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- Volume 3, Issue 1, 2022
Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2022
Volume 3, Issue 1, 2022
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Mediation and uptake in manuscript revision
Author(s): Oliver Shawpp.: 6–28 (23)More LessAbstractIn line with recent interest in mediation as a widespread phenomenon in multilingual academic publication in English, this paper describes and exemplifies a method of researching production practices that is based on text histories. The evolution of rhetorical patterning in two published articles by established Spanish biomedical authors is used to explore the authors’ writing and how their texts were evaluated by an in-house language editor and later by journal gatekeepers. Semi-structured interviews with the two authors using talk around texts reveals commonalities and differences in author orientations towards mediation from discourse community members (journal gatekeepers) and the language professional (the in-house editor). Textual analysis as exemplified by a single rhetorically significant modification proposed by the language editor to each of the two manuscripts is used to compare the selective engagement of one author with the language editor’s contributions against the extensive reassessment of the other author in response to similar feedback. Discussion highlights the advantages and limitations of the modified text history and genre approach to understanding mediation and author orientations to mediation. Implications for textual mediation practices are discussed.
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Opening up the peer review process
Author(s): Niina Hynninenpp.: 29–50 (22)More LessAbstractMany science journals have begun either to provide authors with the opportunity to publish peer review reports alongside their published article or to use a form of interactive open access peer review, which means that the review process is made public from the start. However, because of the traditionally occluded nature of peer reviewing, much applied linguistics research on the topic has focused on corpora of individual reviews rather than the negotiation process between the author(s), reviewers, and editors that peer reviewing essentially entails. In this paper, the focus is on this negotiation process. The data are drawn from an open access journal in geosciences. They consist of review histories of three research papers with clusters of peer review reports, short comments, author replies, and editor decision letters. These clusters have been analysed chronologically in relation to one another, considering their impact and the evaluating authorities evoked in the process. The findings show that the brokers paid attention to both study- and text-related aspects in their evaluations, thus highlighting brokering as an activity related to both knowledge and text. Reviewer authority was recognised by the authors and editors alike, but the authors were also found to negotiate their divergent positions.
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Academic texts in motion
Author(s): Baraa Khuder and Bojana Petrićpp.: 51–77 (27)More LessAbstractKnowledge production in collaborative writing for publication has tended to be studied as fixed in time and place; few studies have focused on the drafting and redrafting of texts and the interactions among the co-authors involved. Using a text history approach to a research article co-authored by an exiled academic and his two more experienced co-authors, all using English as an additional language, this study investigates the impact of interactions during text production on the focal academic’s understanding of writing for English-medium international publication. We analysed the co-authors’ comments on the academic’s drafts, examining their Intervention Levels (levels of directness and explicitness) and Intervention Areas (disciplinary, writing, and publishing conventions) and the academic’s responses to these interventions. Analysis focused on interaction episodes (written interactions relating to a specific point in the text and relevant textual changes throughout drafts). Findings revealed that interventions focused on multiple areas, with the co-authors acting as knowledge brokers in all domains. The interaction dynamics changed across the drafts, in the focus of interaction episodes and the levels of co-authors’ interventions provided to the academic, which created a space to negotiate interventions and, consequently, to enrich his understanding of writing practices for international publication in English.
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Citation in global academic knowledge making
Author(s): Natalia Smirnova and Theresa Lillispp.: 78–108 (31)More LessAbstractThis paper introduces a paired text history methodology to explore the citation practices of three experienced Russian scholars in philosophy, sociology, and economics. The empirical focus is on the analysis of three paired text histories, comparing Russian-medium research articles with English-medium research articles in each discipline. By analyzing the paired text histories through the use of multiple data sources – article drafts, email correspondence surrounding text production, and interviews – focusing specifically on the changes made to citations in each pair, the paper seeks to throw light on both micro and macro level knowledge production practices. At the micro level, the paper analyses changes made to citations across English and Russian-medium texts, documenting the involvement of literacy brokers, their evaluative requests about citations, and authors’ responses to such requests. At the macro level, the paper raises questions about what counts as ‘citeworthy’ in different geolinguistic contexts and considers the consequences of citation brokering and citation practices for knowledge production and circulation globally.
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The dynamics of academic knowledge making in a multilingual world
Author(s): Theresa Lillis and Mary Jane Currypp.: 109–142 (34)More LessAbstractThe use of ‘text history’ and ‘text trajectory’ constitutes an epistemological break from historically static approaches to the study of academic writing for publication. However, there is a need to further develop dynamic approaches to professional academic text production in ways which are robustly grounded in scholars’ lived practices. The paper briefly reviews the use of ‘text history’ and ‘text trajectory’, signalling their value and some limitations, and offers a heuristic foregrounding the importance of chronotope (Bakhtin, 1981 [1935]; Blommaert, 2018), ‘text cluster’, and multi/translingual practice. Drawing on a range of data relating to 12 multilingual scholars in four national sites from the longitudinal study Professional Academic Writing in a Global Context – interviews, observations, curriculum vitae – the paper foregrounds three key chronotopic dimensions in the dynamics of textual academic knowledge making: micro time, specific moments of text production; meso time trajectories of texts; and macro time, text production practices over scholars’ life trajectories. The paper challenges the widely repeated and taken-for-granted mantra that English is currently the (only) language of science and academic knowledge production and, as such, seeks to contribute to strategies of ‘delinking’ (Mignolo, 2007) in the field of academic writing studies.
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Rethinking English as a lingua franca in scientific-academic contexts
pp.: 143–153 (11)More LessAbstractWe aim to challenge assumptions made about the use of English as a “lingua franca” in scientific-academic contexts, identify the impact of such assumptions on trajectories of knowledge production and uptake, and legitimize the use of multiple languages for transnational scholarly exchange. We set out ten principles: Using English as a scientific-academic “lingua franca” does not always promote inclusion; A language positioned as a scientific-academic “lingua franca” can act as a language of domination; Positioning English as the “lingua franca” policy may discourage translations and exclude participation; Policies which position English as being the contemporary scientific-academic “lingua franca” may convey the idea that knowledge produced in English is the only knowledge that exists; The imposition of English as a presumed scientific-academic “lingua franca” is a manifestation of the unequal distribution of knowledge production and uptake; Languages/varieties function as powerful resources for knowledge making; Choosing a language for publishing or presenting is a sociolinguistic right; Choosing a language to publish or present in is a political act; Convention organizers should have the right to promote the language(s) of their choice; Convention organizers and scholars should be as creative and sensitive to including as diverse an audience as possible.
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Review of Paltridge, Starfield & Tardy (2016): Ethnographic Perspectives on Academic Writing & Guillén-Galve & Bocanegra-Valle (2021): Ethnographies of Academic Writing Research: Theory, methods and interpretation
Author(s): Jackie Tuckpp.: 154–163 (10)More LessThis article reviews Ethnographic Perspectives on Academic WritingEthnographies of Academic Writing Research: Theory, methods and interpretation
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