Academic Publishing and Presenting in a Global Context

< List of ReNs

Academic Publishing and Presenting in a Global Context  

Convenors:

 

In the past two decades, the field of research that examines writing, presenting, and publishing academic research has grown in parallel to the increasing pressure in a range of geolinguistic contexts for multilingual scholars and graduate students not only to publish, but often to publish in English as well as in high-status indexed journals. Although many multilingual scholars are committed to continuing to publish in local national and regional languages, publishing in English generally brings not only prestige but also material rewards such as salary and promotion. For many scholars, not publishing in English can have severe negative consequences; yet, publishing in English often requires the dedication of extra resources in terms of time, effort, and money, and can act as a barrier to scholars achieving their intellectual and political interests.

Alongside the growth of English as a global language more generally, the conditions listed above support the need for continued research on scholarly publishing and presenting, as well as the production of related texts such as reviews, grant applications, theses/dissertations, etc., and how these genres function in terms of knowledge construction and dissemination. There is also a continuing need for research on scholars publishing in local, regional and other languages and their interests and challenges in doing so in the face of the pressures to publish in English.

The network’s situated research and practices

Many researchers who have been part of this Research Network since its inception about ten years ago have documented the pressures facing multilingual scholars as they present and publish their work in English and their perspectives on these changes in working conditions and linguistic practices (e.g., Cargill & Burgess, 2017; Curry & Lillis, 2014, 2017; Lillis & Curry, 2015, 2016; in press; Paltridge, 2017; Paltridge & Starfield, 2018). Pressures for postgraduate students to publish early and often in English have also been investigated. Furthermore, the growing number of English-medium journals published outside of dominant Anglophone contexts has been documented and studied (e.g., Sheridan, 2015, 2017).

This AILA Research Network has successfully involved researchers from a wide range of geopolitical and geolinguistic locations who are interested in exploring the many facets of this phenomenon as well as proposing possible responses, both in research and practical terms. Such responses include providing ongoing support for research in publishing in languages in addition to English, the development of materials for scholars to use (Cargill & O’Connor, 2012, 2013; Curry & Lillis, 2013; Englander, 2015), workshops to support scholars’ success in publishing (Cargill& O’Connor, 2011; Corcoran, 2017); the promotion of open access publications and mandates and the “green road” or self-archiving to scientific publishing (Salager-Meyer, 2017); a reconsideration of the taboo against “dual publishing” (Curry & Lillis, 2014) and supporting scholars’ interests in continuing to publish in their local languages. Researchers in this area employ a variety of applied linguistics methodologies, from systemic functional and text linguistics to corpus linguistics and ethnographic methods.