Aiming for National or
International Publication:
Issues in Designing and
Writing Research Papers
Li Zonghong
English Department, Hexi University
The Challenge
• Getting research published nationally or
internationally is a universal challenge
• More so for writers of English as an Additional
Language (EAL)
• Incorporates challenges
– with language
– with research content
– with showing membership of the national or
international research community
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Experience Addressing the
Challenge
• With writers of English as a first language
– Research students
– Novice researchers in workplaces
• With EAL research students
–
–
–
–
Literature reviews
Research proposals
Theses and dissertations
Journal articles
3
Experience Cont.
• With EAL writers in China
– Linguistics and literature researchers
– Research students (non-English-majors)
– 6-day workshops annually since 2001
– Funded by science organisations
• Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
• International Centres for Studies Relating to
Language, Its Teaching and Learning
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Transferable Teaching Approach
• Based on
– Results of genre analysis studies of
research articles (RAs)
– Collaboration with ‘expert informants’
(authors, editors, referees) from content
field
– Methodology from EAP/ESP
• Not well known to scientists anywhere!
– Students work on writing a paper on their
own results (Cargill 2004)
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This presentation is for • Research students and researchers who
want to publish their own results
• Research supervisors who want to help
their students to publish
• Development of the approach through
ongoing contact in the future
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Basic Components of the Approach
(1)
• Pedagogical summary of results of genre
analysis of RAs
– Macro-structure
– Section by section
• Guided analysis of carefully selected
example paper/s from target field and
journal/s
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Basic Components of the Approach
(2)
• Focus on English language features
commonly used to express the functions, eg
– the/a/- in Introductions
– passive voice in Methods
• Students draft their own section
• Refereeing processes
– discussed in detail, and
– practised, with feedback
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Examples of Materials
• Referee guidelines and author instructions
• Article structures
– Argument papers
– Empirical papers (data is collected and analysed)
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Writing Articles: The Twoaudience Dilemma for Authors
• Assumed audience: readers of the journal;
our discipline-colleagues
• The prior audience: the journal editor and
(mostly anonymous) referees
• Manuscripts must pass the gate-keepers
before the assumed audience becomes
relevant
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The Approval Process (1)
• Author submits manuscript with covering
letter
• Editor decides if worthy of refereeing
• If yes, sends to (usually) 2 experts in the
field for review, usually ‘blind’ (no names)
• Each referee writes a report, usually
based on guidelines/criteria provided by
editor
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The Approval Process (2)
• Editor makes final decision:
– Accept as it stands (rare)
– Accept with minor revisions
– Reconsider after major revisions (detailed in
report)
– Reject
• Editor usually judges whether revisions
are satisfactory; sometimes re-reviewed
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What are Referees Looking for?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Of interest to the readers of the journal
Grounded in a/the relevant literature
Methodologically sound
Structure and organisation as expected
Format requirements met (referencing etc)
Makes important contribution to the field
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Examples of Authentic Criteria
(1)
• Interesting to the readers of the journal
– Content is relevant to target audience
– The paper says something of interest to the
… readership
– Engages with issues/problems of significance
to the … community
– The suitability of the topic dealt with in the
paper
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Examples of Authentic Criteria
(2)
• Grounded in the relevant literature
– The issue/problem is well situated in an
appropriate literature.
– Is grounded in theory/scholarship: is the
paper informed by relevant published work in
this field?
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Examples of Authentic Criteria
(3)
• Methodologically sound
– The paper demonstrates methodological
soundness.
– The design and analysis methods are
appropriate
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Examples of Authentic Criteria
(4)
• Structure and organisation as expected
– The paper is succinct and coherent.
– The conclusion is well supported and
persuasively argued.
– Content is organized clearly and ideas are
coherent.
– Is logically argued to a well-supported
conclusion.
– Evinces a coherent structure
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Examples of Authentic Criteria
(5)
• Format requirements met (referencing etc)
– Conforms to format guidelines, including
appropriate referencing style and accurate
proofreading.
– Style is appropriate and bibliographic
conventions are followed accurately.
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Examples of Authentic Criteria
(6)
• Makes an important contribution to the
field
– The paper provides an important critical
and/or analytical insight.
– Article makes a worthwhile contribution to the
field.
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Additional Referee Factors
• Refereeing is unpaid work for busy
people.
• Language problems may annoy, or
impede full understanding of intended
meaning (Flowerdew 2001).
• Some journals can afford language
editors; many cannot.
• Even with interesting content, structure
or language issues may lead to
rejection.
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Genre Analysis Insights into
Article Structure
• Most work on Introductions (eg Swales 1990, Samraj 2002)
• Focus is on papers which report a study
– Results, Discussions, Conclusions
(eg Brett 1994, Holmes
1997, Yang & Allison 2003)
• Teaching texts also available (Weissberg and Buker 1990)
• Pedagogical summary can be useful for novice
writers
• Results on RAs in Applied Linguistics suggest
considerable flexibility (Yang & Allison 2003, 2004)
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‘Secondary’ AL Papers
(Yang & Allison 2004)
• Introduction – Argumentation – Conclusion
• Optional transition stages: theoretical basis,
pedagogic implications/application
• Three overall purposes suggested:
– Theory-oriented (point-by-point structure)
– Pedagogy-oriented (problem-solution or
demand-supply)
– (Pedagogic) application-oriented (problemsolution-demonstration)
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IMRAD: The Logic behind the
Structure
Abstract
Introduction
Materials and
methods
Results
Discussion
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion/Conclusion/
Pedagogic implications
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Results: The ‘DRIVER’
• Relates to ‘importance’ of contribution
• Four questions to ask about your results:
– What exactly do my results (analyses) say?
(= concise summary)
– What do these results mean in their context?
(= significance)
– Who needs to know this? (= my audience)
– Why do they need to know? (= significance)
(Cargill 2004)
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Audience Issues
• When selecting a journal, go to internet
homepages and check out the sections called
Scope and Coverage / Audience.
• Check also Instructions to Authors.
• Aim to scan several issues of the journal, and
read several papers, to get an idea of the
style and approach.
• Try to refer in your paper to some articles in
the same journal.
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Example Paper for Today’s Talk
Yang Ruiying and Desmond Allison (2003)
Research articles in applied linguistics:
Moving from results to conclusions
English for Specific Purposes 22, 365-385
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Yang and Allison’s Results
Question
What do the
results say?
What do they
mean in
context?
Who needs to
know?
Why?
Answer
Organisational options in AL concluding
sections relating to function; moves AND
steps in AL Discussions; able to capture
data of 20 RAs insightfully
Considering all types of concluding
sections together increases usefulness
of analysis for research and teaching
purposes
Genre-analysis researchers; those
teaching students to write research
articles in AL
To expand knowledge of RA structure;
potentially to improve teaching
effectiveness
The Five Stages of an Introduction
(after Weissberg and Buker 1990)
General
Specific
1. General statements about a field of
research to provide the reader with a
setting or context for the problem to be
reported and claim its centrality
2. More specific statements about the
aspects of the problem already studied
by other researchers, laying a foundation
of information already known
3. Statements that indicate the need for more
investigation to create a gap or research
niche for the present study
4. Very specific statements giving the
purpose or objective of the author’s
study or its principal activity
5. Optional statement(s) that give a value or
justification for carrying out the study
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Stage
Realisation
1- Setting
RAs, the central genre of knowledge production, have
received extensive attention in genre analysis…
Most studies have… Much research has been done
2- Previous wk on…
3- Gap
So far, virtually no published research takes account of
the influence of neighbouring sections… Despite more
recent progress in understanding selected sections,
the general picture remains unclear.
Our study accordingly explores some of the ways in
4- Present aim which empirical research articles in one discipline
proceed from presenting results through to closure.
The Results and subsequent sections are crucial and
5- Justification essentially related stages of RAs, in which …
Extra step
Our paper develops as follows. After reviewing…, we
briefly describe…
Conclusions for Intending Authors
(1)
• Consider from the planning stages how
you will aim to meet refereeing criteria.
• Select a ‘package’ of results and match to
a suitable journal.
• Become an apprentice genre analyst: read
all papers for genre features as well as
content.
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Conclusions for Intending Authors
(2)
• Consider informal ‘journal clubs’ to discuss
articles
– Where in the article do the authors make and
substantiate their claims of ‘relevance’,
‘importance’, etc.?
– Can you identify possible ‘sentence templates’
that could be re-used for similar purposes in
your own writing?
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An Example from Yang & Allison
“Although further investigation using the present
framework would be needed in order to verify its
wider descriptive adequacy and its pedagogic utility,
we are already confident that it is worth exploring with
teachers and students.”
Key question: Are the analysis results
(presented earlier) strong enough to make
this claim credible?
Note the hedging effect of the introductory
‘although’ clause.
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Conclusions for Intending Authors
(3)
• Publishing a paper is joining a national or
international conversation.
– Listen to others’ voices keenly as preparation
for writing (ie read and discuss their papers).
– Learn as much as you can about who the
other players are and why they may hold the
views they do.
– Think about features of the Chinese context
that may form a point of interest or
comparison for your audience.
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Conclusions for Intending Authors
(4)
• Recent research highlights the tension
between text and context in learning
research writing (eg Johns and Swales 2002).
• A valuable contribution to understanding
the context of the research article can
come from attending at depth to insights
from sociology and related fields.
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Conclusions for Intending Authors
(5)
• Context of RAs is not (should not be
seen as) fixed (Canagarajah 2002)
• Issue can be framed as:
– “Improving access to publication for EAL
authors”; OR
– Opening opportunities for the academy to
engage with perspectives not previously
heard
– But what are the REAL* ramifications of
such an approach?
* Research English as an Additional Language
(Cadman and Cargill, 2005)
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References
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Brett, P. (1994). “A genre analysis of the Results section of sociology articles.” English for Specific
Purposes 13(1): 47-59.
Canagarajah, S. (2002) "Multilingual writers and the academic community: towards a critical
relationship." Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1: 29-44.
Cargill, M. (2004). “Transferable skills within research degrees: a collaborative genre-based approach
to developing publication skills and its implications for research education.” Teaching in Higher
Education 9(1): 83-98.
Flowerdew, J. (2001). “Attitudes of journal editors to nonnative speaker contributions.” TESOL
Quarterly 35(1): 121-150.
Holmes, R. (1997). “Genre analysis, and the social sciences: an investigation of the structure of
research article discussion sections in three disciplines.” English for Specific Purposes 16(4): 321337.
Johns, A. M. and J. M. Swales (2002). “Literacy and disciplinary practices: opening and closing
perspectives.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 1: 13-28.
Samraj, B. (2002). “Introductions to research articles: variations across disciplines.” English for
Specific Purposes 21(1): 1-18.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Weissberg, R. and S. Buker (1990). Writing Up Research: Experimental research report writing for
students of English. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, USA, Prentice Hall Regents.
Yang, R. and D. Allison (2003). “Research articles in applied linguistics: moving from results to
conclusions.” English for Specific Purposes 22: 365-385.
Yang, R. and D. Allison (2004). "Research articles in applied linguistics: structures from a functional
perspective.“ English for Specific Purposes 23: 264-279.
Thank you for your attention!
Li Zonghong
[email protected]
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