Chinese scientists writing for international publication : the use of mediation services

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed China’s massive growth in internationally published papers. Since most Chinese scientists have been trained in Chinese, they often do not have adequate academic English literacy to publish internationally without assistance, particularly in prestigious journals. This thesis investigates how they overcome discursive barriers to international publication through the use of RA mediation services. RA mediation is defined as third party assistance Chinese authors solicit to overcome language-related difficulties when seeking for international publication. Methodologically, this study adopts a textographic approach with 50 participants, 34 Chinese authors and 16 RA mediators (including the researcher). Data includes interviews, RA manuscripts in different stages, emails, author-mediator communication record, researcher diary, the researcher’s recount as mediator and online discussion of RA mediation services. Chinese scientists are found to tackle their problems internally by designating official writers or editors within research groups or targeting less prestigious outlets, or externally by soliciting help from outside RA mediators. This thesis focuses on RA mediation services instead of internal solutions with the hope to shed light on what can be done to help Chinese scientist authors with their language-related issues for their international publication endeavor. The thesis reveals a number of interesting findings. Firstly, it identifies three categories of RA mediators, namely, for-profit specialist mediators who mostly work for RA mediation companies; convenience specialist mediators who edit RA manuscripts upon author requests free of charge; and language mediators mostly consisting of university English teachers. The strengths and weaknesses of the services offered by each are discussed. Secondly, I explore how Chinese scientists make use of RA mediation, the issues of authorial development and ethical issues which arise from it. Thirdly, I provide two detailed case studies to show the potential of RA mediation and the dynamics affecting its outcome. The first one analyzes one manuscript edited by three mediators to tease out key factors of expertise and author-mediator interaction. The second case elaborates how a non-English-writing author was transformed into an internationally well-published scholar by using different RA mediators. Finally, the thesis looks forward by proposing the development of in-house RA research communication centers to serve the publishing needs of Chinese scientists. This study may have relevance for a broad audience including Chinese scientists and other EAL (English as an Additional Language) academics, policy makers, RA mediators and applied linguists interested in EAL academics’ international publication.