Journal of Second Language Studies - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2025

Questionable research practices (QRPs) comprise a gray area of researcher decisions that may be reasonable in some situations but dubious in others. Recent works in this area have sought to catalog and estimate the presence of QRPs in applied linguistics (e.g., Isbell et al., 2022; Larsson et al., 2023). Building on those studies, we reintroduce the notion of QRPs in this introductory article to the present special issue, linking recent work in this area to related movements toward research ethics, open science, and methodological reform. We then outline the remainder of the special issue that follows. In doing so we highlight the ways in which these papers — both individually and in the aggregate — expand and advance the conceptual and methodological scope of research on QRPs. We conclude by reflecting on and considering next steps for this vibrant research agenda.

Registered reports (RRs) are gaining traction in applied linguistics as a means to enhance research transparency and credibility by disincentivizing questionable research practices that are aimed at generating statistically significant findings, and by mitigating publication bias. While the benefits of RRs are well-theorized in the literature, less is known about authors’ experiences of conducting RRs. This study explored the first-hand experiences of 12 authors of RRs in applied linguistics from an emic perspective currently underrepresented in the field. Through semi-structured interviews, we examined authors’ motivations for engaging in RRs, perceived benefits and challenges, and reflections on RRs. Our findings revealed that authors valued RRs for promoting scientific rigor and offering publication guarantee and found the process to be highly beneficial. However, tensions were also found in the process, ranging from the potentially time-consuming nature of RRs to reduced autonomy and role ambiguity experienced by some authors. Based on these insights, we offer recommendations for improving the RR process and call for greater support for all stakeholders in the process, including reviewers and editors. We also compiled a list of recommendations by our participants to aid future authors in choosing and navigating RRs.

In quantitative applied linguistics research, the ethical grey zone between responsible conduct of research and blatant misconduct covers numerous researcher practices that may be more or less ethical depending on situational variables (e.g., context, researcher intent). Known as questionable research practices (QRPs), these actions coincide with the day-to-day decision points that occur throughout the research process. Building on Larsson et al.’s (2023) investigation of the prevalence and severity of 58 field-specific QRPs among researchers in the quantitative humanities, the current study presents a thematic analysis of the 2,261 qualitative comments left by 167 of these survey respondents. Five overarching themes were identified in these comments: Roughly half of the responses were justifications of QRP actions, while others highlighted the contextually-dependent nature of QRPs and pointed to potential ambiguity in the wording of these items. These findings offer implications for how we as a field discuss QRPs, as well as researcher training practices.

The focus on ensuring quality control measures and ethics is gaining more and more prominence in the field of applied linguistics; and in this avenue, researchers are examining Questionable Research Practices (QRPs). In this study, we set out to examine self-citations within QRPs as a form of self-promotion that may unjustifiably boost the scientometrics of academics and may lead to unfair advantages. To this end, we created a database of recent open-access articles from the last five years (2019–2023) published in the five leading journals in applied linguistics (k = 359). Our findings suggest that there is a high extent of self-citations, and there are significant differences in the total counts of self-citations in the selected journals. Based on the COPE (2019) guidelines, the range of excessive self-citations is relatively high in the selected journals. Policy is needed to be included in author guidelines regarding what excessive self-citation means.

Like other questionable research practices (QRPs) discussed in this issue, self-citation can range from fitting and appropriate to self-serving and unethical (Ioannidis, 2015). The present study sought to estimate self-citation patterns using a large, representative sample of applied linguistics research articles (K = 969). Our results indicate a median of 1 self-citation per paper (2% of all references) at the individual author level (median = 3 or 5% at the author-team or article level). However, much higher rates of self-citation were also observed among individual authors and author-teams (max = 23 and 31, respectively). We explore these and other results in the context of QRPs and in light of bibliometric research from other disciplines. We also consider our findings in relation to the incentive structures in academia. Recommendations for future research are provided along with suggestions for preventing and addressing excessive self-citation for different stakeholders (e.g., journals, institutions, learned societies).

Poor sampling practices can constitute a questionable research practice when conducting L2 inferential quantitative research. The current study, a methodological synthesis (N = 433 Scopus/Web of Science (WoS) reports: cluster random sampling) of sampling practices, revealed that L2 inferential quantitative researchers rarely employed randomized and/or effect size-driven sampling processes with only eight (1.8%) and ten (2.3%) of the reports being respectively satisfactory. Furthermore, just 33.9% of the reports featured multisite (convenience) samples. In models assessing what predicted multisite sampling, whether the report was ISLA-focused (rs = −.33, p < .001) or single-authored (rs = −.15, p < .001) incurred moderate and weak negative associations. Citation analysis metric values and the Scopus/WoS contrast had no associations. The findings of this study suggest the field’s sampling practices have room to improve and guidance for future improvement is offered.

The field of applied linguistics is currently undergoing a methodological shift, specifically in raising accountability towards ethical research practices (Plonsky et al., 2024, Yaw et al., 2023). The current study aimed to discern the perceptions of research ethics of intensive English practitioners affiliated with a university and are positioned to contribute to the scholarly record. A 40-item Q-sort was used to ascertain participants’ (n = 51) perceptions of ethical, unethical and questionable research practices, which resulted in 6 distinct perceptions: ethically informed, unethically informed, uninformed, misinformed, ethically inclined, and QRP misinformed. Cross-referencing participants’ previous research experiences showed no correlation between educational attainment and perceptions of ethics but indicated a trend of theoretical and practical research as a coursework requirement at all degree levels. Overall, instruction of ethics can be supported in multiple ways to encourage and engage practitioner-researchers to contribute to the academic record.

Beginning in 2022, the field of applied linguistics has increasingly approached the evaluation of research quality through an ethical lens, with a particular emphasis on Questionable Research Practices (QRPs). Notably, the majority of existing investigations into QRPs have concentrated on mono-method studies, especially those employing quantitative methodologies, thereby neglecting the realm of mixed methods research (MMR). The present study seeks to illuminate the problematic areas that may contribute to QRPs within MMR studies. To this end, we analyzed 60 MMR studies published between 2011 and 2020 in leading journals within the domain of applied linguistics (AL). Our findings reveal a range of issues pertaining to MMR rhetoric and references, study purpose and design, as well as the integration of methodologies, all of which pose risks to the transparency and foundational principles of MMR. This study concludes with recommendations aimed at enhancing the quality of MMR studies.

Applied linguistics has been showing increased interest in research ethics, including discussion of authors’ questionable research practices (QRPs). However, less attention has been given to how organizations may engender QRPs. To address this, here we discuss how neoliberal systems of academic publishing are implicated in QRPs. Through our collaborative autoethnography as two author-editors, we jointly explore such practices’ influences. Three key findings emerge: 1. journal reviewers’ and editors’ bias towards Anglocentric writing norms; 2. the influence organizations such as publishing houses, Ministries of Education, and universities exert over academic publication; and 3. metrification of research output leading authors to disproportionately focus on journal indexing. We argue that these factors hinder faculty ability to balance publishing, teaching, and administrative responsibilities. By widening the discussion concerning QRPs, we highlight how authors’ publication practices are influenced by external factors, pushing back on the narrative of individual responsibility for QRPs.

The current position paper is a brief account of the pitfalls I have found in the research manuscripts I have reviewed over a period of twenty years. As a review panel member of several academic journals, I encountered several problems in the submissions I have been asked to review, both minor ones and those beyond repair. In this paper, I intend to report my observations with a focus on what I may call unsophisticated and simplistic treatment of the findings. To put it briefly, while some submissions are rightly rejected due to sloppy data collection, biased sampling, or erroneous use of statistics, there are papers that succeed in following the strict methodological do’s and don’ts of research but fail to make sense of the bulk of the collected data, leading to fixation at the lower levels of Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) hierarchy. I will try to address this issue, postulating that inadequate practice of critical thinking and other higher-order thinking skills such as analytical reasoning, evaluation, and inference could be partly responsible for this caveat. The paper ends with suggestions for educating would-be researchers not only by teaching the principles of conducting research but also by encouraging creativity, critical evaluation of information, and a genuine search for knowledge. Such qualities may not readily lend themselves to objective measurement and can hardly be translated into numerical indices by which research impact is estimated but they seem to add to the meaningfulness of research findings in the field.