English for Specific Purposes xxx (2015) 1–2

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

English for Specific Purposes

Review

Writing and Publishing Science Research Papers in English: A Global Perspective, Karen Englander. Springer, New York
(2014). x D 90 pp., ISSN 2211-193X (electronic)

With the development of globalisation and the intensification of academic competition, multilingual scholars, and in-
ternational scientists in particular, are increasingly pressured to publish their research findings in international, largely
English, journals. Accordingly, a newly established branch of discipline, ERPP (English for Research Publication Purposes) is
concentrated on investigating the difficulties and challenges this specific group of scholars encounter in the process of writing
and publishing research articles in English (Cargill & Burgess, 2008). Karen Englander, who co-authored the book Scientific
Writing in a Second Language with David Ian Hanauer in 2013, now proposes this new volume. With hardly more than 90
pages, the book is imperative and instructive for the research and practice of multilingual scientists and graduate students
who seek to publish their papers in English.
Synthesising the latest research findings from the fields of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, bibliometrics and geopo-
litical policy research, the volume extensively discusses issues such as context, text and scholars in the field of ERPP. As an
experienced ERPP researcher and teacher, Englander has a good understanding of EAL (English as an Additional Language)
scholars’ “struggles, victories and furtherance of disciplines” (p. v). Her writing style is explicit and concise, and “the technical
jargon has been eliminated” (p. v) making the book accessible and practical especially for multilingual scholars. The volume is
composed of the introduction and three parts with four chapters in Part 1 and five chapters in Part 2 and Part 3 respectively.
The three parts are separated unambiguously, focussing on context, text and people involved in ERPP scholarship. Another
advantage of the book is that every chapter is organised as an individual research article with an abstract, key words and a list
of references. Thus, readers may skip the chapter that doesn’t interest them after looking through the abstract. References
listed at the end of each chapter are also convenient for readers.
The introduction summarises the major content of the three parts of the volume. In Part 1, the author discusses the
historical, political and economic factors influencing scientific publications. She illustrates how English publications have “a
value beyond their scientific content” (p. 2) and how scientific evaluation might affect the whole society including individuals,
institutions and nations in a globalised world. Chapter 1 explains how English has become the language of science under
certain social and historical circumstances. It is interesting that Chinese is speculated to “become the language of science
sometime toward the end of this century” (p. 4). However, few languages are fortunate enough to become a lingua franca, like
English in science, in that so many factors such as historical opportunity, economy and politics have contributed to English’s
rise as a means of scientific communication. Chapter 2 illustrates the importance of publishing papers in journals with a high
impact factor. However, an appraisal system based on impact factor has been criticised because “citations are a shallow
measure of research quality or impact” (Lillis & Curry, 2010, p. 15). In Chapter 3, Englander argues that English competence
and funds for research are two important elements contributing to the success of paper publishing. Developing countries who
cooperate with developed countries may “break the cycle of poverty” in scientific publication (p. 11). It is interesting that as a
developing and EFL country, China has become the second largest producer of scientific papers in the world. This evolution
could be explained by the fact that English education has been emphasised since 1978; likewise, the investment in research
and development has increased in recent years in China. In particular, many Chinese visiting scholars have been sent to
developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia so that they could cooperate with
world-class scholars in their fields or disciplines. It is believed that China will make more progress in the quantity and quality
of its scientific publications thanks to the consistent support of its national science policy. Chapter 4 discusses scientific
collaboration, international teams and disciplinary networks. It appears to have become a trend that a team-authored paper
are more likely to be highly cited than a solo paper (p. 16).
Part 2 addresses the linguistic, discursive, interactional and epistemological aspects of scientific articles. Chapter 5 reviews
the history of scientific research papers and explains the characteristics of the rhetorical structure of research articles. Chapter
6 introduces a chain of interrelated documents scientists also write, such as conference proposals, grant applications, and
manuscript referees comments. Chapter 7 expounds on three devices used to persuade readers of the validity of claims (i.e.,
making claims, passives and noun structure). This is one of the most important chapters of the book as it addresses two main

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reasons for the difficulty non-native speakers of English have in adjusting claims. One reason is that different languages have
different conventions for claiming; the other is that it is hard for non-Anglophone scholars “to use English to convey the
appropriate levels of caution, humility and importance regarding the work itself and the writer’s relationship to the reader”
(p. 32). In Chapter 8, the structures and features of research articles are explained with examples from published papers in a
range of scientific disciplines. Chapter 9 summarises the variations of writing conventions in languages other than English. By
becoming familiar with the different conventions in different languages, article reviewers may realise that the apparent
‘digressive’ discourse observed in non-native speakers’ writing is not an error, and that non-Anglophone scientists may be
avoiding the negative transfer of their native rhetorical preferences into English writing.
Part 3 examines the scholars who are involved in scientific writing and publishing. The roles and the relationship of those
in the scientific community are discussed to help novice researchers and non-Anglophone scholars succeed in writing for
publication. Chapter 10 explores the apprenticeship-like relationship between supervisors and graduate students. Chapter 11
illustrates how a novice researcher can become an expert through enculturation into the academic community. Chapter 12
discusses the difficulties and challenges non-native scientists meet in publishing scientific papers in English. The major
difficulties are at the sentence level such as correct choice of words, appropriate use of prepositions and agreement between
subject and verb according to the author. Some of the points mentioned in this chapter may be very interesting to non-native
English writers. Firstly, it is reported that “strict adherence to English-language norms of scientific style is not required to be
accepted for publication” (p. 79). That is to say, ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) has been increasingly accepted in the scientific
community in lieu of standard English. Secondly, it is crucial for non-Anglophone scholars to succeed in publishing by
“participating in informal transnational networks” (p. 80) and by collaborating with native English scholars. In Chapter 13, the
roles of journal editors and reviewers as guardians or allies are discussed. The author seems to believe that the bias is existed
among reviewers because they are “influenced by the gender, Anglophone name and/or institutional affiliation of authors” (p.
84). Chapter 14 is an afterword summarising the major content of the whole book and further explains the importance of
scientific publication.
The weak point of this book is that some chapters (e.g., Chapter 4, 6, 10, 11) are too short to explain the topic thoroughly.
For example, as the author pointed out, non-Anglophone scholars are also required to write genres other than research ar-
ticles, but the author did not elaborate on the structures and linguistic features of those genres in Chapter 6. It would be
necessary for the author to extend those short chapters if she were to reprint the book. Furthermore, it is unfortunate that
some hotly-debated topics such as the dichotomy of globalisation and localisation for science publication have not been
included in the book. I suggest that readers of the book comprehend the viewpoints in this volume by referring to some other
references like Hanauer and Englander (2013), Kuteeva and Mauranen (2014) and Lillis and Curry (2010).
That being said, this volume is a timely review of studies about writing and publishing in English in the last decades,
drawing on findings from “applied linguistics, rhetoric, sociology of science, history of science, and bibliometrics” (p. 88). It is
salient not only for multilingual scientists and graduate students but also for ERPP researchers. Based on this book, re-
searchers could further investigate the issues ranging from non-Anglophone writers’ challenges and strategies, to the rela-
tionship between the journal reviewers and the authors.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No.: 14BYY151).

References

Cargill, M., & Burgess, S. (2008). Introduction to the special issue: English for research publication purposes. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(2),
75-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.02.006.
Hanauer, D. I., & Englander, K. (2013). Scientific writing in a second language. Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press.
Kuteeva, M., & Mauranen, A. (2014). Writing for publication in multilingual contexts: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of English for Academic
Purposes, 13, 1-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.11.002.
Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. London: Routledge.

Congjun Mu is a professor at the College of Foreign Languages of Shanghai Maritime University in Shanghai. His current research interests cover second
language writing, applied linguistics, metadiscourse and translation.

Congjun Mu
School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Maritime University,
1550 Hai Gang Avenue, Lin Gang New Town, Shanghai, China
E-mail address: congjun.mu@gmail.com

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