Abridged from the editor-in-chief ’s third email) more editing is required. Just a sample: The characteristic of the proposed; DLMMLM is owning? It is known that each pattern; has different matrix representations? different discriminant roles onto?? by one point? a point; the classification problem comes across the patterns? (Abridged from the editor-in-chief ’s fourth email)

The above-abridged content from the reviewers’ comments and the editor-in-chief ’s requirements show that Dr. Zhou’s manuscript indeed has extensive language problems, though it was accepted because, fortunately, the journal gave the priority to the content of the research. It took him nearly a year to revise the language errors in the manuscript. In his responses to the editor-in-chief, he noted down all the changes he had made. He made 151 changes in his first response to the editor-in-chief, 383 changes in his second response, and 351 changes in the third response. In what follows, we try to summarize the strategies he adopted to cope with language problems pointed out by the reviewers and the editor-in-chief. Firstly, removing a sentence. When reviewer #3 pointed out one sentence in the introduction section as an example of a poorly constructed sentence, he responded to the reviewers that he would remove it from his manuscript.

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We remove the original sentence “Furthermore, if patterns in a matrix representation and the matrix itself have much local information, and then the weight of a matrixized sub-classifier derived from this matrix becomes larger”. (Please see Paragraph 3, Page 6 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s response to the reviewers after the first round of review)

Secondly, adding cohesive devices. Most obviously, he added a lot of connectors such as therefore, on the whole, and so as to as shown in Table 8.1 to make the abstract more coherent and logical. In addition, he used nouns in place of deixes in revising the sentences. For example, “Recently, some scholars make full use of them and propose some methods to deal with real-world problems.” → “Recently, some scholars make full use of the local information and propose the solutions with local or localized properties. These solutions are named as local learning machines.” (Please see Paragraph 2, Page 3 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s second response to the editor-in-chief )

In revising the original sentence, Dr. Zhou replaced “them” with “the local information” and complemented the following sentence to make the meaning clearer. Moreover, he often substituted words with synonyms without changing the meaning of the sentence at all. For example, “For this novel learning machine, only a pattern-depended function, i.e., one matrixized gating model, is enough to reflect the double-fold local information from data in both the representation space and the pattern space” → “For this new learning machine, only a pattern-depended function, i.e., a matrixized gating model, is enough to reflect the double-fold local information from data in both the representation space and the pattern space” (Please see Paragraph 1, Page 5 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s third response to the editor-in-chief )

This example shows that he replaced “novel” with “new” and “one” with “a”. It is also found that he substituted “in fact” with “actually”, “made full use” with “fully used” and “regarded” with “treated” in many other revisions. Perhaps this may be assumed as “over-revision” because he has been after all asked to improve the linguistic quality of his ­manuscript

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for the third time. Under such great pressure, he felt that he had to try to change every sentence a little bit in his manuscript. Thirdly, adjusting the structure of the sentence. There are three kinds of adjustments: rearranging the order of some words or phrases; changing the active voice into the passive voice or vice versa; substituting the non-­ attributive clause with the infinitive. For example, “Further, one data set consists of different patterns and then when we construct the matrix for a pattern, the orders of components are changed” → “Further, when we construct the matrix for a pattern, the orders of components are changed since a data set consists of different patterns” (Please see Paragraph 3, Page 20 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s second response to the editor-in-chief )

In this example, the first half of the sentence was moved to the later connected by “since” as a clause of reason. This adjustment clarifies the meaning of the whole sentence by sorting out the relations of the three clauses. In the following example, Dr. Zhou replaced the active voice with the passive voice. “From the experiments of these machines, we find that their classification performances are matrixization-dependent, i.e. heavily relying on the reshaping ways which reshape the original (vector or matrix) pattern to a new matrix pattern.” → “On the other hand, it can be found that the classification performances of the matrixized learning machines are matrixization-­ dependent. The corresponding experiments have shown their performances heavily rely on the reshaping ways which reshape the original vector or matrix pattern into a new matrix pattern.” (Please see Paragraph 3, Page 2 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s second response letter to the editor-in-chief )

Such a depersonalization strategy (Martín, 2008) may reduce the agent’s responsibility and make the sentence sound more objective. However, many studies (Cameron, 2007; Hyland & Jiang, 2017) have found that the first person and active voice rather than the third person and passive voice are more favored by English-language science-writing conventions. In addition, in the above example, Dr. Zhou has added a

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connector “on the other hand” and changed the present participle into an independent sentence for the purposes of clarity. The next example shows that he changed a non-attributive clause into an infinitive to make the sentence more concise. “a) establishing a pattern-depended function in the matrixized learning, which can realize different roles of matrix patterns for the first time;” → “a) establishing a pattern-depended function in the matrixized learning to realize different roles of patterns for the first time;” (Please see “Abstract” of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s first response to the editor-in-chief )

Fourthly, using hedging devices. With hedges, a risk of opposition may be reduced and the face-threatening may be minimized when a claim is made (Burrough-Boenisch, 2005; Martín, 2008). “Moreover, one vector or matrix pattern can be reshaped to a new matrix pattern by some reshaping ways [6].” → “Moreover, one vector or matrix pattern can be reshaped to a new matrix one by some certain reshaping ways [6].” (Please see Paragraph 2, Page 2 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s second response to the editor-in-chief )

In this revision, Dr. Zhou added “certain” to mitigate the tone of the claim. This addition denotes that Dr. Zhou would not make “reshaping ways” too clear to open a negotiating space with the audience.

8.4.5 Responding Strategies In the interview, Dr. Zhou remarked that he cherished the opportunity for major revision offered by the editor and the reviewers. To satisfy the reviewers, he made efforts to provide a response to the comments point by point that was as elaborate as possible. His first response to the reviewers, explaining how he revised the manuscript, covered 33 pages. He rewrote the majority of the content in the Introduction and added eight references and a table, as recommended by the reviewers. The second response to the reviewers’ comments covered nine pages. As mentioned

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above, there were 151, 383 and 352 revisions of language problems respectively listed in the three responses to the editor-in-chief. Thus, the first, second and third language responses to the journal editor-in-chief cover 24, 64 and 52 pages respectively. In this way, he showed the reviewers and the editor-in-chief his commitment to working on the revisions. No matter whom he responded to, he always kept a humble attitude by saying “Thanks a lot for this valuable comment”. In most of the cases, he would accept their suggestions by replying “We pay our gratitude to this comment. This comment makes us further perfect this paper”. However, he would rebut when the reviewer challenged the novelty of his research. Thanks a lot for this valuable comment. The proposed method DLMMLM is based on the RMultiV-MHKS as the reviewer said. But the DLMMLM is supposed to be significantly improved. Here we give the relationship between DLMMLM and RMultiV-MHKS.  On the one hand, both of them combine multiple different matrixized sub-classifiers into a joint learning process. In a joint matrixized learning, a classifier derived from a corresponding matrix representation is named as a matrixized sub-­classifier. The generation process of one matrixized sub-classifier is also named as one matrix representation learning. So both DLMMLM and RMultiV-MHKS are multiple matrixized learning machines. On the other hand, there are some differences between them, which are given as following. (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s response to the reviewers after the first round of peer review)

It can be seen that he showed his agreement with the reviewer after expressing his gratitude. Then, he turned to argue for the novelty of his research. However, sometimes he would not argue with the reviewer, defusing the disagreement by saying that he would address the criticism in his future work. For example, Comment 3: “There are too many paraters [sic], I still believe it is not easy to set them;” Rep: Thanks a lot for this valuable comment and we also acknowledge this comment. For our proposed method and other compared ones, there are many parameters. Setting the initial values and getting the best values of these

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parameters are two complex tasks. Fortunately, many past works about the related methods including RMultiV-­MHKS [36], MultiV-MHKS [35], MatMHKS [6], MHKS [22], and SVM [27] give us some valuable suggestions to set the initial values of the parameters. Then in order to get the best values of these parameters for one method, we have to try all the combinations of the parameters. Although from the experiments, we still find that with the best parameters, the average training time is still acceptable. But we have to re-acknowledge what the reviewer said, namely, it takes us too much time to select the best parameters, especially for some largescale data sets. So in our future work, we will search some novel methods to reduce the time complexity of tuning the parameters. (Please see Paragraph 2, Page 39 of the revised manuscript) (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s response to the reviewers after the second round of peer review) In his response, Dr. Zhou admitted that the reviewer’s comment was correct before finding the pieces of evidence to support his own argument and promising to try new methods in future to maintain the reviewer’s face in this case.

8.5 Social/Affective Strategies 8.5.1 Seeking Help from the Convenience Editor As shown in Sect. 8.4.4, the editor-in-chief of the journal required Dr. Zhou to improve the language quality of his manuscript three times, after he had modified linguistic problems according to the two reviewers’ comments. These processes show that Dr. Zhou had great difficulties in English writing, as he himself admitted in the interview. However, he was highly motivated to revise the manuscript by himself in order to improve his English writing competence. When he was asked whether he

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had ever considered having his manuscript edited by an editing service, he denied: “No, I have never considered it. I revise the manuscript by myself.” (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou). However, when examining his responses to the editor-in-chief, it is found  that he had sought help from the native English-speaking teachers in his university. Thanks a lot for this valuable comment. In terms of this comment, we have carefully revised this paper in terms of syntax and grammar. We also ask a help from a native English speaking person to give some suggestions about the writing, who is the English foreign teacher in our university. Here, we give all changes made to the revised manuscript. In order to show the changes clearly, we use “A” → “B”. “A” means the contents in the ­previous revision and “B” means the contents in this revision. Now please see all changes as follows. (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s first response to the editor-in-chief )

In this first response to the editor-in-chief, Dr. Zhou mentioned that a native English-speaking teacher had given him some suggestions and he had made 151 changes in the manuscript. In the second response, he replied: Thanks a lot for this valuable comment. In terms of this comment, we have carefully revised this paper in terms of syntax and grammar. We also consult a professional to give some suggestions about the writing. Moreover, we always stress some contents in multiple paragraphs in this revision. For example, the description of the double folds of local information. Then in order to avoid repeating the same sentences, we adopt different expressions to state these contents. Here, we give all changes made to the revised manuscript. In order to show the changes clearly, we use “A” → “B”. “A” means the contents in the previous revision and “B” means the contents in this revision. Now please see all changes as follows. (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s second response to the editor-in-chief )

The beginning part of this response is quite similar to that of the first response, but he mentioned consulting “a professional.” We are not sure about the real identity of this “professional” who may be an expert in his field or a language expert. In the response, he demonstrated 383 changes he

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had made to the manuscript. In his third response to the editor-in-­ chief, he wrote: Thanks a lot for this valuable comment. In terms of this comment, we have carefully revised this paper in terms of syntax and grammar. We also consult a professional to give some suggestions about the writing. Here, we give all changes made to the revised manuscript. In order to show the changes clearly, we use “A” → “B”. “A” denotes the contents in the previous revision and “B” denotes the contents in this revision. Now please see all changes below. (Abridged from Dr. Zhou’s third response to the editor-in-chief )

This time he mentioned the “professional” again and showed 352 changes he had made to the manuscript. All in all, the above-abridged content from his three responses indicated that he had sought help from other people, the native English-speaking teacher in particular. Such people are called “convenience editors” in ERPP literature (Flowerdew & Wang, 2016; Willey & Tanimoto, 2012, 2013). With these people’s help, his revised manuscript was finally accepted by the editor-in-chief. As Maher, Feldon, Timmerman, and Chao (2013) point out, disciplinary writing is a complex social practice. The research article that finally appeared in the higher-ranking journal has actually been contributed by many non-professional/professional ­writers including convenience  editors and reviewers in addition to the authors themselves.

8.5.2 Being Patient Comparing writing in English with writing in Chinese, Dr. Zhou admitted that it was much more difficult writing in English and publishing an international journal article seemed a much longer process. He claimed in the interview: Right, you must be very patient with revising the manuscript. You do not only revise the grammatical errors but also improve the research methods the reviewers pointed out. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou)

Motivated by publishing his very first international journal article, he spent a year and a half in making major revisions with the manuscript

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over five cycles. He felt so “troublesome” that he even believed that the editor-in-chief was too picky, with a bias: I encountered that kind of bias. He (the editor-in-chief ) seemed to have prejudice against Chinese scholars, who were always asked to revise their manuscript again and again. It is a very long process. It took me over two years to publish that paper. Yeah, very annoying. At that time I was doing my Ph.D. It was not very long for me to do the experiment, but I spent nearly two years in writing and revising the manuscript. All the reviewing processes were very long. It usually took two or three months to review every time I submitted a manuscript. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Zhou)

Thus, it is so important to be patient and highly motivated when attempting to publish an international journal article in English. However, Dr. Zhou achieved his purpose and gained self-satisfaction for publishing in a higher-ranking journal because of his perseverance. Moreover, he has succeeded in publishing four or five English-language articles consecutively because he improved his writing ability from such a long-suffering experience in revising his manuscript.

8.6 Summary While Dr. Zhou had to endure many difficulties during his very first publishing experience in English, he learned a lot and finally became a successful, competent English-language writer. Perhaps his experience may have been shared by a majority of multilingual scholars, if we could not say all. It is not abnormal for a scholar using English as an additional language to make grammatical errors or select words improperly in writing an Englishlanguage manuscript. However, the highly motivated and patient writer may revise a manuscript to meet a journal editors’ satisfaction with a premise that s/he has something new to say (Hyland, 2016). What is regrettable is that some novice researchers may be frightened by criticism from editors and reviewers and give up further revising their manuscript. Thus, multilingual scholars, particularly novice researchers, should be patient in improving their manuscript according to reviewers’ comments, and improving their English writing competence at the same time. From the comparison of Dr.

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Zhou’s first version of the manuscript, the revised version, and the published article, it can be seen that he did not have to change the macro-structure of his article. This means that multilingual scholars need to familiarize themselves with the genre conventions required by the target discourse community. In addition, major content was provided in his manuscript. However, the biggest challenge he met was the lack of clarity about the novelty of his research: the key issue which he did not make prominent. By rearranging and ­complementing the content of the Introduction, he convinced the reviewers of the contribution made by his research. Hence, for multilingual scholars, it is very important to present the unique findings and “news value” of their research to convince those who will review a manuscript for publication (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995). Undoubtedly, the language problem is one of the biggest barriers faced by multilingual scholars aspiring to publish international journal articles in English. However, Dr. Zhou’s experience suggests that multilingual scholars could improve their language proficiency and writing skills by absorbing and applying the many manuscript revisions they receive. Cohesive and hedging devices may be used in scientific writing to build a better relationship with the potential audience. While literacy brokers, including convenience editors, are important in helping multilingual scholars publishing in English, Dr. Zhou’s experience shows that self-motivated learning may be more helpful in the longer term. So far, we have analyzed the writing strategies used in three cases of Chinese male scholars who succeeded in publishing in higher-­ ranking  international journals in English. Their experiences may be imperative for other multilingual scholars. However, these analyses are, after all, qualitative so that the strategies summarized from these Chinese scholars may be used in a specific context. How these strategies can be adopted depends on the specific circumstances. In the next chapter, we will explore the strategies used by a young female engineer while writing and publishing English-language research articles.

References Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition, Culture, Power. New York: LEA.

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Burrough-Boenisch, J. (2005). NS and NNS scientists amendments of Dutch scientific English and their impact on hedging. English for Specific Purposes, 24, 25–39. Cameron, C. (2007). Bridging the gap: Working productively with ESL authors. Science Editor, 30(2), 43–44. Cargill, M., & O’Connor, P. (2009). Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Flowerdew, J., & Li, Y. (2007). Language re-use among Chinese apprentice scientists writing for publication. Applied Linguistics, 28, 440–465. Flowerdew, J., & Wang, S. H. (2016). Authors’ editor revisions to manuscripts published in international journals. Journal of Second Language Writing, 32, 39–52. Hyland, K. (2007). English for Professional Academic Purposes: Writing for scholarly publication. In D.  Belcher (Ed.), Teaching Language Purposefully: English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. (2017). Is academic writing becoming more informal? English for Specific Purposes, 45, 40–51. Lei, J., & Hu, G. (2019). Doctoral candidates’ dual role as student and expert scholarly writer: An activity theory perspective. English for Specific Purposes, 54, 62–74. Li, Y. (2005). Multidimensional enculturation: The case of an EFL Chinese doctoral student. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 15, 53–70. Li, Y. (2007). Apprentice scholarly writing in a community of practice: An intraview of an NNES graduate student writing a research article. TESOL Quarterly, 41, 55–79. Maher, M. A., Feldon, D. F., Timmerman, B. E., & Chao, J. (2013). Faculty perceptions of common challenges encountered by novice doctoral writers. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(4), 699–711. Martín, P. M. (2008). The mitigation of scientific claims in research papers: A comparative study. International Journal of English Studies, 8(2), 133–152. Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Willey, I., & Tanimoto, K. (2012). “Convenience Editing” in action: Comparing English teachers’ and medical professionals’ revisions of a medical abstract. English for Specific Purposes, 31(4), 249–260. Willey, I., & Tanimoto, K. (2013). “Convenience editors” as legitimate participants in the practice of scientific editing: An interview study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(1), 23–32.

9 Dr. Ma—An Epiphanic Scholar

9.1 Overview Dr. Ma had just started her career as a lecturer in a Shanghai university, one year after acquiring her Ph.D. degree from the Chinese Academy of Science, when she was interviewed in 2017. Unlike the previous cases having been discussed above, Dr. Ma may be regarded as a relatively inexperienced novice researcher: she lists three international journal publications in total on her personal webpage. However, her experience may be unique and instructive for female novice researchers in the field of engineering. In this chapter, we mainly report Dr. Ma’s first experience in publishing in higher-ranking  English-language journal. Dr. Ma reported that her first attempt to publish in English had actually been rejected during the period of her doctoral study. For nearly a year she was disappointed by failing to persuade journal editors to accept her manuscript. However, one day, she said, she suddenly felt inspired by reviewers’ comments and realized that she should improve both experimental design and writing in English. Immediately she reexperimented and wrote up her new manuscript and submitted it to an SCI-indexed journal. It took only two months to complete the process from submission to reviewing and acceptance. This is a salient experience © The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8_9

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for her academic career because she came to understand how she could succeed in researching and publishing in English. After this successful experience, she understood what she should do with her experiments and how to find the focus of her English writing. In what follows, we attempt to recognize Dr. Ma’s strategies in writing English-language research articles by analyzing her manuscripts, reviewers’ comments, her responses to those comments, combined with a transcript of her interview.

9.2 Discursive Strategies 9.2.1 Problem-oriented Logic In the interview, Dr. Ma repeatedly emphasized the importance of logical structure in writing English-language articles . She explained that the logic of English writing could and should be derived from the processes of research and experiment: Essentially, I think writing is only one of the means to express our ideas. The most important thing for research article writing is whether your research process is complete or not and your ideas innovative or not. If you have done well in all these aspects, your writing may become secondary. The logical structure formed in the process of research, experiment, and conceptualization is very crucial for scientific writing. In fact, you need not consider using those flowery and literary expressions in scientific writing. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Ma)

Perhaps writers are not unfamiliar with the concept of logic in writing, but it is not easy to keep a logical line in actual writing (Basturkmen, 2012). Dr. Ma adopted a problem-oriented logical line in writing the Introduction section of her manuscript. Firstly, she identified the problem (information loss) with Sparse Coding which had been a popular coding technique in image analysis. To solve the problem, ScSPM was proposed. However, ScSPM was pointed out as being unable to encode similar SIFT features. Thus, Laplacian Sparse Coding (LSc) was proposed to cope with the problem of coding similar SIFT. Although these problems have been solved, the geometrical structure of images has not

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Fig. 9.1  The logical line of the development of Dr. Ma’s RA introduction

been considered. Then, the GraphSC (GSC) was proposed to preserve the geometrical structure, but this new technique still has the problem of being time-consuming. Therefore, Dr. Ma’s paper (Letter) was written to present a new method to speed up GSC. Figure 9.1 shows the logical line of Dr. Ma’s introduction section. Along this logical line, Dr. Ma has identified the research gap step by step. Since her method has two advantages—fewer variables and a smooth and strongly convex function over the primal problem—the “news value” (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995) of her article can be presented with the feature of fast gradient-ascent strategy to GDC’s practical use.

9.2.2 Elements of Research Article Introductions When she was asked to rate the degree of difficulty in writing the sections of an English-language research article—Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion—Dr. Ma, like many other researchers, acknowledged that the Introduction was the most difficult. In Chap. 5, 36.2% of the scholars participating in our questionnaire survey rated the Introduction of a research article as one of the most difficult sections in writing English-­ language research articles, just second to the Discussion. Flowerdew (1999), Hyland (2005) and Harwood (2005) argue that writers have to persuade their audience to believe the value of their research in the Introduction of a research article. Swales (1990) proposed the popular CARS (Create A Research Space) model to help academics to write a research article Introduction. However, different scholars may have dif-

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ferent understandings of the research article Introduction. For example, Professor Zhao in Chap. 6 summarized three important points—attracting readers’ attention, identifying a gap in research, and predicting the method and major findings of the research—in writing the Introduction. Dr. Ma clarified the essential elements of the Introduction in the interview: I think the introduction section is the miniature of a research article. Generally speaking, reviewers who are very busy and spend no time in scrutinizing the whole manuscript may focus their attention on the introduction section to make a decision on whether to reject or accept that manuscript within 15 or 30 minutes. For this section, I think the most important thing is to make clear where the article comes from and where it will go. For the former question, I mean any new research must be developed based on the previous research findings and the implications of those prior studies for the present study must be clarified. For the latter question, you have to answer what new findings you have got, from which aspects you have done the research and what results you have had from those aspects respectively. You need also introduce clearly the organization of your whole paper in this section. I always hold that the introduction of the article is a failure if these questions have not been answered. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Ma)

Therefore, for Dr. Ma, the two most important elements of the introduction section are the research’s foundation and the research’s innovation. With innovation of research, a manuscript could be publishable and with foundation, the research could be placed in a community-­ acknowledged context. Dr. Ma has grasped the core concepts of the Introduction in English-language research article writing. For multilingual scholars, it is important to bear in mind these two elements while writing the Introduction of a research article intended for publication in an international journal.

9.2.3 Genre Awareness As mentioned in Sect. 9.1, Dr. Ma’s first manuscript was accepted, after several rejections, within one year. She reported that she suddenly real-

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ized how she should do the research and write the article. Her target discourse community required her to bring in an innovative contribution. This awareness of genre is important because the journal (IEEE Signal Processing Letters) to which she was to submit her manuscript requires a concise report of new findings. The Letter genre demands texts that are shorter than articles. Letters are used for more straightforward reports about scientific findings, while articles are more in-depth studies of a particular subject and contain more display items (Belcher, 2009; Hartley, 2008). Therefore, within a limited space, writers need to report their latest findings concisely and clearly. In what follows, we list the sub-­ headings of Dr. Ma’s Letter. I. Introduction II. Graph Regularized Sparse Coding

A. Model B. Optimization

III. Dual Gradient Ascent Strategies for GSRSUB

A. Novel Dual Problem of GSRsub (D-GSRsub) B. Dual Gradient Ascent (DGA) Strategies for GSRsub

IV. Experiment V. Conclusion (Adapted from Dr. Ma’s Manuscript) The above list of section titles demonstrates the clear organization of Dr. Ma’s manuscript. As we explained in Sect. 9.2.1, Dr. Ma introduced the novel characteristics of her own research through a problem-oriented logical line in the Introduction. In the second part, she explored the GSC from two aspects, as model and optimization. However, “the number of variables D-l1-QP is the same as in the primal problem of GSRsub and the objective function of D-l1-QP is still non-differentiable” (Abridged from Dr. Ma’s manuscript). Then, in the third part, she proposed dual gradient ascent strategies for GSRsub and two experiments to test the strategies are reported in the fourth part. The last part is a short conclusion, reiterating the key points of the Letter. The feature of this genre, as

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Dr. Ma remarked, is novelty-protruding and single- focus concentrated. Hence, the genre of the Letter in engineering is characterized by brevity and novelty without too many details. Genre awareness is also important for writing the Abstract (Anderson & Maclean, 1997; Martín, 2003; Swales, 2004). Since editors and reviewers usually first read the Abstract in a manuscript, it is crucial for them to go on reviewing the manuscript after looking through the abstract. The Abstract of Dr. Ma’s manuscript is rather eye-catching. Let us read it as follows. Abstract—①Graph regularized Sparse Coding (GSC) considers data relationships during Sparse Coding (SC) and thus has better performance in certain image analysis tasks. ②However, it is very time consuming. ③This letter aims at speeding up GSC. ④The alternating optimization framework for GSC involves repeatedly solving a variant of l 1 minimization referred to as GSRsub in this letter. ⑤Traditional ways to deal with GSRsub are to generalize optimization strategies for minimization to solve its primal problem that is strongly convex but non-differentiable, thus converging slowly. ⑥We propose that GSC can be accelerated by solving a new dual problem of GSRsub called D-GSRsub. ⑦Compared with the primal form and the existing dual form of GSRsub, D-GSRsub has a strongly convex and smooth objective function with less variables. ⑧Based on these properties, four dual gradient ascent strategies with lower computational complexities are developed. ⑨Experimental results on real-world datasets demonstrate that these strategies can dramatically and stably speed up GSC without affecting its performance in the corresponding image analysis tasks. (Abridged from Dr. Ma’s Manuscript)

There are nine sentences in this abstract. The first two present the background of the research to clarify the gap that the current study is to fill. The third and fourth sentences illustrate the purpose—to speed up GSC. Sentences ⑤, ⑥, and ⑦ propose a solution to the problem, and the last two sentences demonstrate the results of experiments on the four dual gradient ascent strategies. Therefore, the genre structure of this Abstract may be summarized as Background–Purpose–Solution to the problem–Results. As the genre of the Letter is to report the cutting-edge findings of the phenomenon to be observed, in her Abstract the writer

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has added a move of the solution to the problem, which is slightly different from the moves identified by other genre analysts (e.g., Graetz, 1985; Swales, 1990).

9.3 Metacognitive Strategies 9.3.1 Language Selection In Chap. 5, we reported the result of the questionnaire survey of 118 scholars in Chinese higher education institutions and found that only 25.4% of them preferred writing research articles in English. Those participants who were motivated to publish in English had a range of reasons. For example, 81.6% of them would exchange research findings with international colleagues by means of publishing in English; 63.3% expected their own papers to be cited by more scholars; 63.3% sought to strengthen their own research ability through international colleagues’ reviews; 44.9% published in English to improve their chances of promotion; 42.9% expected to be recognized by international colleagues; 32.7% wanted to strengthen their own English writing ability through international colleagues’ reviewing; 18.4% were invited by international journal editors; 18.4% published in English due to being influenced by the fiercely competitive environment; 16.3% were testing the quality of their own papers; 14.3% published in English because of the bonus awarded by affiliated institutions for publishing high-quality papers; and 14.3% were challenging themselves. It appears that different scholars have quite different reasons for selecting English as a medium to publish their research findings. Dr. Ma Li explained why she would not write and publish research articles in Chinese: There are a lot of reasons. Firstly, I don’t think the criteria and procedure of submitting and accepting a manuscript have been established as yet by domestic journals. At least, the process of manuscript reviewing is not as transparent and rigid as that of Western journals. Thus, I don’t feel confident of being treated fairly if I submit my manuscript to these domestic journals. Secondly, the impact of publishing high-quality research results

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in Chinese is limited because many scholars in the international academic community cannot read Chinese research articles. On the contrary, publishing my manuscript in English may attract more attention and citations in the international academic community. Finally, we are required to publish articles in SCI journals, but few Chinese journals have been indexed by SCI. Even if there are some Chinese journals indexed by SCI, it is impossible for us young scholars to publish our manuscript in those journals because of fierce competition for publication. However, we have more opportunities to publish in international journals in English because there are after all many more SCI journals abroad. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Ma)

Dr. Ma’s views may be not uncommon among young multilingual scholars, because both Duszak and Lewkowicz’s (2008) study and our own investigation (see Sect. 5.2) have found that younger scholars prefer writing and publishing in English as they have much better English-­ writing skills than older scientists. Recent studies (Kuteeva & Mauranen, 2014; Martín, Rey-Rocha, Burgess, & Moreno, 2014; McGrath, 2014) have noted the gradual disappearance of the academic genre in some national sciences, and scholars being encouraged to disseminate knowledge and publish in their national languages (e.g., Nordic countries). The Chinese government has also invested large amount of money in helping Chinese national journals to attract more high-quality research articles in recent years. However, it is reported that only 9% of SCI journal articles published by Chinese scholars appear in Chinese journals even though the number (5020 in 2016) of Chinese scientific journals is only a little bit less than that of the United States and the UK (Yu, 2018). This indicates that over 90% of SCI journal articles published by Chinese scholars appear in Western journals, and it is hard for Chinese journals to attract high-quality research articles. Although the  economic situation for Chinese scientific journals is gradually becoming better due to the government’s increasing investment, Dr. Ma’s concern exposes the shortcomings in Chinese journals’ management. In other words, Chinese journals need to be more transparent and standardized in their process of selecting articles for publication. The mature experience of the peer-­reviewing process in the West may be imported to reform the current outdated publishing system in China.

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9.3.2 Epiphany Dr. Ma mentioned that it had taken her over one year struggling with writing her first English-language research article before it was accepted. She had been reflecting what it was wrong with her writing when, she reported, one day she realized that her failure in publishing the research article lay in the insufficiency of her scientific experiments as well as her inexpert English writing. Once she was conscious of these shortcomings of her own, she managed to complement the necessary experiments and reorganize her writing according to the reviewers’ comments. After two months she submitted her new manuscript for peer review, and it was passed through the reviewing process successfully. She was excited that her very first publication was so successful within such a short period of time. She called her strategy epiphanic. When she was asked the connotative meaning of the epiphany, she explained that: My epiphany means that in working (research) innovation should be demonstrated while in writing there should be a focus for discussion. You cannot write a research article as you write a narration with no focus and express yourself with imagination. On the contrary, you have to focus on one important point for in-depth discussion from the aspects of theory and practice. A published SCI paper may not necessarily have a very great innovative idea, but it must have a fully complete discussion on an issue showing your comprehensive understanding of the rich connotative meaning of the research. This is one of the most important points I learn from my publishing experience. In other words, you need to have a complete ­discussion on a focus rather than provide five or six arguments without any strong pieces of evidence. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Ma)

Perhaps, an analysis of Dr. Ma’s article may clearly illustrate her epiphany in discussing on a focus thoroughly. The GSRsub Dr. Ma proposed in her Letter has improved the speed of the prior GSR coding. In writing the article, she explained a series of problems related to sparse coding and why she would propose a new model. She compared her new model with “the primal form and the existing dual form of GSRsub” and showed that her “D-GSRsub has a strongly convex and smooth objective function with fewer variables” (Abridged from Dr. Ma’s manuscript). Then, she

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has given an account of the results of the image classification and clustering experiments adopted to testify the fast and stable performance of the four strategies based on her new model. Thus, in her whole paper, she focuses on solving one problem related to sparse coding— speeding up the GSR coding for its practical use. She discussed the focus of her research from different levels and aspects, such as comparing with the prior and existing methods and testing the method with experiments. In short, a well-written article requires elaboration in the Discussion, with more details in order to present the audience with a full understanding of the research.

9.4 Cognitive Strategies 9.4.1 Incorporating the Reviewers’ Suggestions in Revisions Reviewers’ comments play a very important role in preserving the quality of publications in international journals, and it is found that researchers incorporate reviewers’ suggestions to strengthen their papers (Belcher, 2007; Li, 2005). Dr. Ma was found in the present study to “absorb the nutrients from the reviewers’ comments” (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Ma). As she remarked, one of the criticisms from reviewers was that her research had not noticed newly emerged methods. Therefore, she went to review those methods and incorporate them into her own paper. However, her revision of the manuscript was not so extensive as Dr. Zhou’s—the editor of the journal only asked her to do a minor revision. Based on the attached set of reviews, I reach the conclusion that the paper can be accepted, but that certain minor revisions are necessary (giving this an “AQ” status, ACCEPTED WITH MANDATORY CHANGES). The required revisions are described in the reviewers’ comments. (Abridged from the editor’s email)

In her minor revision, she mainly stopped the “leaks” in her writing. For example,

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(1) The main weakness of the paper in its current form is the lack of comparison to other methods. In the first experiment, they compare against Feature-sign and PFISTA, and in the second, the[sic] compare only with PFISTA. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the paper could be significantly strengthened by performing additional comparisons to existing approaches. (2) It is also unclear as to why they do not compare with the method presented in Zheng et al. (reference [4] in the paper). Response: Thank you for the comments and suggestions. (1) In both experiments we have added comparisons with the Cyclical Coordinate Descent (CCD) method in Reference [10] (Reference [10] has been added in the revised version) in the revised version (see Tables I and II on page 4). In the second experiment, we have also added comparison with Feature-sign in the revised version (see Table II on page 4). (2) Feature-sign was originally proposed in Reference [6] for sparse coding. In Reference [4] by Zheng et al., Reference [2] and Reference [3] by Gao et al., Feature-­sign was modified for GSRsub. The modified Feature-sign is still called Feature-sign in both the previous and revised versions. Thus, we have actually compared against Feature-­sign in the first experiment in the previous version. We are sorry for not explaining this clearly in the previous version. This has been corrected in the revised version (see lines 15–16 in column 2 on page 1, lines 4–5 in paragraph 3 in Section II-B on page 2 and line 3 in paragraph 1 in Section IV on page 3). (Abridged from Dr. Ma’s response to reviewer #1) R1:

In Dr. Ma’s response to reviewer #1’s comments, it can be seen that there are some leaks in her writing. For example, reviewer #1 was concerned that her paper compared against Feature-sign and PFISTA in the first experiment but only PFISTA in the second experiment without comparing against Feature-sign. In her response, she replied that she had also

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added a comparison with Feature-sign in the revised version. Therefore, her incorporation of the reviewer’s comments has stopped the “leaks” in her writing and strengthened the quality of her paper. Similarly, she caught up the point she had not noticed in the revision as pointed out by reviewer #2. It seems that from an optimization point of view the current work is using well established gradient ascent techniques. Further, it appears that the paper presents as the main contribution the idea of working with the dual problem instead of the primal formulation in GSRsub. However, the latter idea appears to have been used before in sparse representation problems such as the graphical lasso. It seems pertinent to cite and compare with the line of work. Response: Thank you for drawing our attention to the line of works on Graphical LASSO (GLASSO). In the revised version, we have added several sentences to explain the idea of using the dual and primal formulations of ℓ1 regularized QP problem in GLASSO and its connection with GSRsub; we have also discussed the advantages of our dual formulation for GSRsub (called D-GSRsub in the letter) over the existing dual formulations (see the last five sentences in paragraph 1 in column 2 on page 1 and paragraph 1 in column 2 on page 2). In both experiments we have also added comparisons with the Cyclical Coordinate Descent (CCD) method in Reference [10] in the revised version (see Tables I and II on page 4). Two references [9] and [10] on GLASSO, which are relevant to this letter, have been added and cited in the revised version. (Abridged from Dr. Ma’s response to reviewer #2) R2:

As Dr. Ma had not been aware of the line of work on Graphical LASSO, so she added the explanations of the existing graphical lasso and the advantages of her dual formulation for GSRsub. In sum, the main strategy Dr. Ma adopted in her revision of the manuscript was to incor-

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porate the reviewers’ comments in her manuscript to enhance its quality. It seems that she did not rebut the reviewers’ comments, but positively accepted their criticism and actively stopped the “leaks” of her writing. Therefore, the reviewing process facilitated the improvement of the published paper. The writer’s open mind towards revision was also significant for the success of her publication (Buckingham, 2014; Cargill & O’Connor, 2009; Hyland, 2007).

9.4.2 Writing in Plain Language It seems Dr. Ma paid much attention to the content of research rather than the language. As she explained, it is important to formulate a logical idea before doing the experiment. The logic which is clear with the experiment may be naturally reflected in the writing process. Firstly, I think, do not place the importance of writing above researching. As I said just now, the most important thing is to formulate a perfect logic in the process of scientific research. Then, we can come to consider how we can express that logic in our writing. If the logic of scientific research is good enough, the logic of writing will be unlikely to be poor. This is what I want to emphasize the most. It is certainly problematic that the content of the research is empty with no news value even though you write with flowery language. It is unnecessary for scientific writing to pay as much attention to the language as literary writing does. In scientific writing, you can use simple and concise sentences to explicate the research content clearly. You needn’t show off your writing skills, which may cause some troubles instead. What you should consider is to help your readers directly and rapidly accept your information. (Abridged from the interview with Dr. Ma)

It is evident that Dr. Ma is aware of the linguistic features of the genre of scientific writing. As many teaching materials for scientific writing (e.g., Cargill & O’Connor, 2009; Day & Sakaduski, 2011) suggest, it is crucial to write in a precise plain style when writing research articles. Therefore, for multilingual scholars, it may be more important to consider the novelty of the research than concern a lot about language expressions in writing.

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9.5 Social/Affective Strategies Unlike the other three cases in this volume, it appears that Dr. Ma has not established a social network in her academic career. The three articles (from her personal webpage) she published are the products of her co-­ working with her doctoral supervisor. As a young scholar who has just gained her Ph.D., Dr. Ma has not had time to set up her own research team as Professor Zhao did. Nevertheless, her case shows how important the research network is for international publications. In Chap. 6, Professor Zhao’s research team played a significant role in his international publications. Due to the strong research team Professor Zhao trained his postgraduate students to do research and then cooperated with them to publish research articles. On the one hand, his students have experienced rigid academic training. On the other hand, he increased his production of publications by supervising the writing of research manuscripts. In Chap. 7, Dr. Zheng has some “faithful” regular co-­ workers in research. These co-workers are crucial for his prolific publications because of his competent cross-disciplinary cooperation. In Chap. 8, Dr. Zhou, though a young scholar as well, has joined a strong research team affiliated with his institution, from which he has benefited a lot in publishing international journal articles. In sum, in the contemporary research community, particularly in natural sciences and engineering, network and cooperation for research are important in that much laboratory work and many experiments need to be done in close cooperation with a number of collaborators with an appropriate division of labor. Although Dr. Ma does not have her own research team at present, she is the principal investigator of an important project funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. It will be a natural trend for her to form her own research team in the future.

9.6 Summary This chapter has reported on Dr. Ma’s strategies in writing and publishing research articles in English. As she commented in the interview, she had never been trained academically in publication before starting her doc-

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toral study, which is why she failed in having her first submitted manuscript accepted for over a year. Contemplating this failure, she suddenly realized that research is more important than writing. In the process of research, the innovation should be emphasized because any publishable manuscript should have “news value” (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995) in the eyes of the editors or reviewers of a journal. As a matter of fact, the logic required in writing has been formulated in the process of research. This idea is coincident with the social-cognitive framework of writing for international publishing (see Fig. 2.1) we propose in Chap. 2. For international publishing, it lies not simply in writing. The process of international publication should include the processes of research and writing. Writing is merely a presentation form subordinate to the content of research, though good research does need clear presentation. As a novice researcher, Dr. Ma has benefited from her epiphany in that she published another two higher-ranking international journal articles in rapid succession to her first publication. An analysis of her manuscript shows the clear structure she used to organize the Letter. Specifically, she adopted a problem–solution pattern (Hoey, 1983, 1991), showing the foundation and novelty of her research in the Introduction . She presented a series of problems with sparse coding and corresponding solutions to those ­problems. Through narrating the development of the research, she identified the gap she was going to fill. At the same time, she predicted the important findings in this section to arouse the readers’ interest in her article. Above all, Dr. Ma’s discursive strategies for organizing ideas and text may be helpful for multilingual novice researchers. Second-language writers need to be concerned with the innovation of research and pay attention to the logic of research and writing as well as the target language itself. Moreover, Dr. Ma’s explanation for selecting English as a channel to publish her research is unique too. Her explanation indicates the current status quo of publishing system in China: young researchers have fewer chances to publish their research in Chinese higher-ranking journals and there are still some problems with the reviewing process in Chinese journals, though they have made great improvements in recent years. In addition, as a novice researcher, Dr. Ma adopted a strategy to incorporate the reviewers’ comments in revising her manuscript, enhancing the quality of her manuscript. This strategy suggests that scholars’

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manuscripts benefit from the reviewing process. Multilingual scholars need to be open-­minded in an interaction with the editors and reviewers of the target journals (Hyland, 2007). Unfortunately, Dr. Ma has not yet set up her own research team, which would be helpful for her publishing in English, but the great project she is working on will give her the opportunity to expand her research network.

References Anderson, K., & Maclean, J. (1997). A genre analysis study of 80 medical abstracts. Edinburgh Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 8, 1–23. Basturkmen, H. (2012). A genre-based investigation of discussion sections of research articles in Dentistry and disciplinary variation. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11(2), 134–144. Belcher, D. D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 1–22. Belcher, W.  L. (2009). Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks. London: SAGE. Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. (1995). Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition, Culture, Power. New York: LEA. Buckingham, L. (2014). Building a career in English: Users of English as an additional language in academia in the Arabian Gulf. TESOL Quarterly, 48, 6–33. Cargill, M., & O’Connor, P. (2009). Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Day, R. A., & Sakaduski, N. (2011). Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists and Other Professionals (3rd ed.). Oxford: Greenwood. Duszak, A., & Lewkowicz, J. (2008). Publishing academic texts in English: A Polish perspective. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 108–120. Flowerdew, J. (1999). Writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 123–145. Graetz, N. (1985). Teaching EFL students to extract structural information from abstracts. In J. . M. Ulijn & A. . K. Pugh (Eds.), Reading for Professional Purposes: Studies and Practices in Native and Foreign Languages (pp. 123–135). London: Heinemann Educational Books. Hartley, J. (2008). Academic Writing and Publishing: A Practical Handbook. Florence, KY: Routledge.

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Harwood, N. (2005). ‘Nowhere has anyone attempted … In this article I aim to do just that’: A corpus-based study of self-promotional I and we in academic writing across four disciplines. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 1207–1231. Hoey, M. (1983). On the Surface of Discourse. London: George Allen & Unwin. Hoey, M. (1991). Patterns of Lexis in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7(2), 173–192. Hyland, K. (2007). English for Professional Academic Purposes: Writing for scholarly publication. In D.  Belcher (Ed.), Teaching Language Purposefully: English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuteeva, M., & Mauranen, A. (2014). Writing for publication in multilingual contexts: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 1–4. Li, Y. (2005). Multidimensional enculturation: The case of an EFL Chinese doctoral student. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 15, 53–70. Martín, P. M. (2003). A genre analysis of English and Spanish research paper abstracts in experimental social sciences. English for Specific Purposes, 22, 25–43. Martín, P., Rey-Rocha, J., Burgess, S., & Moreno, A.  I. (2014). Publishing research in English-language journals: Attitudes, strategies and difficulties of multilingual scholars of medicine. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 16, 57–67. McGrath, L. (2014). Parallel language use in academic and outreach publication: A case study of policy and practice. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 5–16. Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. (2004). Research Genres: Exploration and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yu, S. N. (2018). How to strengthen the quality of Chinese scientific journals whose number is in the third place in the world? The People’s Daily. Retrieved June 30, 2019, from http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-05/21/c_11228 62010.htm

10 Conclusion

10.1 Overview This final chapter concludes the book by summarizing the major findings of the study and discussing the pedagogical implications of the research results for ERPP and EAP. The non-discursive or research content-related problems and the discursive or language problems that Chinese multilingual scholars encountered have been reiterated, a taxonomy of writing and publishing strategies is proposed, and the implications for academic writing teaching and ERPP writing are discussed. There is an appeal to integrate genre analysis into ERPP teaching practice, identifying students’ needs for English writing training and coping with students’ difficulties in finding a new idea and expressing themselves while having insufficient language proficiency. Multilingual scholars should be provided with necessary language support and training to help them to succeed in the target discourse community. Finally, we suggest the directions for future study. The taxonomy of writing and publishing strategies for multilingual scholars needs to be tested in practice. Future studies could conduct an experiment to examine whether this taxonomy really helps novice scholars or not. In what follows, we attempt to answer the five © The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8_10

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research questions proposed in Chap. 3 by re-presenting the major findings of the study.

10.2 Major Findings 10.2.1 C  hallenges Chinese Multilingual Scholars Faced in Publishing in English With no exception, like multilingual scholars in other countries and regions, mainland Chinese multilingual scholars face many difficulties in publishing international journal research articles, even though China has become the second-largest producer of SCI-indexed research articles in the world. In Chap. 5, we presented the eight greatest challenges 118 mainland Chinese scholars reported in the questionnaire survey. Here we adopt Salager-Meyer’s (2014) division of language/ discourse-related difficulties and non-linguistic/ discursive difficulties that EAL scholars face when publishing in English, as we did in Chap. 3. We first present non-­linguistic/ discursive challenges, then language/discourse-related difficulties. 1. Non-linguistic/discursive challenges (1) As we have discussed about the theoretical framework for the present study in Chap. 2, writing for international publications does not mean simply carrying out a writing process from which a manuscript can be published if only one’s writing skills are sufficient. As is shown in Chap. 2, it is an integrated process combining researching, writing, and reviewing. Moreover, to a great degree, the research process is more important than the process of writing and reviewing. As is shown in the on-line questionnaire survey, 61.4% of the respondents reported that their submissions were often rejected because of inappropriate research content or research design. This result is consistent with Mungra and Webber’s (2010) finding that 56% of their participants also reported the rejection of their manuscripts for the same reason. Dr. Ma in Chap. 9 argued that research content should be placed above writing and that innovation should be reflected in the process of a research experiment. In all four case studies

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in the previous chapters, journal reviewers usually focused more attention on the research design of submissions, and those scholars were often asked to complement more experiments. Hence, it is crucial to select an interesting topic and ensure sound research design in the process of research or experiment. As Dr. Ma pointed out, only those manuscripts recording innovative experiments and identifying a gap in the research field were likely to be published. Therefore, novice multilingual scholars need to enhance their research competence, follow up the state of art in their research fields, and build a strong research design so that they may get the interesting findings that attract editors’ and reviewers’ attention. Mediocre results described in flowery language do not catch peers’ attention. Additionally, multilingual scholars need to take cross-cultural and crossdisciplinary factors into account and make genuine efforts to familiarize themselves with the conventions of local, international, and disciplinary communities. It is important to link a local research topic with international concerns when seeking to publish research articles in the higherranking international journals. (2) The second non-discursive challenge Chinese multilingual scholars reported in our investigation is the large amount of time and energy expended in writing and publishing research articles in English. Dr. Zhou in Chap. 8 complained that it took him over an year and a half to revise the language problems in his manuscript again and again at the insistence of a journal editor and reviewers. However, in the current academic assessment system in China, Chinese scholars are required to publish at least one higher-ranking journal research article every year. It will be difficult for a scholar to pass the assessment if s/he spends excessive amounts of time in writing and publishing an international journal research article in the field of humanities and social sciences in particular. In Flowerdew and Li’s (2009) study, one of the participants stated that she would spend two years publishing an SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) paper in English, but she could publish 5–10 CSSCI (Chinese Social Science Citation Index) papers in the same period of time, which she could use for promotion to professorship. Thus, it is indeed a challenge for multilingual scholars to spend a long time publishing in English if they are under the great pressure of contract evaluation. However, it is normal for high-quality scientific research to take a long time and scholars should be encouraged

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to do excellent research without too much care about the time and energy involved. (3) One of the research questions asked in Chap. 3 is “How do Chinese multilingual scholars perceive the decisions made by the editor and reviewers of international journals?” In our questionnaire survey, 75% of the respondents believe the reviewing process of international journals is fair or very fair. For no other reason than trust in the fairness of the reviewing process, Dr. Ma prefers submitting her manuscripts to international journals. All four Chinese scholars in our case studies reported that they had absorbed insights from the reviewers’ comments and improved the quality of their manuscripts. However, bias against multilingual scholars’ submissions seems to exist to some extent. For example, a technical editor asked Professor Zhao to revise the language of his manuscript as soon as the submission was received. In fact, Professor Zhao did not make many changes from his fifth track-changed manuscript, but the “revised” manuscript was sent out for peer review immediately after he submitted it. Dr. Zheng’s case is typical. To prevent a journal editor asking him to revise the language of his manuscript before sending it out for peer review, he asked a language-editing service to provide him with a certificate to prove that his manuscript had been read and edited by a professional service. Once the certificate was shown, the editor made no further request for language revision. It is interesting to note that Dr. Zheng had nearly all of his manuscripts corrected by the editing service before submission—he lacked self-confidence in his English writing even though he had already published 138 English-language research articles. Dr. Zhou also thought the editor was somewhat picky to ask him to revise the grammar of his writing again and again, so many corrections that in the end he hardly knew what he should revise. Another interesting observation from Dr. Ma was that the editors of international journals have a prejudice against Chinese scholars’ submissions perhaps because more and more of the submissions by Chinese scholars under pressure are so-called “incremental work” that has little innovation in it. In short, a majority of Chinese scholars take a positive attitude to international journals and they appreciate the comments and suggestions provided by ­editors and reviewers, which have actually improved both the quality of their articles and their English-language writing competence.

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(4) The fourth challenge identified from the present study is that a majority of Chinese scholars have limited access to the library resources necessary for research. We have investigated different levels of higher education institutions in China and found that only the few higher-level universities supported by the Chinese governments’ “985 projects” and “211 projects” can afford the richer and more expensive academic databases that the ordinary universities with limited funding have to do without. However, even with their slender funding, the ordinary universities may give priority to constructing buildings rather than subscribing to academic databases, which further downgrades the academic resources available to scholars. Although it is relatively acceptable for the government to support some key universities in a developing country like China, academic library resources should be placed in a significant position in all universities for the benefit of both scholars and students. In addition, as knowledge is commonly accumulated by and for people in all parts of the world, the closed management of databases for minority benefit may inhibit the advance of science and knowledge. Therefore, open access to academic resources should be encouraged for the benefit of humankind, but especially for multilingual scholars. (5) The last non-discursive challenge the participants in the present study mentioned is training in English-language academic writing, training almost totally lacking in the process of their education. Although English is taught as a foreign language in China, reading is emphasized much more than other language skills such as listening, speaking, and writing in the time-limited language classroom. Even now it is generally held that Chinese learners are being taught English for reading foreign documents in their future careers. However, more and more Chinese people need English to communicate with people from other countries; the Earth has become a global village. Specifically, more and more Chinese scholars submit their research findings to international journals in English. Thus, the traditional conception of teaching English only for reading foreign documents cannot satisfy the needs of English learners in China. Nevertheless, few Chinese teachers and applied linguists have been aware of this change in this new age. Few qualified teachers can provide training in English academic writing for students, let alone offer services to scholars on the campus of Chinese higher education institu-

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tions. Therefore, to meet the needs of multilingual scholars, faculties and individual applied linguists need to update their traditional concepts of foreign language teaching, and more qualified teaching staff need to be trained to deliver advanced courses on academic writing. 2. Linguistic/discursive challenges (1) The questionnaire survey in our project shows that only 25.4% of the respondents prefer writing research articles in English. In other words, a majority of Chinese scholars (at least in our sample of the population) would prefer to write in their mother tongue. However, due to the current academic assessment system in China, international publications, especially publications in highly prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature, and Science, count much more than local Chinese publications. Thus, Chinese scholars, no matter whether they are competent in writing English or not, crowd to take part in the competition to publish their research articles in international journals. This directly results in China becoming the second largest country in terms of the number of its international publications, though the real strength of its science and technology may not necessarily match its publications at all (Casassus, 2014). For multilingual scholars, English as an additional language is not as convenient as their mother tongue in academic communications. It is easy to imagine how great is the pressure felt by multilingual scholars with limited language proficiency as they write in English. However, the four scholars in our case studies appear to have become accustomed to using English to get international recognition for their academic activities, just as Matsuda (2014) did. Professor Zhao writes research articles in English, but he publishes many newspaper and magazine essays in Chinese. Dr. Zheng, who contended that he expressed himself more precisely in English, only published English-language research articles. Nevertheless, like people in Nordic countries (Kuteeva & Mauranen, 2014; McGrath, 2014), many Chinese scholars are worried about the loss of some scientific terminologies in Chinese and their domestic audience’s ignorance of the development of scientific advancement in the world. Although the Chinese government has increased investment in developing Chinese local journals, the effect seems not to have been what

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was anticipated (Pan & Ding, 2012; Yu, 2018). Chinese journals have serious problems, notably their inflexible evaluation system and a lack of transparency in their reviewing process, as Dr. Ma pointed out in Chap. 9. Chinese journals are reforming their administrative system by inviting experienced international editors and reviewers to get involved in their development. The reform strategies summarized by Professor Zhao in Sect. 6.4.1 may be used as a guide for other journals. (2) As previous studies (e.g., Flowerdew, 1999a, 1999b; Salager-Meyer, 2014) have found, the respondents to our on-line questionnaire survey stated that the Introduction and the Discussion are the two most difficult sections in writing English-language research articles. The difficulties lie in the persuasiveness required in these two sections: it is in them that the “news value” of the article needs to be expressed and it is in there that strong evidence must be cited to sway the judgment of editors or reviewers. It is usually difficult for novice researchers unfamiliar with the research territory to position themselves in their article and display the novelty of their findings. Furthermore, because of their unfamiliarity with the field they may not do a good job in the Discussion of comparing their own research findings with the results of other studies, or be able to discuss their findings from the variety of angles that would elaborate the significance of their stud. Thus, novice researchers, no matter whether they are native speakers or not, need to familiarize themselves with their research field by scrutinizing the relevant literature in depth and width. (3) For multilingual scholars, it is normal to have language problems such as an inadequate vocabulary or misuse of diction and grammar in their manuscripts. For example, Dr. Zhou, the subject of Chap. 8, was asked by his journal editor to revise his text to address language problems three times, even after he had revised the grammatical mistakes in his manuscript that the reviewers had pointed out. Although Dr. Zheng had published over a hundred research articles in English, he was still not confident about his writing in English and so he retained the services of a language editing service to proofread his manuscript before submission. Examining of the manuscripts of the four cases in this study reveals that multilingual scholars do not have any difficulty in organizing their research articles because it is easy for them to understand the IMRD model structure. They do find it difficult, however, to master the “inner

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logic” of each section of the research article in the writing process (Basturkmen, 2012). Thus, Dr. Ma’s problem-oriented logical line used to organize her Introduction may be instructive for other multilingual scholars. Additionally, from the analysis of Professor Zhao’s students’ writing, it can be seen that novice researchers have difficulties in using hedges to moderate the tone of their claims. However, all these language problems may be overcome through practice, as Dr. Zheng suggested.

10.2.2 T  axonomy of Writing Strategies for Publishing International Journal Articles In this section, we summarize the strategies used by the four scholars reported in Chaps. 6, 7, 8 and 9. Some of these strategies have features in common, though each individual has his or her idiosyncrasies. We use the framework established in Chap. 2 to organize these strategies, but we categorize the detailed strategies as sub-strategies, as shown in Table 10.1. This taxonomy of writing strategies for publishing in international journal research articles may be useful for novice researchers who are pondering their first attempt to publish their research in international journals. However, it is cautioned that there are no all-powerful strategies applicable to every researcher. Since every researcher is situated in their specific context, such as different disciplines, the best strategy may be the one summarized from their own writing and publishing experiences. As mentioned in Chap. 6, Professor Zhao is a commander-in-chief because team training is a very important strategy of his prolific productivity. Dr. Zheng is a faithful co-author because he has succeeded in co-working with so many scientists in his publishing career. Dr. Zhou is a persevering writer because he is so patient in revising his manuscript according to an editor’s repeated requests. Dr. Ma is an epiphanic writer because she suddenly realized the two important points (research innovation and writing focus) in her reflective experience. Nevertheless, this taxonomy of strategies drawn from the accounts of successful scholars may be confidently used as the first step for multilingual novice researchers to make a difference.

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Table 10.1  Taxonomy of writing strategies for publishing in English Strategies Discursive strategies

Sub-strategies

 •  Abstract organization: problem–solution pattern (situation–problem–response–evaluation); background– purpose–solution to problem–result  •  Introduction organization: formula (attention/ importance–gap–bridging of gap); CARS model; two elements (research foundation and novelty); problem-­ oriented logical line  •  Methods organization: data-collection procedure– experimental procedure–data-analysis procedure  •  Results and discussion organization: describing results– interpreting results  •  Conclusion organization: summarizing major findings– stating implications  •  Cohesive devices: conjunctions; first-person pronouns …  •  Hedging devices: could, may, might …  •  Awareness of rhetorical differences   • Genre awareness   • Telling stories Metacognitive   • Language selection strategies   • Journal selection  •  Writing directly in English  •  Planning strategies: scenario planning; the arrangement or deployment of moving military forces  •  Monitoring strategies: patching the leaks of the manuscript; disinfecting the mistakes  •  Epiphany: innovation of research and one writing focus Cognitive  •  Imitating: language re-use strategies   • Writing more  •  Revising strategies: structural global revision; rearranging the content; rewriting the content; using plain, accurate and concise language; removing sentences; adding cohesive devices and hedges; adjusting sentence structures; depersonalization  •  Responding strategies to reviewers: being polite; clarification and rebutting; avoidance; point to point response; incorporating reviewers’ suggestions Social  •  Training research team strategies   • Extensive cooperation  •  Seeking help from editing services or convenience editors  •  Co-authoring with supervisors Affective   • Being confident strategies   • Being patient   • Perseverance

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10.3 P  edagogical Implications for Academic English Writing and ERPP Writing The large-scale investigation presented in this volume aroused a positive reaction among the respondents: they not only volunteered to complete the questionnaire but also wrote to the principal investigator to express their support for the study. Here are two examples: Your study is very significant! At present English is indeed a barrier for many Chinese scholars to publish their research results in international journals. It is usually hard for us to express our ideas in idiomatic English. Moreover, in China, academic English writing training is insufficient to meet our needs. (Abridged from the email by Liu Wu from Shanghai University of Engineering Science) Many thanks for sharing your project! Writing research articles in a non-­ native language is indeed a challenge that we as academics nowadays must face. In addition to writing for international journal research articles by myself, I’m now also undertaking a course teaching master’s students how to write English-language research articles. However, as I’m not an English major graduate and lack experience in publishing international journal articles, I’m not confident of myself and have a lot of puzzles in the process of teaching the academic writing course. I’m looking forward to the insights derived from your research and more in-depth communications with you in the future. Thank you! (Abridged from the email by Xu Hu from Shanghai Normal University)

From these two abridged emails, it can be seen that there is a great demand in China for training in English-language academic writing. Chinese multilingual scholars have encountered difficulties in publishing in English, and Chinese college students have not been trained by qualified teaching staff in writing English-language research articles. On the basis of the findings of the present study, we propose the following suggestions for EAP writing classroom and ERPP writing practice. Firstly, some traditional English teaching concepts in non-English speaking countries need to be adapted to the development of interna-

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tional communications. In countries like China, situated in the expanding circle (Kachru, 1985), English has long been taught as a foreign language in universities, and students were mainly trained to be able to read the documents in their specialties. Forty years ago it was acceptable for college English teaching to focus on English reading, because at that time China has just opened its doors to the outside world and Chinese academics had had little contact with the international academic community. Moreover, the proficiency of English learners in the whole country was generally low at that time. Accompanied by traditional concepts in English-language teaching, college English test band four and six (CET-4 and CET-6) were developed to examine nationwide Chinese college students’ English-language proficiency. The washback of these tests reinforced the traditional English teaching concepts, focusing on English reading more than writing, because reading scores were 40% of the marks, while writing scores were only 15% of the marks in the two tests (Cai, 2009). Under the influence of these traditional English teaching and testing concepts, English teachers usually assume that undergraduate students have neither the ability nor the necessity to learn to write research articles. Thus, students are only trained in writing a timed short essay with a length of fewer than 200 words in the classroom for the purpose of examination. In other words, students who have passed CET-4 or CET-6 do not have the ability or experience to write longer articles of more than 200 words. Once they enter postgraduate programs, it is nearly impossible to have them draft English manuscripts as required. Professor Zhao stated in the interview as follows. Although postgraduate students passed through CET-4 and CET-6, they cannot write such papers (research articles). Of my eleven post-graduate students only one has the ability to write English-language research articles. All the others cannot, even though they have passed CET-4 and CET-­ 6. The cause is that we have not provided systematic academic writing training for our students. In our college educational system, scientific writing training has not been included and all the students in our universities lack compulsory writing training. Those students who are good at English language may not necessarily write English scientific research articles well. Their good English only means that they did well in the English-language examinations. (Abridged from the interview with Professor Zhao)

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From what Professor Zhao commented, it can be seen that Chinese undergraduates have not even been trained to write research articles in their native language, let alone writing in English. Of course, it is important to appeal for the incorporation of training in academic writing in college curricula. However, it is also necessary to reform college English classroom teaching and change the traditional English-language teaching conceptions. That is to say, we need to increase the weight given to writing in the marking protocols of college English teaching. If we regard listening and reading as the channels of information input, speaking and writing can be regarded as the means of information output. In the past, we paid most attention to the input of information. Now we need to emphasize output: speaking and writing in English (because English learners in China now have more desire to communicate with the outside world than before at this age of globalization). Specifically, in the academic community more and more Chinese researchers wish to share their findings with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Hence, they demand training in academic writing in English. Furthermore, writing as a channel of information output does not deny the importance of reading for information input. On the contrary, in training classes in academic writing, teachers with new pedagogical conceptions need to develop English learners’ ability to write longer essays or articles on the basis of a large number of English readings. For example, instead of asking students to write timed short essays of less than 200 words, teachers might co-­ design a mini research project with students in their own disciplines, to be carried out within a semester. They may start from topic selection, teach students how to find pieces of literature, design the experiments and analyze/interpret the results. Students may be encouraged to consult specialists or teachers in their own disciplines for topic selection and research design. In the classroom EAP teachers may discuss with students the linguistic features of different genres in the various disciplines. The taxonomy of writing strategies for international publishing proposed in the present volume may be introduced to the students to help them comprehend the complicated social-cognitive process of writing for publication in English. In the process of literature review and report writing, students will have to read many English articles, which will improve their English reading competence. At the same time they should also learn how to

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incorporate what they have read into their own writing. Through such processes students can be trained in thinking critically, citing properly, and being aware of English-language writing conventions. Such training would help students to evolve from knowledge telling to knowledge transformation (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987), because they may no longer depend on rote learning to complete their assignments, as they do in timed writing tasks in the classroom. Additionally, in this kind of academic writing activity, students may be grouped to train their collaborative ability and the spirit of teamwork. They can imitate reviewers to give comments or criticism on their peers’ written work. After collaborative revision, some of their written articles may be selected for publication in class journals. In brief, students learn English as an additional language in this classroom by familiarizing themselves with the whole process of writing for publication in English. However, the teaching method outlined above mainly aims to illustrate the ways in which Chinese EAP teachers may change their traditional English teaching conceptions: English-language output skills should be valued above input skills. In view of the newly emerged situation in the world, people desire to acquire output skills for the purpose of communicating with those from other cultures and languages. Moreover, English input skills such as reading can be implicitly acquired through learning output skills like writing. Of course, we need to take context and the students’ needs into account when we adopt the new teaching method in the specific classroom. For example, we may train first-year undergraduates to write an abstract of a research article and then gradually move through a paper from the Introduction to the Methods and then on to the Results and Discussion. In sum, when we have changed our traditional teaching philosophy, we would not confine our English teaching to focusing on reading only. Rather, we would develop our students’ English academic writing ability to improve their English-language proficiency. Secondly, more ESL (English as a second language) teaching staff need to be trained to teach EAP courses that meet students’ needs. To the best of our knowledge, a majority of college English teachers in China earned their bachelor’s degrees in English literature and master’s degrees in applied linguistics, theoretical linguistics, or translation studies. Few of them have any experience in publishing international journal research

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articles in English. As Swales (1987) pointed out thirty years ago, many ESL instructors would not assume teaching research paper writing to non-native speaking students to be their responsibility “largely beyond their professional preparation and competence” (p. 41). Thus, teaching how to write a research paper has remained a “Cinderella status” activity (ibid., p. 42). In the case of Chinese college English teaching, it has not made any progress in EAP teaching, even more than 30 years after Swales’s (1987) paper publication. The most popular excuse offered is that it is impossible for ESL teachers to familiarize themselves with all the disciplines their students are working in, and so teachers have difficulties in understanding various abstruse genres and terminologies of the disciplines. However, we argue that it may not be necessary for ESL instructors who teach research paper writing to non-native speaking students to learn and master specific disciplinary knowledge. What they have to do is develop their own genre awareness and improve their teaching methods following the latest pedagogical theories. ESL teachers should be provided with more training on how to deliver EAP courses. In addition, ESL teachers need to be encouraged to do research in their own field and publish international journal articles themselves. With personal experience of publishing in English, they would be able to provide appropriate advice and instruction . It is not necessarily that they need publishing experience in their students’ disciplines; rather, they have to experience the research, writing, and publishing processes so that they acquire a thorough understanding of the process of writing for international publications. They can then deliver more effective lectures based on their personal experience. Thirdly, EAP teachers may work with specialists in specific disciplines to help students with their research article writing and publishing. As mentioned above, ESL teachers are concerned with their professional knowledge when teaching the writing of research papers to non-native speaking students. It is understandable that ESL teachers without specific disciplinary knowledge may not be able to provide substantial suggestions for improving the content of students’ research article writing, though they can revise the language problems in their students’ manuscripts. Hence, it seems there is still a problem with qualified teaching staff in the EAP classroom. In our investigation, Professor Zhao reported that he delivered an elective course entitled “Survival Skills in Scientific

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Research and Academic Conventions” in which he mainly taught postgraduate students from different disciplines how to write and publish research articles in English. The following is the English translation of his Chinese course syllabus. Survival Skills in Scientific Research and Academic Conventions Teaching Goals: –– Improving students’ research skills (presenting, reading, writing an SCI article, managing schedules, communicating, seeking jobs) –– Informing students of academic ethical conduct (scientific cooperation, academic misconduct, data management, conflicts of interest, authorship) Contents (34 hours): Chapter 1 Introduction (1 hour): students’ expectation; the rationale for this course; a survey of scientific research; the importance of research skills and ethics Chapter 2 Writing & reading (15 hours): writing of research article sections; common problems; knowledge about publication and submission; explanation of cases; library resources; Web of Science Chapter 3 Presenting skills (4 hours): six rules for “opening up”; the difference between posters and presentations; demonstration of cases Chapter 4 Ethics (8 hours): ethics in an experiment; ethics in writing and publishing; conflicting and communicating; discussion of cases Chapter 5 Time management (2 hours): Eisenhower decision matrix; Pareto analysis; discussion of my own case Chapter 6 Experience and career development (4 hours): research methods; career development for youth; team organization (Abridged from Professor Zhao’s course advertising document)

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From this syllabus, we can see this is a comprehensive course including explaining ethics, career development in addition to teaching writing SCI papers. However, Professor Zhao spent over half of the course time teaching the writing and publication of SCI articles. As he is a successful scholar, with 165 research articles, and an experienced supervisor, having instructed many of his students in the writing of English-language articles, he often invoked his own experience and examples in the classroom (see Fig. 10.1). It is precisely Professor Zhao’s personal success in English-language publication that made his course popular with students. In fact, he substituted the EAP course to some degree by teaching research paper writing to non-native speaking students in an authentic context. An English teaching class or EAP course may incorporate some of his content to motivate students to learn English because students would be more active in achieving a real purpose—learning to publish research articles in addi-

Fig. 10.1  An example used in Professor Zhao’s lecture note 1

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tion to learning the English language. At least, EAP teachers might invite experts in particular specialties, people like Professor Zhao, to work with them to improve their teaching method. It is assumed that the quality of EAP teaching could be improved and that the students who are tired of current English-language teaching would be highly motivated to learn. In other words, an EAP class should not be merely a class for teaching the language; instead, EAP instructors could learn from experts in specific content areas, helping students to learn English through specific subject content. Fourthly, once qualified teaching faculties are ready, teaching methods and teaching materials should be reformed. As Li, Flowerdew, and Cargill (2018) point out, there is little literature aimed at the preparation of ERPP teachers, and it seems ESL teachers still use traditional teaching methods such as communicative teaching or situational teaching in the EAP classroom. However, Cargill and her colleagues (Cargill, Gao, Wang, & O’Connor, 2018; Cargill & O’Connor, 2006; Cargill, O’Connor, & Li, 2012) have conducted a series of workshops to help Chinese advanced graduates publish in English. Their CIPSE (Collaborative Interdisciplinary Publication Skills Education) approach involves scientists and Englishlanguage specialists working together on education programs incorporating corpus linguistics, English for Specific Purposes pedagogy and interdisciplinary collaborative practice. Their approach is successful, leading to “strong student engagement with course tasks, enhanced awareness of the links between English learning and the design, conduct, and reporting of scientific research, and increased student confidence to write a paper for international submission” (Cargill et al., 2018, p. 13). Thus, their experience could be integrated into EAP classroom teaching by adopting the collaborative workshop model. Other scholars like Davis and Morley (2015), Li et al. (2018) and Laso and John (2017) have also introduced corpus linguistics into ERPP teaching. Li et al. (2018) summarized a total of eight teaching strategies: 1) applying a rhetorical moves approach; 2) teaching the use of corpus methods; 3) highlighting the value of applied linguistics in supporting scientists’ international publishing; 4) highlighting distinct but complementary roles of learning science and learning language; 5) demonstrating

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specialized (as opposed to specialist) knowledge; 6) encouraging a language re-use strategy; 7) telling stories and recounting past experience; and 8) emphasizing the role of the scientist collaborator. (p. 13)

Laso and John (2017) evaluated a pedagogical approach involving EAL writers using a lexical database they developed by themselves. They found that writers’ command of formulaic language was enhanced, helping them to produce publishable texts. Similarly, Davis and Morley (2015) also found academic phrases could be “useful to help students’ thinking, and to help their writing by providing a scaffold of support, a means of organizing ideas and an improvement in writing style” (p. 20). These studies show that it is helpful to fuse the methods of corpus linguistics into EAP teaching to improve EAL scholars’ competence in writing and publishing in English. By self-compiling a corpus in their own disciplines, EAL writers come to recognize the patterns of linguistic features in their targeted genre they are going to acquire (Hunston & Francis, 2000). This corpus-driven approach can develop the students’ self-­ learning ability and facilitate them in writing a more native-like text. Fifthly, writing or translating service centers may be established for helping early-career multilingual scholars. At present ERPP studies focus more attention on novice researchers such as doctoral students in the center or peripheral countries or regions (e.g., Lei, 2019; Li, 2006a, 2006b, 2013; Moreno, Burgess, Sachdev, López-Navarro, & Rey-Rocha, 2013). However, it is evident from our online questionnaire survey that many multilingual academics at different professional ranks from different levels of university face the challenge of publishing research articles in international journals. Some scholars, like Dr. Zheng, have to seek help from commercial language editing services. One of our interviewees asked: Can the faculties from your College of Foreign Languages help us engineers or non-native teaching staff in revising the language problems in our manuscripts or translating our manuscripts from Chinese into English? Our university is a specialized multi-disciplinary university where we have conducted many innovative studies, but we are unable to publish our research findings in higher-ranking international journals due to our limited English language proficiency. What a pity we cannot communicate with international scholars just because of our language problems! Personally, I would

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try to seek help from a commercial translating service. I cannot bear to confine my research within local Chinese journals just because I could not express myself in English. You know, in our present situation we must publish in international journals to enable more scholars in the world to know of our research. If you do not publish in international journals, how can they know you? Well, we have difficulties in writing research articles in English. Perhaps your colleagues specialized in foreign languages may help us in this respect. I would talk to the leaders at the Division of Science and Research and suggest them establishing a language editing or translating service center in our university. You could help us at a lower price. After all, the commercial language editing service is too expensive. (Abridged from the interview with Hua Min)

Hua Min’s suggestion may be feasible for multilingual scholars who face challenges in publishing international journal articles in English. As Luo and Hyland (2016, 2017) point out, face-to-face interaction is more effective for language editing of manuscripts because the language professionals and the specialist author can more closely complement each ­other’s knowledge. He and Gan (2008) also argue for the strengths of bilingual Chinese editors over native English-speaking editors with comparable credentials, citing such distinctions as “[better] understanding of the logic of the Chinese language, better communication between the Chinese author and the editor, and greater economy” (p. 189), though native speakers have such advantages “such as a greater command and better sense of the English language, richer vocabulary, more flexibility in the use of English, and faster editing if the original version is clear” (p. 191). In sum, a language editing or translating center in an institution may be helpful for multilingual scholars who have difficulties in writing and publishing international journal articles in English.

10.4 Suggestions for Further Study As we mentioned in Chap. 3, ERPP is a new branch of applied linguistics research, in which there are many conflicting research findings to be clarified in better-designed investigations. While we have combined quantita-

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tive and qualitative ethnographic case studies to explore Chinese multilingual scholars’ experience in publishing research articles in English, there is still a need for further studies to explore this topic in more detail and more depth. Firstly, although we have investigated the challenges and difficulties that Chinese multilingual scholars in the Shanghai area experience, and the strategies they employ while writing and publishing international journal articles in English, further studies may be conducted in other areas such as the western or northern parts of China, where the scientific technology and economy are relatively lagging behind Shanghai, to examine whether the multilingual scholars there experience the same pressure as the scholars in Shanghai. To what extent can those scholars be helped with ERPP studies? A clearer picture of Chinese multilingual scholars’ difficulties would be helpful for the reformation of Chinese college English teaching and facilitating Chinese scholars to integrate into the international academic community. Secondly, in this book, we proposed a social-cognitive framework of writing for international publications and summarized a taxonomy of writing and publishing strategies on the basis of analyzing qualitative cases. As the theoretical framework needs to be tested in the field, and the taxonomy cannot be generalized due to its small sample size, a further replicated study may be carried out to examine the theoretical framework, and more samples in another context can complement our study and enhance our findings. In this way, our research findings may be generalized to the other context through the so-called qualitative generalizing technique (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984). Finally, this book focused on the challenges and strategies Chinese multilingual scholars have experienced in writing research articles in English. However, many Chinese academics translate their Chinese manuscripts into English. Thus, another direction to explore is Chinese scholars’ publishing experiences from the perspective of translation studies. Translation studies of academic discourse is an area in which few applied linguists have been involved. Therefore, an exploration of academic discourse and the role of multilingual academics in transferring work in one language into another may provide a new insight for ERPP studies.

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He, H., & Gan, K. J. (2008). Advantages of English-fluent Chinese editors over native—English-speaking editors in editing Chinese biomedical manuscripts. Science Editor, 31(6), 189–192. Hunston, S., & Francis, G. (2000). Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. London: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures (pp. 11–34). London: Cambridge University Press. Kuteeva, M., & Mauranen, A. (2014). Writing for publication in multilingual contexts: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 1–4. Laso, N. J., & John, S. (2017). The pedagogical benefits of a lexical database (SciE-Lex) to assist the production of publishable biomedical texts by EAL writers. Iberica, 33, 147–172. Lei, J. (2019). Publishing during doctoral candidature from an activity theory perspective: The case of four Chinese nursing doctoral students. TESOL Quarterly, 53(3), 655–684. Li, Y. (2006a). A doctoral student of physics writing for publication: A sociopolitically-­oriented case study. English for Specific Purposes, 25, 456–478. Li, Y. (2006b). Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15, 159–178. Li, Y. (2013). Chinese doctors connecting to the English publishing world: Literature access, editorial services, and training in publication skills. Publications, 2(1), 1–13. Li, Y., Flowerdew, J., & Cargill, M. (2018). Teaching English for Research Publication Purposes to science students in China: A case study of an experienced teacher in the classroom. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 35, 116–129. Luo, N., & Hyland, K. (2016). Chinese academics writing for publication: English teachers as text mediators. Journal of Second Language Writing, 33, 43–55. Luo, N., & Hyland, K. (2017). Intervention and revision: Expertise and interaction in text mediation. Written Communication, 34(4), 414–440. Matsuda, A. (2014). Beyond the native speaker: My life as an NJS, NNES, and bilingual user of Japanese and English. NNEST Newsletter: The Newsletter of

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the TESOL NNEST Interest Section. Retrieved from http://newsmanager. commpartners.com/tesolnnest/issues/2014-09-09/2.html McGrath, L. (2014). Parallel language use in academic and outreach publication: A case study of policy and practice. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 5–16. Moreno, A.  I., Burgess, S., Sachdev, I., López-Navarro, I., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2013). The ENEIDA questionnaire: Publication experiences in scientific journals in English and Spanish. Retrieved from http://eneida.unileon.es/ eneidaquestionnaire.php Mungra, P., & Webber, P. (2010). Peer review process in medical research publications: Language and content comments. English for Specific Purposes, 29, 43–53. Pan, X., & Ding, L. (2012, December 3). CAST funded scientific research journals in English in China to promote the impact of China journals. China Science Daily. Retrieved March 4, 2019, from http://news.sciencenet.cn/ htmlnews/2012/12/272356.shtm Salager-Meyer, F. (2014). Writing and publishing in peripheral scholarly journals: How to enhance the global influence of multilingual scholars? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13, 78–82. Swales, J. (1987). Utilizing the literatures in teaching the research paper. TESOL Quarterly, 21(1), 41–68. Yu, S. N. (2018). How to strengthen the quality of Chinese scientific journals whose number is in the third place in the world? The People’s Daily. Retrieved June 30, 2019, from http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-05/21/c_1122 862010.htm

 Appendix A: Survey of Chinese Scholar’s English Writing and Publishing Experience (Online)

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(English Version) Directions: The purpose of this survey is to understand the difficulties and challenges you encountered, and the strategies you adopt in the process of writing and publishing English research articles, and to provide suggestions for ESL or EAP writing. It is not a test with right or wrong answers. Please record your responses as frankly as you can. No identifying details of your answers will be revealed. It will take you around 10 minutes to complete all 26 questions. If you have any queries or expect to learn the result of the survey, please contact us through our telephone (xxxxxx) or email (xxxxxx). Many thanks! 1. What is your gender? [single-response] Female Male 2. What is your highest degree? [single-response] Bachelor's degree Master's degree Doctoral degree Other (please specify in the box) 3. Your current academic rank: [single-response] Assistant Teacher Lecturer Associate Professor Professor Other (please specifyin the box) 4. Your affiliated institution: [single-response] Fudan University Shanghai Jiaotong University Tongji University East China Normal University East China University of Science and Technology Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Shanghai International Studies University Donghua University Shanghai University Shanghai Maritime University Shanghai Normal University University of Shanghai for Science and Technology Shanghai University of International Business and Economics

Shanghai University of Technology Shanghai University of Engineering Science Shanghai Business School Shanghai University of Electric Power Shanghai Lixin University of Commerce

  Appendix A: Survey of Chinese Scholar’s English Writing…  Other (please specify in the box) 5. Your specialty: [single-response] Biology Computer Science Electronics Mechanics Linguistics Literature Mathematics Marketing Law Chemistry Physics Philosophy Textile Engineering Physical Education Landscape and Architecture Materials Science Accounting Finance Transportation History Journalism Sociology Politics Education Psychology Civil Engineering Electrical Engineering Environmental Engineering Other (please specify in the box) 6. Years you have worked: [single-response] Less than one year One to two years Two to three years Three to five years Five to ten years Ten to twenty years Above twenty years Other (please specify in the box)

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7. When did you start learning English? [single-response] Kindergarten Primary School Middle School University Other (please specify in the box) 8. You have ever received the following English writing training: [multiple-response] English writing class in Masters programme English writing class in Doctoral programme Workshops for English research article writing Instruction by Supervisors Self-reading research articles and books concerning English writing Exchanging information with colleagues or friends Obtaining information from academic websites such as sciencenet and Xiaomuchong Other (please specify in the box) 9. Your evaluation of English-language competence: [multiple-response] Competent in making presentations in English in international conference Competent in talking to scholars from English speaking countries Need simultaneous interpreter in international conference Competent in writing English research article related to my field Competent in writing English emails Competent in reading English references and books related to my field Competent in surfing English webpage Other (please specify in the box) 10. Have reviewed research manuscripts for international journals in the last ten years? [single-response] Yes No 11. Your often involve yourself in the following academic activities in English: [multiple-response] Publishing research findings Attending academic conferences Net discussion Joining research projects Reading research articles Co-working with other institutions Making academic presentations Other (please specify in the box)

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12. How often do you attend international conferences where Chinese is not the working language? [single-response] Less than once in a year Once or twice a year More than thrice a year 13. Please select the following statement to which you agree: [multiple-response] English is an academic lingua franca. English is a barrier on my academic way. I want to live in an English-speaking country for a period of time. Some specialty courses should be delivered in English. 14. You are motivated to publish English journal papers by the following factors: [multiple-response] Communicating the results of my research to the international scientific community Getting cited more frequently Improving my research ability through peer reviewing my manuscript Improving my English writing ability through peer reviewing my manuscript Meeting the requirements for professional promotion Increasing my chances of receiving a bonus payment My desire for my research work to be recognized Responding to a request or invitation from an editor Challenging myself Assessing the quality of my manuscript Being stimulated by the fierce competition around me 15. Do you agree or disagree that your colleagues in your field publish their findings in English? [single-response] Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 16. Do you agree to the statement that the fact that excellent research findings are published in overseas journals may result in the decreasing quality of Chinese journals? [single-response] Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 17. Please select the following statement to which you agree: [multiple-response] I prefer writing research articles in Chinese. I prefer writing research articles in English. English and Chinese research articles share the same rhetorical structures. English research articles are more rigid with literature review than Chinese research articles.

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Chinese journals editors often require writers to cite less reference due to the limited space. 18.In the last 10 years, what’s the percentage of your scientific publication that is written in English?

[single-response] Less than 5% 5%-25% 25%-50% 50%-75% More than 75% 19. In the last 10 years, what’s the percentage of your collaborated publication with the overseas scholars in your total publications? [single-response] Less than 5% 5%-25% 25%-50% 50%-75% More than 75% 20. In the last 10 years, is this phenomenon occurred to you that your English manuscript submitted is accepted without any further revision? [single-response] Never Seldom Occasionally Often Always 21. How do you like the reviewing process of international journals? [single-response] Very unfair Unfair Neutral Fair Very fair 22. Indicate the difficult sections of research articles or the documentation involved in your publication in English: [multiple-response] Abstract Introduction Literature review Methods Results Discussion Conclusion Cover letter Response letter Other (please specify in the box)

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23. Reasons for your English manuscript rejection: [multiple-response] Not writing on a topic that fits the content of the journal to which I submitted the article. Not offering results of sufficient interest to the readers of the journal. Presumed flaws in certain areas of the content of the research (E.g., design, methods, use of statistical tests, etc.). Not following the writing conventions expected by the journal when reporting my research (E.g., putting my research into a wider context, clearly expressing my contribution to field, making sure my conclusions fit my objectives etc.). Features of my writing in English (E.g., excessively long phrases, overly-complicated ideas or paragraphs, grammatical, stylistic or vocabulary errors). Not following the journal’s instructions for authors regarding manuscript style (E.g., word limits, format of tables, figures, pages, citations, bibliography, vocabulary, etc.). Other (please specify in the box) 24. What factors led you, as corresponding author, not to consider or to decide against publishing

research articles in journals in English? [multiple-response] Chinese journals are more prestigious than English journals in my field. My English writing proficiency is below the standard the journals require. I do not think I know enough about the writing conventions expected by these journals to report my research. I don’t think these journals will consider my results sufficiently interesting. It would take up too much of my time and my effort. It would not offer me the benefits I seek. It does not seem to me to be a stimulating task. I have difficulty finding translators familiar with my research field. Translations involve increased costs for which I do not have funding. I have difficulty finding authors’ editors familiar with my research field. Authors’ editing involves increased costs for which I do not have funding. Other (please specify in the box) 25. Please select the strategies you use while writing in English: [multiple-response] Directly write in English. First write in English by myself and then ask somebody else for editing. First write in Chinese and then translate it into English by myself, finally ask somebody to revise it. Write in Chinese and then ask somebody to translate it into English. Work with colleagues competent in English writing. Work with overseas scholars. Other strategies:

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Appendix A: Survey of Chinese Scholar’s English Writing… 26. Select those who can help you the most in your English writing: [multiple-response] Friends who are good at English writing but not familiar with my specialty. Colleagues who are good at English writing and familiar with my specialty. Native English speakers who know little about my specialty. Translating services. Other (please specify in the box).

 Appendix B: Scholars Interview Guide

1. Do you like writing and publishing research articles (RAs) in English? Why? 2. Please briefly describe your experience of publishing your first RAs in English, and introduce the typical process you prepare for publishing an English article. 3. What is your personal understanding of the difficulty Chinese scholars experience in writing English RAs? Why? 4. What is your own difficulty in writing RAs in English? 5. What is the difficulty writing RAs in your field? Why? 6. Which sections of RAs (e.g. Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, etc.) do you think more difficult or easier? Why? 7. What strategies have you used to improve your writing competence? 8. Do you write your article in Chinese and then translate it into English by yourself or give it to someone else? Why? 9. Do you often co-author an article in English? What role do you play in? 10. Do you think the editor of the international journal to which you submit your RA has a bias against Chinese scholars? Why? © The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8

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11. How do you respond to the editor’s decision (e.g. accept, major/ minor revision, reject)? 12. Which section(s) of your RAs is (are) often required to be revised by the reviewers or editors? Why? 13. Do you write more English RAs than Chinese RAs or vice versa? Why? 14. What are the similarities and differences between English and Chinese writing in your opinion? Why? 15. How do you avoid the negative transfer of Chinese writing conventions into your English writing? 16. What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing in English compared with Chinese writing? Why? 17. What is the role (positive or negative) of Chinese thinking in your English writing process? Why? 18. How do you overcome the negative influence of your Chinese thinking in English writing? 19. What do you think can help your manuscript be accepted by the journal you submit to? Why? 20. Do you have any advice for other scholars about writing and publishing journal papers in English? Thank you!

Index

A

Abridged, 159, 173, 184, 191 Academic community, 1, 30, 37, 45, 51, 202, 223, 224, 232 Academic evaluation system, 8, 56, 90, 215, 218 Academic phrase, 230 Academics, vi, viii, x, xiii, 1, 3–5, 10–12, 15, 16, 28, 32, 34, 37, 46, 54, 58, 59, 72, 73, 81–83, 92, 109, 121, 156, 157, 160, 172, 197, 219, 222, 223, 230, 232 Academic writing, viii, ix, 24, 25, 29, 47, 48, 51, 68, 69, 73, 90, 100, 148, 151, 163, 213, 217, 222, 224, 225 Accepted, 9, 13, 14, 16, 46, 47, 77, 89, 90, 93, 94, 100, 101, 108, 120, 122, 126, 135, 136, 144, 159, 161, 163, 164, 183, 184,

191, 198, 203, 204, 207, 209, 246 Adapted, 27, 77, 121 Added, 29, 110, 115, 122, 123, 126, 127, 130, 159, 161, 162, 185–187, 201, 205, 206 Affective, 31, 37, 38, 50, 80, 82, 107, 110, 131–136, 149, 159–164, 189–192, 208 Affective strategies, vii, 31, 51, 82, 107, 110, 131–136, 159–164, 189–192, 208 Affiliated, 75, 80, 82, 100, 124, 152, 176, 208 Allison, D., 35 Ammon, U., 54 Anderson, K., 200 Anglophone centre, 59 Applied linguistics, v, xiii, 3, 9, 23, 24, 75, 156, 225, 229, 231 Apprentice, 37

© The Author(s) 2020 C. Mu, Understanding Chinese Multilingual Scholars’ Experiences of Writing and Publishing in English, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33938-8

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248 Index

Arndt, V., 26 Arrangement, 49, 122, 160, 221 Articles, v, vii, viii, x, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 25, 27, 29, 32, 47–49, 54, 75, 77, 79–81, 89–92, 94–98, 100–102, 107, 108, 114, 118–122, 126, 128, 131, 132, 134–136, 143, 144, 146, 150–154, 156–161, 164, 171, 172, 175, 177, 179, 192, 193, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202, 207, 208, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222–226, 228, 231, 232, 245 Associated, 38, 121, 144, 147, 153 Atkinson, D., 68, 70 Audience, v, ix, 14, 25, 28, 30, 32, 49, 53, 102, 107, 111, 113, 153, 164, 175, 182, 187, 193, 197, 204 Avoidance, 221 B

Baker, M., 114 Bardi, M., vi, x, 2 Basturkmen, H., 111, 196, 220 Bazerman, C., 78, 165 Beckett, G., 7 Belcher, W. L., vii, x, 9, 32, 46, 53, 54, 58, 95, 100, 129, 199, 204 Benfield, J. R., 55 Bereiter, C., 27, 28, 225 Berkenkotter, C., 2, 35, 113, 114, 193, 197, 209 Bianchi, F., 114 Bias, 2, 15, 47, 56, 82, 97, 162, 163, 192, 216, 245 Bloch, J., 38 Bocanegra-Valle, A., 55, 164

Botelho de Magalhães, M., 149 Braine, G., 11, 48, 50, 128 Brokers, 53, 73, 110 Buckingham, L., 28, 29, 50, 52, 207 Burgess, S., vi, x, 1, 2, 23, 29, 35, 37, 52–54, 74, 156 Burrough-Boenisch, J., 48, 52, 157, 187 C

Cal Varela, M., 74, 76 Cameron, C., 186 Canagarajah, A. S., 37, 46, 98 Cao, F., 13, 34, 117 Cargill, M., 1, 2, 23, 29, 37, 50, 52, 54, 58, 128, 136, 153, 155, 156, 164, 177, 207 Casanave, C., 1, 24, 28, 70 Casassus, B., 6, 218 Centre, vi, 1, 58, 120, 230, 231 Challenges, vi, viii, xiii, 2, 3, 10, 11, 15, 38, 45, 47, 59, 74, 77, 80, 81, 83, 89, 93, 101, 103, 172, 214, 218, 231, 232 Chamot, A. U., 82 Chan, L. T., 154 Chang, H., 5 Chen, L., 8, 78, 101, 160 Cheung, Y. L., 52, 53 Chi, L., 38, 92 Chief, 134, 172, 183–192 China, vi, viii, ix, xi, xiii, 2–13, 15, 45, 71–73, 90, 91, 98, 101, 102, 108, 109, 118, 119, 132, 151, 152, 160, 202, 208, 209, 214, 215, 217, 218, 222, 223, 225

 Index 

Chinese, vi, viii–xi, xiii, 3–8, 10–16, 24, 25, 34, 38, 45, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59, 67, 70, 72–77, 79, 81–83, 89–103, 107, 109, 111, 112, 117–120, 126, 131, 132, 136, 150–152, 154, 156, 160, 162, 164, 171, 172, 176–177, 191–193, 195, 201, 202, 209, 213–220, 222–227, 229–232, 238–246 Cho, D. W., 2, 52–54, 57, 76, 156 Clarification, 29, 78, 221 Classifier, 173, 181–183, 185, 188 Clyne, M. G., 117 Cognitive, 15, 23–38, 49, 50, 80, 82, 107, 110, 124, 161, 177, 209 Coherence, 111, 114 Cohesion, 107, 114, 117 Cohesive, 48, 80, 114–117, 185, 193 Cohesive devices, 48, 115, 117, 185, 221 Community of practice, 31, 32 Competent, 27, 91, 98, 119, 125, 136, 192, 208, 218 Conclusion, 14, 48, 111, 121, 124, 144, 147, 148, 175, 199, 204, 245 Confidence, 46, 102, 108, 118, 131, 136, 137, 156, 216, 226, 229 Confirmed, 75, 96, 119, 121 Connor, U., 24, 25, 34, 50, 52, 58, 101, 117, 136, 153, 155, 156, 164, 177, 207, 229 Constructed, 31, 72, 145, 147, 148, 183, 184 Content, 14, 28, 32, 47–49, 69, 80, 89, 94, 101, 115, 122, 123, 126–128, 145, 153, 155,

249

161–164, 172, 176, 178–184, 187, 191, 193, 207, 209, 213, 214, 221, 228 Contrastive rhetoric, 24, 25 Contribute, 3, 12, 14, 35, 59, 146, 150, 153 Controversial, 2, 15, 45, 51, 55, 56, 68, 72, 83, 156 Controversial issue, 2, 15, 45, 51, 55, 68, 83 Convenience editor, 189–191, 193, 221 Conventions, 25, 30–32, 34, 35, 37, 47, 49, 50, 90, 94, 97, 100, 101, 107, 111, 114, 123, 151, 177, 186, 193, 246 Corcoran, J., 57 Counsell, J., 82 Create a Research Space (CARS), 32, 107, 112, 146, 197, 221 Curry, M. J., 2, 12, 37, 46, 53, 59, 70, 71, 73, 77, 79, 91, 110, 134, 161, 165 Cyranoski, D., 13 D

Davis, M., 229, 230 Day, R. A., 207 Decomposition, 113, 116, 129 Depended, 175, 181, 185, 187 Depersonalisation strategy, 186 Deployment, 122, 221 Design, viii, 12, 33, 38, 47, 49, 57, 59, 67–71, 73, 74, 76, 81–83, 89, 100, 101, 109, 132, 134, 137, 155, 156, 175, 181, 214, 224, 229 Diennes, Z., 13

250 Index

Difficulties, vi, vii, 3, 11, 14, 24, 38, 46–49, 54, 58, 59, 73, 77, 79, 80, 83, 89, 93, 98, 103, 151, 163, 171, 189, 213, 214, 219, 220, 222, 226, 231, 232 Ding, L., 8, 219 Directly, 12, 49, 52, 57, 131, 145, 154, 161, 177–178, 207 Discourse community, 12, 24, 30, 32, 33, 49, 111, 164, 173, 193, 199, 213 Discourse function, 148 Discourse organising strategies, 113 Discursive, 30, 37, 38, 47–50, 54, 58, 69, 80, 82, 107, 110, 111, 209, 213, 214 Discursive strategies, 50, 80, 111, 209 Discussion, 14, 34, 48, 77, 90, 95, 111, 118, 119, 123–126, 129, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150, 156, 157, 173, 197, 203, 204, 219, 221, 227, 245 Disinfecting, 122, 123, 221 Dong, Y. R., 28 Draft, 49, 75, 93, 109, 110, 122–127, 133–135, 144, 171, 174, 223 Dual, 199, 200, 203, 206 Duszak, A., 2, 37, 47, 56, 92, 202 E

EAL, 2, 9, 12, 45–47, 54, 59, 78, 90, 102, 117, 135, 156, 163, 214, 230 EAP, viii, ix, 1, 3, 12, 15, 23, 31, 32, 45, 59, 102, 213, 222, 224–226, 228–230

Editing service, 161–165, 190, 216, 219, 221, 230, 231 Editor, v, x, 36, 52, 56, 93, 100, 109, 110, 123–126, 135, 144, 153, 154, 158, 161, 163, 164, 172, 179, 183–187, 189–192, 204, 215, 216, 219, 231, 245, 246 EIL, 55, 100 Elements, 14, 68, 145, 146, 163, 198, 221 ElMalik, A. T., 2 Encinas, F., 78 Englander, K., vi, x, 2, 37, 46, 54, 57, 74, 90, 154, 156 English, x, xi, 1–3, 8, 10–16, 23–26, 28–38, 45–48, 51, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 69, 70, 73–77, 79, 81–83, 89–103, 107–111, 114, 115, 117–122, 125, 131–137, 148, 150–157, 161, 163–165, 171, 172, 175–179, 183, 186, 189–193, 195, 196, 198, 201–203, 208, 213, 222–231, 238–246 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), 55, 121 English as Second Language (ESL), 28, 46, 125, 225, 226, 229 English for Academic Purposes, viii, x, xi, 23 English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP), vi, viii, ix, xiii, 1, 2, 6, 11, 15, 23, 28, 29, 31, 34, 45–59, 68, 70, 74, 76, 83, 191, 213, 222–232 English translation, 75, 177, 227 Epiphany, 203, 209, 220 Ernst, 57

 Index 

Ethnographic, 3, 11, 15, 67–71, 73, 76, 79, 81, 83 Ethnographic research, 69, 70, 81 Ethnographic textual history approach, 71 Ethnography, 68, 69, 81 Experience, v, vi, viii, 3, 10, 11, 13, 28, 37, 47, 49, 52, 54, 59, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76, 78, 82, 83, 90, 91, 100, 133, 134, 136, 154, 155, 157, 161, 163, 165, 172, 192, 195, 202, 203, 220, 222, 223, 225, 228–230, 232, 238–245 Experiment, 12, 13, 33, 35, 36, 49, 51, 97, 110, 115, 118, 123, 124, 130, 131, 157, 158, 171, 192, 196, 203, 205, 207, 213, 214, 227 F

Fairbank, J. K., 118, 119 Familiarise, 35, 109, 111, 177, 193, 215, 219, 226 Farley, A. F., 2, 37 Feak, C. B., 55 Feng, H., 7, 57, 72, 78 Ferguson, G. R., 55 Fierce, 1, 58, 71, 201, 202 Fife, W., 68 Figure, 33, 116, 122, 125, 135 Fill, 3, 11, 59, 75, 109, 112, 175, 200, 209 Firstly, 80, 154 First-person pronoun, 38, 115, 148–149, 221 Flower, L., 26–28, 110, 125

251

Flowerdew, J., 1, 3, 10, 12, 14, 29, 32, 33, 48, 52–55, 57, 59, 70, 74, 77, 78, 82, 91–93, 95, 96, 101, 102, 111, 122, 125, 136, 156, 157, 161, 163, 178, 191, 197, 215, 219, 229 Fold(s), 173, 175, 180–183, 185, 190 Formula, 107, 111, 112, 221 Francis, G., 230 Fu, X., 7 Fusch, P. I., 68, 70, 73 G

Gan, K. J., 56, 126, 231 Gao, A. X., 2–4, 10, 55, 58, 116, 165, 205, 229 Gatekeepers, 14, 32, 49, 50, 53, 71, 73, 77, 80, 96 Gea-Valor, M. L., vi, x, 93, 95, 101, 156 Gender, 59, 79, 82 Genre, 15, 23, 28, 32, 34, 37, 56, 80, 145, 150, 175, 193, 199, 200, 202, 207, 213 Genre analysis, 23, 32, 80, 145, 175, 213 Genre awareness, 226 Gentil, G., 2 Gholami, J., 2 Giannoni, D. S., 2 Globalisation, 2, 55, 59, 120, 224 Global revision, 28, 51, 107, 125, 221 Goetz, J. P., 68, 70, 73, 76, 80, 81 Gollin-Kies, S., 68 Gosden, H., 46, 48, 52, 154 Graetz, N., 201 Guo, X., 96, 97

252 Index H

I

Halliday, M. A. K., 114 Hanauer, D. I., vi, x, 2, 37, 46, 54, 74, 90, 154, 156 Hartley, J., 199 Harwood, N., 113, 197 Hasan, R., 114 Hedging, 36, 48, 49, 101, 107, 126–128, 149, 150, 164, 187, 193 Hewings, M., 128 Higher education institutions, 8, 11, 67, 71, 82, 98, 201, 217 Hinds, J., 24, 117 Hirano, E., 70 Ho, M. C., 47, 175 Hoey, M., 114, 145, 209 Holloway, I., 69 Hong, W., 78, 91 Hong Kong, 2, 7, 10, 14, 54, 57, 70, 78, 91, 95 Hu, G., 2, 3, 10, 13, 34, 46, 48, 77, 101, 117, 126, 178, 222 Hu, X., 222 Hua, Zhang, 78, 90, 93 Huang, J. C., 2, 3, 7, 56, 157, 165 Huberman, A., 80, 81 Humanities and social sciences (HSS), 9, 12, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 101, 155, 215 Hunston, S., 230 Hyland, K., vi, x, xi, 1, 2, 9, 12, 14, 32, 35, 37, 48, 51, 52, 56, 93, 94, 97, 102, 113, 127, 134, 136, 149, 150, 157, 161, 163, 164, 179, 186, 197, 207, 210, 231 Hyon, S., 32

Imitating, 155, 156, 173, 175 Impact, 4, 8, 9, 91, 108, 120, 154, 201 Improve, 7, 11, 13, 67, 77, 97, 98, 102, 120–122, 128, 132, 134, 153, 157, 165, 179, 185, 189, 191, 192, 195, 245 Including, 13, 25, 26, 28–30, 36, 38, 46–48, 50, 58, 67, 68, 70–73, 81, 95, 98, 100, 107, 109, 110, 115, 123, 124, 134, 143, 147, 150, 164, 172, 189, 193, 198 Incorporating, 178, 221, 224, 229 Inner logic, 111, 137, 219–220 Innovative, 2, 14, 33, 36, 69, 90, 94, 145, 196, 199, 203, 215, 230 Intercultural, 15, 23, 38, 49, 95, 101, 117, 150 Intercultural rhetorical theory, 24–25 International, 1, 3–16, 25, 30, 34–36, 38, 45–47, 50, 51, 53–56, 58, 59, 67, 70–74, 76, 79–83, 90–92, 94, 97, 98, 100–102, 107, 108, 110, 118–121, 124, 125, 131, 134, 151, 152, 155, 161–165, 171, 191–193, 198, 201, 202, 204, 208, 209, 245 Internationalisation, 15, 35 International journal, vi, viii, ix, 2–4, 8–11, 14, 15, 34, 46, 47, 50, 56, 59, 67, 71, 73, 79–81, 83, 91, 94, 97, 98, 101, 103, 107, 109, 111, 118–120, 126, 131, 134, 151, 152, 155, 164, 165, 171, 191–193, 195, 198, 201, 202, 204, 208, 209, 214–218, 220, 222, 225, 230–232, 245

 Index 

International publications, vii–ix, 1, 4, 8, 9, 13, 38, 47, 72, 74, 82, 89, 91, 92, 96, 102, 107, 108, 110, 119, 120, 124, 125, 131, 163, 208, 214, 218, 226, 232 Interview, ix, 15, 16, 37, 57, 67, 69, 74, 76–80, 82, 83, 90, 91, 93, 96, 97, 102, 107, 109–111, 118, 120–123, 125, 133–136, 151, 153–155, 157, 160–162, 164, 171–173, 176–179, 183, 187, 189, 191, 192, 196, 198, 202–204, 207, 208, 223, 231 Interviewees, 57, 70, 77, 78, 80, 82, 91, 97, 102, 230 Introduction, 14, 23, 24, 34, 48, 75, 90, 95, 107, 111–114, 118, 122–126, 135, 144–146, 148, 150, 156, 173–177, 181, 182, 184, 187, 193, 196–199, 209, 219, 220, 225, 245 J

Jeffery, J. V., 25, 164 Jiang, F., 186 John, S., ix, 35, 115, 148, 229, 230 Jones, R., 156 Journal, 2, 3, 7–10, 12–15, 23, 25, 30, 32, 34, 36, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79, 81, 83, 89, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 107, 108, 118, 119, 121, 124, 126, 131, 134, 135, 137, 143, 153–155, 158, 161, 163–165, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 189, 191, 192, 195, 199, 202, 204, 208, 209, 245, 246 Journal selection, 47, 153

253

K

Kachru, B. B., 117, 120, 223 Kaplan, R. B., 24 Karimnia, A., 2, 157 Kent, A., 37 Keranen, N., 78 Ke Xue Wang, 109 Knowledge-telling, 28 Knowledge transformation, 28, 225 Korotkina, I. B., 2, 55 Kourilova, M., 70 Kroll, B., 26, 46 Kuhn, T. S., 13, 33 Kuteeva, M., 49, 56, 102, 154, 202, 218 L

Language selection, 15, 121 LaPlaca, P., 46, 50 Laso, N. J., 35, 229, 230 Lave, J., 31, 32, 37, 134 LeCompte, M. D., 68–70, 73, 76, 80, 81 Lee, I., 58, 160 Legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), 31–33 Lei, J., 2, 3, 46, 48, 58, 77, 178, 230 Leki, I., 26, 28 Letter, 95, 96, 115, 116, 123, 127–129, 154, 199, 200, 206, 209 Lewkowicz, J., 2, 37, 47, 56, 92, 202 Li, Y., vi, x, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 28, 29, 46, 48–50, 52–55, 57, 58, 72, 74, 77, 78, 91–93, 96, 98, 100, 103, 111, 128, 133, 136, 151, 154–157, 163, 178, 201, 204, 215, 229, 230

254 Index

Lillis, T. M., 2, 12, 37, 46, 53, 59, 68–70, 73, 77, 79, 91, 110, 134, 161, 165 Lindgreen, A., 46 Literacy brokers, 161, 193 Lo, W. A.-Y., 25 Localisation, 2, 15, 55, 59, 120 Local revision, 125 Logic, 111, 114, 125, 137, 196–197, 207, 209, 231 Logical, 48, 113, 136, 178, 185, 196, 197, 199, 207 Logical line, 196, 197, 199, 220, 221 Loi, C. K., 25, 34, 117 Lu, J., 48, 156 Luo, N., vi, xi, 37, 157, 161, 231 M

Maclean, J., 200 Mainland, 2–10, 15, 45, 54, 57, 214 Mainly, 12, 14, 25, 37, 50, 72, 77, 80, 94, 114, 124, 132, 150, 178, 195, 204 Manuscript, v, vii, 9, 33, 35, 36, 38, 51, 56, 59, 71, 74, 94–95, 97, 100, 110, 112, 122–129, 133, 143, 148, 150, 153, 154, 157–164, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177–180, 182–187, 189–192, 195, 196, 198–201, 203, 204, 206, 209, 214, 216, 219–221, 246 Marshall, C., 81 Matalene, C., 25 Matrix, 174, 180–188, 227 Matsuda, P. K., 24–26, 46, 55, 57, 120, 152, 218

Mauranen, A., 56, 102, 117, 202, 218 McDowell, L., 55 McGrail, M. R., 156 McGrath, L., 56, 202, 218 Mediate, 145, 147, 149, 150 Mediators, 157, 161 Mei, J., 9 Mentioned, 2, 7, 13, 28, 34, 47, 48, 51–53, 57, 109, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, 125, 131, 150, 152, 153, 158, 160, 163, 182, 187, 190, 191, 198, 203 Metacognitive, 29, 31, 36, 38, 50, 80, 82, 107, 110, 121, 124, 178 Metacognitive strategies, 31, 51, 107, 121, 124 Method(s), viii, ix, 14–16, 33, 37, 38, 51, 68–70, 73, 74, 76, 79–81, 83, 96, 111, 112, 116, 118, 123–125, 130, 133, 144, 145, 147, 148, 156, 158, 176, 177, 180, 182, 183, 185, 188, 189, 191, 197, 198, 204–206, 225–227, 229, 230, 245 Miles, M., 80, 81 Model, 26–30, 32, 36, 50, 80, 95, 107, 112, 146, 155, 175, 177, 185, 197, 199, 203, 209, 221 Modulating, 119, 121–124 Mohan, B. A., 25 Moreno, A. I., vi, x, 2, 74, 96, 135, 150, 157, 230 Morley, J., 229, 230 Motivation, 94, 101, 182 Move analysis, 32 Mu, C., 2, 3, 25, 31, 34, 46, 117

 Index 

Multilingual, 3, 10, 12, 14–16, 24, 29, 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 46–54, 57–59, 67, 70, 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 83, 89–103, 111, 119, 125, 126, 128, 136, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 161, 163, 165, 172, 177, 179, 192, 193, 198, 207, 209, 213 Multilingual scholars, vi–ix, xiii, 3, 12, 14–16, 29, 30, 33–35, 37, 38, 45–54, 57–59, 67, 70, 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 83, 89–103, 111, 119, 125, 126, 128, 136, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 161, 163, 165, 172, 177, 179, 192, 193, 198, 202, 207, 213–220, 222, 230–232 Multiple, x, 26, 46, 68–70, 79, 82, 145, 146, 174, 175, 182, 188, 190 Mungra, P., 48, 94, 214 Mur Dueñas, P., 25, 70, 71, 79, 110 Muresan, L.-M., 2, 5, 48, 54, 55, 76 Myers, G., 14, 128, 150 N

Native speakers, 1, 31, 55, 56, 219 Natural sciences (NS), 4, 6, 9, 12, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 101, 144 Nesi, H., 2, 6 Network, 27, 37, 51, 56, 70, 100, 114, 144, 145, 147, 148, 159, 161, 165, 208, 210 News value, 2, 35, 114, 193, 197, 207, 209, 219 Nodes, 80 Non-native speakers, 1, 54, 56, 156, 219

255

Noor, R., 117 Novel, 13, 33, 144–146, 153, 155, 160, 164, 179, 180, 185, 189, 199 Novelty, 113, 114, 144, 146, 148, 164, 172, 179, 180, 182, 183, 188, 193, 200, 207, 209, 219, 221 Novice researchers, vii, 11, 16, 32, 97, 121, 133, 134, 136, 153, 156, 179, 192, 195, 209, 219, 220, 230 Nwogu, K. N., 147 O

Okamura, A., 158, 165 O’Malley, J. M., 82 Optimization, 199, 200, 206 Organisation, 24, 25, 30, 68, 111, 122, 145, 147, 164, 175–177, 198, 199, 221, 227 Organise, 26, 50, 114, 121, 123, 157, 209, 220 Organising, 30, 111–114, 146, 151, 172, 173, 175, 176, 209 Over-revision, 185 P

Paltridge, B., 13, 57, 128 Pan, X., 8, 219 Paragraph, 112, 113, 123, 125, 126, 128, 132, 133, 137, 146, 159, 205, 206 Participants, ix, 16, 28, 31, 32, 37, 49, 67, 69, 71–77, 79, 81–83, 89, 91, 93, 94, 96, 103, 122, 178, 201, 214, 215, 217

256 Index

Patching, 123, 178, 221 Path, 144–147, 160 Pathway, 150 Patient, 25, 49, 191–192, 220, 221 Pattern, 23–25, 68, 145, 148, 171, 173–175, 180, 181, 184–187, 209, 221 Patton, M. Q., 82 Payant, C., 54, 58 Pedagogy, 45, 229 Peer review, viii, 9, 13, 34, 37, 53, 57, 102, 120, 122, 126, 153, 174, 216 Pérez-Llantada, C., 2, 5, 48, 53–55, 76, 98 Periphery, 1, 102 Perseverance, 165, 192 Plain language, 207 Planning, 26, 29, 31, 107, 119, 121 Plo, R., 55 Pointed, 24, 33, 38, 73, 78, 81, 97, 112, 130, 144, 146, 151, 153, 159, 164, 174, 180, 183, 184, 191, 196 Point to point response, 221 Predicted, 122, 209 Pressure, 1, 3, 16, 37, 50, 53, 58, 59, 90, 135, 186, 215, 216, 218, 232 Pressured, 2, 11, 14, 51, 56, 89, 90, 101 Process, vii, viii, xiii, 3, 10, 13–15, 23, 26–33, 35, 36, 38, 45, 46, 54, 56, 59, 67, 70, 71, 73, 77, 79, 80, 83, 93, 94, 96, 97, 108, 110, 119, 122–126, 128, 144–146, 150, 153, 156, 163, 175, 177, 182, 188, 191, 192,

195, 196, 201–203, 207, 209, 214, 216, 219, 222, 224–226, 245, 246 Professor, 57, 70, 76, 108, 143, 165 Proposed, 2, 24, 26, 28–30, 32, 38, 45, 50, 68, 83, 107, 118, 120, 144, 146, 147, 175, 180–184, 188, 196, 197, 199, 203, 205, 213 Publications, vii, viii, 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 13, 14, 33, 34, 38, 47, 54, 55, 72, 74, 76, 82, 91, 92, 96, 102, 107, 108, 110, 119–121, 124, 125, 131, 132, 134, 136, 143, 147, 148, 151, 153, 156, 159, 160, 163, 165, 172, 195, 204, 207, 208, 218 Publishing, vi, viii–x, xiii, 3–11, 14–16, 29, 30, 32–38, 45–47, 51–56, 58, 59, 67, 70, 71, 73–75, 77–83, 89–103, 108–111, 118–120, 124, 128, 131, 134, 136, 137, 143, 144, 151–153, 155, 156, 160, 161, 163–165, 172, 191–193, 195, 201–203, 208, 213–222, 224–232, 238–245 Putative, 31, 144–147 Q

Qiu, C. H., 4, 7, 8 Qualitative, vii, ix, 3, 10, 15, 28, 68, 69, 79, 82, 110, 193, 232 Questionnaire, viii, 26, 67, 71, 73–77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 95, 98, 102, 103, 109, 154, 197, 201, 214, 216, 218, 219, 222, 230

 Index  R

Raimes, A., 26, 125 Ramanathan, V., 68, 70 Reader expectation, 24 Rebut, 130, 182, 188, 207 Recognised, 15, 16, 29, 45, 47, 68, 115, 120, 122, 163, 174 Regulation, 147 Related, vii, viii, 11, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 35, 37, 47–49, 69, 75, 80, 82, 91, 94, 95, 111, 121, 132, 143–147, 152, 153, 159, 160, 172, 175, 181, 189, 203, 213, 214 Reminding, 115, 116, 130, 131 Removing, 184, 221 Ren, S. L., 10 Reported, 2, 7, 9, 11, 16, 28, 30, 37, 46, 49, 50, 54, 80–82, 89, 90, 93, 94, 100, 108, 112, 117, 122, 128, 133–135, 144, 150–152, 154, 157, 165, 171, 172, 178, 198, 201, 202, 208, 214–216, 220, 226 Representation, 29, 174, 180–183, 185, 188, 206 Resch, K. L., 57 Research, x, 1, 2, 4–8, 10–16, 23, 25–28, 30, 32–36, 38, 45–51, 53–55, 57–59, 67–75, 77–79, 81–83, 89–98, 100–102, 108, 111–114, 117–124, 126, 132–136, 143–147, 149–159, 161, 164, 171, 172, 174–177, 179, 180, 182–184, 188, 191, 193, 196–204, 207, 208, 213, 245 Research articles, vi, viii, x, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 25, 27,

257

32, 47, 51, 54, 77, 79, 89–98, 101, 103, 108, 114, 119–121, 126, 132, 135, 136, 143, 144, 146, 150–152, 154, 156–159, 164, 171, 172, 176, 177, 179, 193, 196, 197, 201, 202, 207, 208, 214–216, 218–220, 222–228, 230–232, 245 Reshaping, 174, 186, 187 Respondents, 16, 71, 79, 89–97, 99–101, 154, 214, 216, 218, 219, 222 Responding strategies, 128 Response, 47, 68, 74, 75, 79, 96, 115, 116, 122, 123, 127–130, 145, 148, 158–159, 182, 184–191, 205, 206, 221 Result, vii, 8, 46, 57, 84, 95, 102, 118, 123, 124, 145, 157, 201, 214, 221 Reviewer(s), x, 11, 15, 16, 34, 36, 47, 53, 56–59, 74, 77, 79, 80, 90, 94–97, 101, 102, 107, 109, 110, 113, 115, 116, 120, 122–124, 127–131, 134, 144, 145, 154, 158–159, 163, 164, 172, 174, 178–180, 182–185, 187–189, 191, 192, 195, 198, 200, 203–207, 209, 215, 216, 219, 221, 225, 246 Reviewing, vii, 13, 26, 30, 34, 56, 59, 74, 97, 109, 120, 123, 124, 126, 146, 163, 175, 182, 192, 195, 200–203, 207, 209, 214, 216, 219 Revise, 34, 35, 70, 93, 100, 122–126, 129, 133–135, 157, 161, 172, 178, 179, 184, 189, 191, 192, 246

258 Index

Revised, 28, 34, 38, 73, 74, 93, 109, 110, 115, 116, 122–131, 133, 135, 136, 143, 154, 159, 174, 178, 179, 182–187, 189–191, 193, 205, 206, 219 Revising, 27, 29, 34, 51, 71, 102, 124, 125, 132, 161, 178, 183–187, 191, 192, 209, 230 Revising strategies, 125, 183–187 Revision(s), 26, 28, 34, 37, 46, 51, 93, 97, 102, 107, 115, 122–128, 133, 135, 144, 154, 157, 159, 162, 165, 172, 175, 179, 180, 182, 183, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191, 193, 204–207, 216, 225, 246 Rewriting, 133, 221 Rey-Rocha, J., vi, x, 74 Rhetoric, viii, 23–25, 34, 46, 95, 101, 117, 119 Rhetorical difference, 24, 38, 49, 77, 95, 111, 117–119, 150–152, 164, 176–177, 221 Rhetorical preference, 15, 24, 150 Rhetorical strategies, 31, 148 Riazi, A., 28 Rickard, C. M., 156 Rigid, 95, 124, 134, 175, 176, 201, 208 Robinson, M., 112 Rose, H., 55 Rossman, G. B., 81 Round, 74, 75, 120, 123, 124, 129, 180, 182, 183, 185, 188, 189 Ru, X., vi, xi S

Sachdev, I., 74 Sakaduski, N., 207

Salager-Meyer, F., 47, 48, 55, 127, 128, 149, 214, 219 Samraj, B., 35 Santin, D., 2 Scardamalia, M., 27, 28, 225 Scenario planning, 121, 221 Schluer, J., 2 Scholars, 1–4, 6–16, 25, 28–30, 32–35, 37, 38, 45–53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 70, 73–77, 79, 81–83, 89–103, 107, 111, 112, 119–121, 123, 125, 126, 128, 136, 137, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 160–163, 165, 172, 176, 177, 179, 185, 192, 193, 197, 198, 201, 202, 207, 209, 213, 245, 246 Schwartz-Shea, P., 82 SCI, 1, 4–9, 13, 108, 171, 177, 195, 202, 203, 214, 227, 228 Sciencenet, 9, 98, 100, 109 Scientific community, 13, 14, 33, 120, 124, 129, 152 Scientific discourse, 12–14 Scollon, R., 38 Score, 145, 159 Second, x, 4, 6, 8, 15, 23, 24, 29, 36, 49, 68, 75, 82, 90, 93, 102, 112, 113, 115, 122–128, 137, 146, 147, 163, 181–187, 189, 190, 197, 199, 205, 209 Second language writing, 15, 23, 24, 68, 163 Section, 33, 35, 90, 95, 107, 111–113, 118, 119, 122, 123, 125, 126, 133, 135, 147, 148, 150, 152, 156, 157, 173–178, 182, 184, 193, 196, 198, 199, 209, 246

 Index 

Select, 73, 122, 134, 151, 153, 176, 189 Selling point, 111 Shaikh, A., 153 Shanghai, viii, 11, 67, 71, 73, 75, 100, 103, 171, 222 Sheldon, E., 2, 127 Shi, L., 98 Shortest, 144–147 Signaling, 147, 150 Silva, J., 6, 117 Specialty, 153 Spiral, 33, 35, 38, 126 Stake, R. E., 69 Stapleton, P., 25 St. John, M. J., 2, 23, 46, 49, 52, 53, 154, 161 Strategies, vi–viii, xiii, 3, 11, 15, 16, 26, 28–30, 36, 38, 45, 49, 52–53, 59, 70, 73, 77, 80–83, 103, 107, 110–137, 144–164, 172–193, 196–208, 213, 219–221, 224, 229, 232, 245 Su, Y., vi, xi Succeeding, viii, 30, 50, 84, 153, 193, 209 Suggestions, viii, x, 34, 45, 75, 97, 122–124, 128–130, 179, 187, 189–191, 204–207, 216, 221, 222, 226 Summarised, 15, 29, 30, 47, 50, 107, 110, 111, 137, 144, 147, 155, 193, 198, 200, 213, 219, 220, 229, 232 Swales, J., 1, 14, 32, 37, 46, 51, 56, 107, 111, 112, 145, 146, 163, 174, 197, 200, 201, 226 Sweetnam Evans, M., 25

259

T

Tang, R., 115, 148, 156 Tanimoto, K., 191 Tardy, C. M., 57 Taxonomy, viii, xiii, 3, 31, 52–53, 70, 213, 220, 221, 224, 232 Team, 53, 108, 110, 131–134, 136, 160, 208, 210, 220, 221, 227 Teng, L. S., 29 Thorat, S., 2 Tian, M., vi, xi, 2, 3, 37, 58 Tollefson, J., 6 Transcriptional, 147 Translating service, 51, 163, 230, 231 U

Uzuner, S., 23, 30, 46, 47, 50, 52, 53, 95, 129 V

Vanhamme, J., 46 Verma, S., 2 Version, 79, 127, 128, 131, 154, 159, 174, 175, 178, 180–183, 193, 205, 206, 231 Voice, 14, 48, 49, 95, 117, 148, 164, 186 Vygotsky, L., 31, 32 W

Wang, G., 34 Wang, Q., 72 Wang, S. H., 29, 52, 53, 191 Wang, W., 26 Wang, X., 229 Wang, Y. D., 116

260 Index

Watson-Gegeo, K. A., 68, 69 Webber, P., 48, 94, 214 Wen, Q., 26 Wenge, E., 31, 32, 37 Wilcox, K. C., 164 Willey, I., 191 Write, 10, 13, 16, 24, 26, 33, 35, 36, 51, 81, 83, 89, 90, 92, 93, 97, 101, 110, 111, 113–115, 117–119, 121, 125–127, 130, 133–136, 143, 148, 149, 152, 154–157, 160, 164, 165, 171, 177, 179, 192, 197, 199–201, 203, 207, 245, 246 Writing, x, 3, 10–12, 15, 16, 23–38, 46–49, 51–53, 58, 59, 68–70, 73–77, 79–83, 89–96, 98, 100–102, 107, 109–111, 113–115, 117, 119–122, 124–126, 131–137, 148, 151, 152, 154–157, 161, 163–165, 171, 175–179, 183, 186, 189–193, 195, 196, 198, 200–205, 207, 208, 213, 222–231, 238–246 Writing directly in English, 177, 178 Writing process, vii, 15, 26–29, 31, 33, 36, 54, 70, 73, 110, 125, 207, 214, 220, 246 Wu, Y. S., 6, 8, 78, 222 X

Xing, W. J., 75 Xiong, B. Q., 4, 8 Xu, X., 6 Xue, L., 116 Xue, M., 72

Y

Yang, Chen-ning, 160 Yang, R., 35 Yang, W. M., 116 Yang, Y., 78, 101 Yanow, D., 82 Ye, T. Q., 4 Years, 1, 4, 6, 13, 32, 47, 51, 70–72, 76, 79, 83, 93, 108, 122, 131, 135, 136, 152, 155, 157, 171, 172, 180, 192, 202, 209 Yin, R. K., 68 Yockey, R. D., 80 Your, 77, 97, 113, 118, 123, 125, 128, 131, 133, 136, 153, 154, 157, 161, 184, 196, 198, 203, 207, 245, 246 Yu, S. N., 202, 219 Z

Zamel, V., 26, 117, 125 Zeinolabedini, M., 2 Zhang, C. B., 116 Zhang, L. J., ix, 2, 3, 29, 46, 101, 117 Zhao Jie, 78, 79, 103, 107–137, 152, 164, 198, 208, 216, 218, 220, 223, 224, 226–228 Zheng Fei, 78, 103, 143–165, 205, 208, 216, 218–220, 230 Zheng, Y., 2, 3, 10, 55, 58 Zhong, M., 160 Zhu, P., 7 Zhu, W., 76 Zones of proximal development (ZPD), 32