Iranian doctoral students’ perceptions of publication in English

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the English for publication purpose practices of doctoral students in Iran. The overall objective was to explore their motives, hurdles and strategies in academic writing. Design/methodology/approach This case study draws on a narrative inquiry to explore nine science and engineering doctoral students’ perceptions of academic publication. The data were analyzed through a hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis. Findings The qualitative results showed three dominant themes, namely: motives for publication, hurdles to publication and strategies for dealing with these challenges were extracted. The main sources of motives were students’ desire to publish their works for their graduation, improve their resume, satiate the universities’ evaluation system, and finally share their knowledge worldwide. Their hurdles included: political reasons, language-related problems, center-periphery priorities and the lack of academic writing instruction. In order to overcome these hurdles, the participants employed some strategies in academic writing. Research limitations/implications Due to qualitative nature of this study, only nine PhD students were recruited and therefore the research results are not intended to render generalizability. Besides, only narratives were employed to collect the required data. Future researchers can use surveys to collect more data. Practical implications The findings are discussed within English for academic purposes discourse and some recommendations are provided to alleviate the plights of non-native-English-speaking academic writers. Originality/value The methodology and the higher education context in which this paper was conducted are new to the literature.

ELT Graduate Students’ Challenges of Writing for Scholarly Publication: Discursive Perspectives

“…Some studies have previously been conducted to examine the graduate students' challenges of writing for academic publication, particularly in doctoral education context. Grounded in narrative inquiry, Rezaei & Seyri (2019) investigated nine Doctor of Science and Engineering students' scholarly publication experiences. One of the essential findings of their study is the participants' challenges in their publication process.…”

Writing for International Journals: Lessons Learned from the Experts

“…Regarding to writing a journal article and its publication process, it was revealed that the process itself came out for various motivations and reasons from the writer. In line with this, Rezaei & Seyri [7] proven that the writer intends to write a journal article for some reasons such as for academic requirements, for better self-resume and sharing knowledge to the world. In terms of academic requirements, it is well-known for most educational institutions which regulate their students to write and publish some articles before they finish their study in those institutions.…”

“…Furthermore, publishing journals also means for an evaluation system and for sharing. In line with this, Rezaei & Seyri [7] revealed that for professor and similar professional purposes, the ranking system is evaluated based on the amount of journal publications. Submitting international journals can increase their chance to get promotions [8].…”

“…The problems related to the language problems were the most related things that also happen in some countries which do not use English as the first language. They struggle with their work in writing a journal in the English language which is not their main language [7]. In addition, academicians who have not enough training in academic writing also had a hard time.…”

“…As mentioned by one of the interviewees in Rezaei & Seyri's works which suggested to educational institutions for providing academic writing training so students understand well how to write well in a journal article. In addition, Rezaei & Seyri [7] also revealed some strategies that might work to be applied when writing a journal article. The process of writing a journal can be anticipated by some tips such as reading some related journals before writing the new one, consultation with competent supervisors, participating in writing workshops and paying professional editing services for the better result.…”