Ismaeil Fazel, PhD, TESL
Emerging Scholars’ Socialization into Scholarly Publication: Negotiating Identities and Investments in a Neoliberal Era
Supervisor: Dr. Shi Ling
Thursday, February 15, 2018 | 9:00 a.m. | Graduate Student Centre, 6371 Crescent Road, Room 200
Committee Members:
Dr. Ling Shi (LLED)
Dr. Patsy Duff (LLED)
Dr. Bonny Norton (LLED)
University Examiners:
Dr. Guangwei Hu
Dr. Dr. Anthony Paré
Dr. Claudia Ruitenberg
Abstract:
Given the paramount importance of publication in academia, socialization of novice scholars into scholarly publication has received increasing scholarly attention. Extant empirical literature has tended to predominantly focus on impediments facing English as an additional language (EAL) doctoral students (e.g., Ho, 2017; Li, 2007, 2016; Lillis & Curry, 2010) in getting published, although recent research has also attended to issues encountered by Anglophone doctoral students in academic publication (Habibie, 2016). However, there is a paucity of longitudinal research that compares the publication processes and practices of EAL and Anglophone doctoral students. Moreover, little research thus far has compared the perspectives and practices of novices vis-a-vis established scholars in writing for publication. In light of this lacuna in the relevant research, this study compared the writing-for-publication practices of both EAL and Anglophone doctoral students at a Canadian university. These doctoral students’ experiences were also triangulated with the perspectives of journal editors in applied linguistics and language education.
In this 16-month, multiple-case study on four – two Anglophone and two EAL – doctoral students in education at a Canadian university, questionnaires, multiple semi-structured interviews, submission trajectories, and communications with journal editors and reviewers were used as the chief sources of data. Additionally, 27 editors and editorial boards members of well-known journals in applied linguistics and language education were interviewed to triangulate their perspectives with the experiences of the doctoral students in the study. The data were subject to iterative thematic analysis, and interpreted in light of the theoretical constructs of academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2010; Kobayashi, Zappa-Hollman, & Duff, 2017) and identity and investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015).
Findings indicate that learning how to academically write a paper – i.e., discursive and generic dimensions of writing for publication (e.g., Habibie, 2016; Huang, 2010; Li, 2007) – is arguably important yet not sufficient in getting published. Perhaps more importantly, the findings suggest that navigating today’s increasingly digitized terrain of academic publication demands socialization into a set of strategic competencies and tactical sensibilities, including the sensibility of knowing where (and where not) to publish and learning how to navigate and negotiate the process of academic publishing and its inherent complexities.
