LINGUIST List 26.684
Mon Feb 02 2015
Review: Applied Linguistics: Curry, Lillis (2013)
Editor for this issue: Sara Couture <saralinguistlist.org>
Date: 13-Mar-2014
From: Pejman Habibie < habibiepezhman
gmail.com">phabibie
uwo.ca, habibiepezhman
gmail.com>
Subject: A Scholar's Guide to Getting Published in English
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AUTHOR: Mary Jane Curry
AUTHOR: Theresa Lillis
TITLE: A Scholar's Guide to Getting Published in English
SUBTITLE: Critical Choices and Practical Strategies
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2013
REVIEWER: Pejman Habibie, University of Western Ontario
Review's Editors: Malgorzata Cavar and Sara Couture
INTRODUCTION
“A Scholar’s Guide To Getting Published In English” is a guide book aimed at demystifying occluded or semi-occluded aspects of scholarly writing and publication for academics, especially those who have English as an additional language (EAL) and belong to Kachru’s (1985) outer and expanding circles where English is not the dominant language. The book consists of eighteen chapters including the introduction. Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, the remaining chapters have a unified structure and identical constituent sections. They begin with a section called chapter focus. This section presents the overall theme which is elaborated on in subsequent sections. Based on thematic orientation, examples are presented and commented on in all chapters. The concluding sections of chapters are “thinking about your experience”, “suggestions for further action”, “useful resources”, “related research”, and “information box.” These sections provide the reader with extra information on related research and issues and help the reader to see their own experiences in the discussed framework.
SUMMARY
The book begins with an overview of issues concerning scholarly production in today’s academia. In this chapter, Curry and Lillis underline the significance and the challenging nature of publication in English-medium journals especially for multilingual scholars. The authors also highlight the objectives of the book and what distinguishes it from parallel publications. They explain how related issues are discussed in a broader sociopolitical framework rather than a merely rhetorical or linguistic one, and where they have arrived at the notions, principles, and examples presented in the book. They clarify the terms that have been adopted in referring to contested concepts as well as the genres and academic disciplines. Finally, they explain the framework adopted in subsequent chapters and how this guidebook can support the practices of scholars.
In chapter one, “Identifying your personal interests,” Curry and Lillis focus on the set of decisions that EAL scholars have to make in their publication practices concerning the choice of the academic communities they want to address and contribute to. They draw upon a scholar’s personal story about writing in academia to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of this decision-making process. They also explain how the term “international publication” is interpreted outside of the Anglophone center.
The next two chapters concern the key role of governmental and institutional assessment criteria in survival and promotion of scholars and their decisions for publication in inter/national contexts as well as different languages. In chapter four, “Entering academic conversations,” the authors focus on the significance of academic conferences in developing an understanding of current disciplinary discussions and formation of local and international research networks.
In the following two chapters, Curry and Lillis point out that attention to issues presented in scholarly journals indicates disciplinary concerns and discussions and contribute to targeting the right journal and fashioning the manuscript for intended discourse communities as well.
Chapter seven concerns the significance of acknowledging and citing other scholar’s work and the role of citation in contextualizing one’s research and relating it to ongoing disciplinary conversations. The authors define integral, non-integral citation, and quotation in scholarly texts and explain discursive reasons behind each.
In the following two chapters, the authors compare potential pros and cons of publishing book chapters with those of journal articles and the role of timing in writing and submitting. Using excerpts from an online call for book chapters, they familiarize the reader with how book chapters are solicited by editors, and raise their awareness of intricacies and problems involved in the publication process such as timelines, delays, etc. They exemplify a scholar’s experience in contributing a chapter to an edited book and how they developed a conference poster into a full book chapter. They also present the trajectory of a co-authored article toward publication, and demonstrate the unexpected circumstances that might influence the publication process time-wise.
In chapter ten, the authors discuss the significance of material aids such as research funding, bibliographic resources, and travel funding in the publication process, and their key role in obtaining access to intellectual and social supports such as research networks and literacy brokers. Using EAL scholars' experiences and accounts, they also point out how electronic and bibliographic management programs can provide scholars with useful information.
Curry and Lillis investigate EAL scholars' decision-making regarding the language(s) that they use to address different academic communities in chapter eleven. They also refer to different approaches to translation and publishing parallel texts for different academic communities as strategies that EAL scholars adopt in their publication practices.
Chapters twelve and thirteen concern the significance of local and transnational networks in the publication process and coauthorship. The authors discuss how academic research networks develop over time and how forging them and participating in them provide scholars with access to various material and social resources necessary for academic productivity. They draw on established and novice scholars' accounts to demonstrate a range of experiences that they had in co-authorship with their colleagues, supervisors, and students.
The authors discuss the types and limitations of support that academic and literacy brokers can provide, and the significance of negotiation with editors and reviewers in chapters fourteen and fifteen. To further explain and clarify submission and negotiation practices, they also examine manuscript submission guidelines from two academic journals, draw upon an EAL scholar’s account about preparing a manuscript for submission and another scholar’s cover letter to an editor, and also present a cover letter for a revised manuscript.
In chapter sixteen, “Producing a journal”, Curry and Lillis draw on guidelines from a journal website and scholars’ accounts to demonstrate how academic journals invite reviewers and describe a range of practices, opportunities, and benefits that is offered and gained through reviewing. They foreground difficult choices and important decisions that scholars encounter in assuming reviewing and editing roles. They also present an overview of journal mentorship and support programs for writers. In the concluding chapter, the authors discuss the changing nature of global publication and reiterate the aims and goals of writing this guide.
EVALUATION
In recent years, the publication industry has witnessed a surge in the production of guidebooks on scholarly writing and publishing. The support provided in most of these resources is limited to technical and structural aspects of academic writing and publishing. What makes this book outstanding is the fact that it adopts a more holistic approach to academic publication and steps beyond technical aspects that stand in this publication secondary to more significant sociopolitical and geolinguistic issues involved, especially in EAL scholars’ publication practices. The book encapsulates such concerns and intricacies and provides a structured, strategic, and easy-to-understand approach to coping with them.
In chapters four, twelve, and thirteen, the authors explain pre-/post-conference procedures and enumerate some of the merits of collaborative work, such as, critical perspective on one's writing, sharing authorship responsibilities, and developing interpersonal communication. Such information enlightens novice EAL writers as to how such academic fora and practices facilitate their scholarly socialization and, therefore, contribute to their inter/national visibility.
In chapters two, three, five, six, and seven, Curry and Lillis demonstrate the inner-workings of organizational evaluation systems and enumerate factors such as institutional assessment measures, geographical location, index rankings, and number of citations as the criteria that influence scholar’s decisions in the submission process. They discuss the status of academic productivity as a pivotal evaluative factor in such reward systems. An exploration of such measures contributes to EAL scholars’ informed decisions about the publication practices within their academic context. They explain American and international citation indexes, the concept of ''the impact factor'' as a quantitative index of credibility for a publication, as well as different types of publishers and journals such as university press, open access, and predatory publishers. They also discuss academic, personal, contextual, as well as political issues involved in citation decisions and practices of scholars. Such discussion raises EAL writers’s awareness of policies behind the existence and development of those organizations and measures, and foregrounds a power dynamics and scholarly rivalries within academic camps and behind the scenes. In chapter seventeen, the authors draw on a campaign in Taiwan to indicate critical resistance to the pressures of publishing in English-medium journals. They also refer to the open access movement and its role in the free dissemination of knowledge.
In chapters ten and eleven, Curry and Lillis highlight geolinguistic disadvantages of EAL scholars and shed light on the difficulties that these academics encounter in getting access to material aids, such as, funding and academic resources. They explore some of the strategies through which EAL scholars gain access to such possibilities inside or outside their own contexts. They also draw on EAL scholars' experiences to indicate tensions that these scholars face when thinking and writing in a local language and in a foreign language.
The experiences presented make the accounts more tangible and the guidance more effective for the reader. The comments provided by the authors clarify the opaque aspects of examples. The “thinking about your experience” section generalizes the theme to the reader’s situation, helps the reader reanalyze their own issues, and informs their decisions in their future practices. Last but not least, relevant information provided in “useful resources”, “related research”, and “information box” sections contributes to the development of researchers' knowledge base in this domain and is among the strengths of the book.
On the other hand, the orientation towards writing and publishing practices of peripheral EAL scholars, rooted in the ever-increasing dominance of English over academia and consequent, so-called, geolinguistic disadvantage of EAL scholars, has resulted in a biased approach to research and material development in this domain. This biased view, although hidden in the title of the book, is evident and mentioned in the focus, scope, and content of the book. Focusing on EAL scholars and marginalizing practices of scholars that happen to have English as their first language gives the impression that Kachru’s Inner Circle (1985) (where English is the dominant language) were a safe haven in which academic publication happened naturally and willingly. It should be noted that academic English has no native speakers and in the current research world the difference is no longer between Anglophones and non-Anglophones but between experienced researchers and novice ones (Mauranen et al., 2010; Swales, 2004). Scholarly productivity cannot be taken for granted by virtue of native speaker status or membership in prestigious institutions of higher education (Belcher, 2007; Ferguson et al., 2011; Uzuner, 2008). Consequently, in the globalized academic environment, guides to getting published in English need to adopt a more inclusive approach in demonstrating the challenging nature of academic publication for all scholars as well as presenting more comprehensive strategies.
REFERENCES
Belcher, D. D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(1), 1-22. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2006.12.001
Ferguson, G., Perez-Llantada, C., and Plo, R. (2011). English as an international language of scientific publication: A study of attitudes. World Englishes, 30(1), 41-59. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-971X.2010.01656.x
Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk and H. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World (pp. 11-34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mauranen, A., Hynninen, N., and Ranta, E. (2010). English as an academic lingua franca: The ELFA project. English for Specific Purposes, 29(3), 183-190. doi: 10.1016/j.esp.2009.10.001
Swales, J. M. (2004). Research genres: Explorations and applications. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Uzuner, S. (2008). Multilingual scholars’ participation in core/global academic communities: A literature review. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(4), 250-263. doi: 10.1016/j.jeap.2008.10.007
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Pejman Habibie is a research and teaching assistant in the Faculty of Education at The University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research interests are English for professional academic purposes (EPAP), academic writing and publishing, genre analysis, and doctoral education.
Page Updated: 02-Feb-2015