Perceptions and Negotiations of Taiwanese Researchers
INTRODUCTION
In the era of hyper information exchange and knowledge development, the government of Taiwan has been promulgating various policies to encourage internationalization of scholarship in order to boost Taiwan’s intellectual industry and international visibility. Scholarly publication in international journals, thus, has been inevitably emphasized in Taiwan and has become one of the crucial parameters to evaluate researchers’ scholarship. Because of the overabundant information sources and diverse international journals of various levels of quality, journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) have emerged as the target venues for knowledge exchange and professional discussion. The journals indexed in the SSCI database are identified as having the most frequently cited articles.
Thomson Reuters, the company that runs the SSCI database, provides selective data of the world’s 2,474 leading journals across 50 social science disciplines.
The majority of these journals are issued in western countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom. Only 2% of indexed scientific publications come from developing countries (Salager-Meyer 2008). Indisputably, the major language used for publications in these SSCI journals is English. In Taiwan, papers published in SSCI journals usually are deemed as canonical scholarship in the respective fields and represent an honorable achievement for researchers who publish them. Thus, government institutions and most of the national universities in Taiwan have adopted publication in SSCI journals as one of the core indicators to appraise a researcher’s performance determining recruitment and promotion, grants and awards, level of salary, national research project proposal acceptance, as well as resource allocation.
The local academic ecology of Taiwan has been dramatically impacted by these SSCI-related practices in various ways, and “SSCI” has been used to describe anything generally related to professional advancement in Taiwan academic life.
Likewise, in this article, “SSCI” will be adopted as a general term rather than simply being the abbreviation for the name of the index. This article will first explore the SSCI publication difficulties that Taiwanese researchers usually encounter, then discuss Taiwanese researchers’ negotiation strategies, and finally analyze the impact of SSCI on researchers and on the academic culture in Taiwan.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
English has been the lingua franca or a major language used by scholars in most of SSCI journals to construct and exchange knowledge among nations. English academic writing for publication in SSCI journals can be a formidable undertaking (Bartholomae 1985). Not only can the academic discourse and the conventions of scholarly publication be daunting challenges to the NES (native English speaking) researchers, also needless to say, SSCI publication puts off-networked NNES (non-native English speaking) and the EIL (English as an international language) scholars at serious disadvantage from participating in the international academic community.
These highly demanding genres and linguistic requirements of publication in SSCI journals, on the one hand, have served as a gatekeeper to maintain the quality and control the content of the publications; however, on the other hand, they have raised serious concerns because these culturally and linguistically exclusionary requirements may encourage knowledge exclusion (Canagarajah 1996) and inequality of knowledge creation (Wen and Gao 2007), linguistic impoverishment (Mauranen, 1993), ideological imposition (Canagarajah 1993; Pennycook 1994;
Phillipson, 1992) and cultural hegemony (Canagarajah 1993, 1996).
A number of researchers have argued that the worldwide Anglicization of scholarly publication has disadvantaged NNES and EIL scholars in the participation of the mainstream academic community (Braine 2005; Canagarajah 1996, 2003;
Curry & Lillis 2004; Gibbs 1995; St. John 1987; Swales 1987, 1990). Besides, many studies also have reported that the majority of NNES scholars perceived themselves as off-networked and disadvantaged due to lack of English proficiency (Cho 2004;
Curry & Lillis, 2004; Flowerdew 1999a; Huang 2010; Tardy 2004).
With the increasing pressure to be recognized in quantifiable terms, a great number of NNES and EIL scholars strive to publish in the SSCI journals. The disparities of English writing for scholarly publication have drawn extensive attention. It is reported that NNES writers generally experience difficulties in grammar, adopting citations, interpreting references, developing arguments, organizing information, constructing authorial voice, showing readership awareness, using hedges, and making academically appropriate claims (Dudley-Evans 1994; Johns 1993;
Mauranen 1993; St. John 1987; Swales 1990).
In parallel with these studies, Flowerdew (1999) investigated the problems for scholarly publication among Cantonese scholars in Hong Kong. By means of in-depth interviews, he studied 26 scholars’ perception of their publication difficulties.
He found that NNES scholars perceived themselves to have less facility of expression, take longer to write, have a less rich vocabulary, be less capable in making claims for their research with the appropriate amount of force, be better suited to writing quantitative articles, be interfered by their L1 with their L2 composition process, be best advised to write in a simple style, and have the most difficulties in writing introduction and discussion parts of research articles. Furthermore, the participants reported that academic writing courses had little benefit on their scholarly publication,
PROBLEMS, STRATEGIES, AND IMPACT OF SSCI PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH
and that editing services, which resolved surface errors rather than substance, could be helpful.
Although writing in English for scholarly publication seems to be an obvious challenge for international scholars, some researchers have incongruent findings.
Belcher (2007), the editor of English for Specific Purposes (ESPj), analyzed submissions to the journal from 1998 to 2001 written by EIL and EL (English language) researchers and the 29 reviews written by both EL and EIL reviewers.
Nine text features emerged based on her analysis of reviewers’ comments: audience, topic, purpose, literature review, methods, results, discussion, pedagogical implications, and language use. Belcher found that “topic” received positive comments from the majority of reviews (72%), and “language use” received negative comments among 90% of the reviews. Belcher also found that the off-networked EL researchers suffered similar disadvantages as the off-off-networked EIL researchers, such as unfamiliarity with journal expectations in both research design and presentation. In her study, Belcher interpreted the 75% high rate of publication from Hong Kong among the total China-origin papers as its “substantial financial support for research” (p. 17). Not surprisingly, Belcher (2007) suggested that research writing expertise and availability of resources might be more salient factors than language issues. Nevertheless, Belcher’s suggestion is contradictory to what she had observed in that 83% of the papers originated from the US were eventually accepted, and only 24% of the China-origin (among the total 75% were from Hong Kong) submissions were accepted for publication (p. 17). In fact, her finding that the majority of the accepted papers originated from the US and Hong Kong has already proven language to be one of the crucial factors determining the success of scholarly publication. In addition, it is questionable to distinguish “research writing expertise” from language issues; it is also problematic to claim that language is less salient in scholarly publication simply because both EL and EIL researchers received similar language comments from reviewers, and EIL acceptance rate has been rising.
Besides, it is disputable to mark Hong Kong as an EIL milieu (Flowerdew 1999; Li 1999), as it is a highly internationalized city where English is commonly used in governmental organizations and schools.
Flowerdew (2001) conducted a qualitative research study to explore the publishing issue from the perspective of journal editors. He interviewed 11 international journal editors and found that many journal editors have recognized language as a major issue in academic publication. Most of them agreed that the EIL researchers usually made surface errors in their submissions. Most of the editors expressed their sympathy for EIL researchers and would like to help them if the research was worthwhile.
However, in line with Belcher (2007), the most significant problem indicated by these editors about international scholars’ submissions was not language use but
“parochialism” or failure to show the relevance of the study to the international community.
The “language” issues discussed by Flowerdew (1999) and Belcher (2007) as well as the “parochialism” suggested by Flowerdew (2001) can be problematized
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from the perspective of academic literacy. Academic literacy refers to not merely linguistic knowledge but also “knowledge of the textual, social and cultural features of academic written discourse as well as knowledge of English as used by their academic disciplines” (Ferenz 2005, p. 340). According to Barton and Hamilton (1998), academic literacy is a social act, which can be acquired through discourse community practices and interactions between members of the community. Within the academic community, academic literacy can be cultivated through the practice process of knowledge creation and construction. Participating in the academic community practice enables participants to perceive the meta-cognitive knowledge of the community, the intricate trends of the past and future, and the relationships among the members. Thus, community practices and academic literacy afford the participants a sense of membership, which further enables the participants to appropriate discourse, be aware of readership, define issues, negotiate arguments, theorize findings, and lead discussions. Based on Barton and Hamilton’s (1998) theory of literacy, language issues of advanced academic writing can be the abstract difficulties at the higher level beyond the surface linguistic usage for NNES and EIL writers. However, with relatively less chance of joining this central academic community due to language barriers, most of the NNES and EIL researchers suffer the process of developing academic literacy, which in turn, creates a vicious circle hindering NNES/EIL researchers’ legitimate participation of the academic community of the mainstream.
From the perspective of academic literacy that scholarly writing involves higher-level language issues, the findings that no manuscript was rejected only because of language usage (Flowerdew 2001; Hewings 2002), and the editors could help out with the language problems if the research idea of a manuscript is worthwhile (Flowerdew 2001) have overlooked the complexity of language in advanced academic literacy.
Canagarajah (1996) pointed out that the inequities faced by NNES/EIL writers in the academic publishing industry are not only discursive but also nondiscursive.
According to the theory of contrastive rhetoric (Kaplan 1966), NNES/EIL writers’ rhetorical knowledge is deeply engrained in their indigenous culture and communicative conventions. Their written texts manifest the discursive structures and thought patterns that are different from the Anglo-American expectations.
Besides, the nondiscursive publishing practices, such as “the format of the copy text, bibliographical and documentation conventions, the particular weight and quality of the paper… the procedures for submitting revisions and proofs, and the nature of interaction between authors and editorial boards” (Canagarajah 1996, p.436) also have important implications for scholarly publication, which can become the barriers to exclude the participation of the off-networked researchers.
That is, the issues of EIL scholars’ “language use” reported by Belcher (2007) may be caused by the influence of their indigenous communicative conventions (Canagarajah 1996; Kaplan 1966). The Hong Kong scholars’ self-perception of being academically incompetent may result from the asymmetrical relations
PROBLEMS, STRATEGIES, AND IMPACT OF SSCI PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH
of politico-economic power behind the Western publishing industry. The
“Parochialism” indicated by the editors interviewed by Flowerdew (2001) can be what Canagarajah (1996) called the “periphery perspectives” which can provide alternative cultural perspectives and vibrant contributions to the “stable” and
“conservative” “centre” (p. 465). The cross-reviewed literatures have revealed the gaps between not only NNES/EIL scholars and journal editors, the peripheral and the center but also theory and practice. Most of the NNES/EIL scholars consider English as their major challenge for scholarly publication; however, most of the journal editors believe that content quality, such as research writing expertise and meta-cognitive knowledge about the academic community including journal expectation or parochialism is more crucial than accuracy issues (Hamp-Lyons 2009). In other words, those journal editors seemed to believe that what NNES/
EIL scholars suffer is only linguistic problems; moreover, content quality, research writing expertise and meta-cognitive knowledge about community seemed to be viewed as independent from language and academic literacy. Though theories of academic literacy, intercultural communication and contrastive rhetoric have challenged the monolith of the publication gate of the center academic community, contours of the evolving publication practice for multilingual scholars’
knowledge construction are still unclear. Most of the editors within the position of gatekeepers, despite feeling sympathetic to NNES/EIL scholars or helping correct lexicogrammatical errors, have limitation to equalize knowledge creation, distribution and access (Wen and Gao 2007; Nunn 2009; Salager-Meyer 2008). To shorten the gaps, more discussions and research about academic publication of L2 scholars are necessary.
The purpose of this study is to discuss issues of SSCI publication in Taiwan. So far, most studies on Asian NNES/EIL writers’ publication issues were conducted in Hong Kong (Braine 2005; Cheung 2010; Flowerdew 1999 a; Flowerdew 1999 b;
Flowerdew 2000; Flowerdew 2001; Li and Flowerdew 2009) and China (Cargill and O’Connor, 2006; Cargill O’Connor and Li 2012; Flowerdew and Li 2009; Li, 2002; Liu 2001; Liu, 2004; Shi Wang and Xu, 2005). Taiwan is a unique case of the research of writing for scholarly publication. Unlike Hong Kong, a postcolonial context where people, especially researchers, have considerable English exposures, the majority of the Taiwanese researchers are speakers of English as a foreign language. Besides, Taiwan’s fairly even distribution of economic and academic resources is distinct from China where resources are not available evenly, and most
“institutions of higher learning lack the financial resources” (Wen and Gao 2007, p. 224). For researchers who would like to minimize non-discursive variables, such as, availability of resources, but focus on language issues, Taiwan can offer a more congruent research context.
Echoing Flowerdew’s (1999) suggestion that under the macro picture of English hegemony in scholarly publication, individual researcher’s publication problems should be explored at the micro level, in this study, I attempt to explore Taiwanese researchers’ problems, strategies and impact of SSCI publications from the micro
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perspective by discussing the interplay between the micro and macro influences from the academic context of Taiwan. My research questions are:
1. What are Taiwanese researchers’ problems in academic publishing?
2. What are Taiwanese researchers’ strategies to negotiate these problems?
3. What are the impact of SSCI publication on Taiwanese researchers and their milieu?
Methodology
A qualitative research study was conducted to explore the problems, strategies and the perceived impact of SSCI publication on Taiwanese researchers. Both etic and emic approaches were adopted to collect and interpret the textual and interview data respectively. To understand Taiwanese researchers’ publication problems (research question 1), the collected SSCI reviewers’ comments were analyzed from the etic perspective. Furthermore, to answer the three research questions from the emic perspective, following Flowerdew’s (1999) social constructionist methodology (Berger & Luckmann 1966; Gergen 1985), I conducted in-depth interviews to obtain participant researchers’ perceptions of their problems, strategies, and the impact of SSCI publications on them. The interview data were analyzed from the emic perspective in order to reveal individual participant’s perceptions.
Participants
Convenience sampling was used in this research design. To answer research questions 1 and 2 and to analyze NNES researchers’ typical problems with SSCI journals, I contacted the researchers that I have known to collect the SSCI journal reviewers’
comments that they received, and I requested interviews with the participants afterwards. Some of them declined my request because they felt uncomfortable sharing the reviewers’ comments, or they did not archive the reviews. Five researchers accepted my invitation by sending me the reviews via emails and being interviewed individually. Knowing these participants allowed me to conduct a reflective interview and establish rapport with them more easily because the participants might have felt embarrassed to disclose their research weaknesses or complaints.
All five participants were native speakers of Mandarin. Two were in the research line of TESOL, two were in education, and the other one was in business management.
To understand the development of academic literacy, the five participants were divided into three groups according to their research competence: experienced, developing, and novice (see Table 1). Their research competence was not based on the number of years of their research but rather the quality and quantity of their publications. SSCI was adopted as one of the quality measures (Flowerdew 1999, p. 244).
Researcher 1 (R1) has about 9 years of research experience; he has published one university press book and 17 papers in international journals. Among his
PROBLEMS, STRATEGIES, AND IMPACT OF SSCI PUBLICATION IN ENGLISH
published papers, seven were published in SSCI journals. R2 has about seven years of research experience and has published 12 articles. Among her publications, nine are international journal articles and one is an SSCI article. R2 also has three papers published in the local journals in English. Both R1 and R2 were grouped as experienced researchers. R3, identified as the developing scholar, has over 15 years of research experience; she has published four articles in local journals in Chinese and three single-authored books in Chinese in Taiwan. R4 has less than four years of research experience and has two papers published in local journals in English.
R5 only has research experience for about 3 years; he has published three articles in international journals. All of his publications were co-authored works. Both R4 and R5 were categorized as novice researchers.
Table 1. Information of the Taiwanese Researcher Participants
Group Experienced Developing Novice
9 years 7 years 15 years 4 years 3 years
International publications
17 (SSCI=7) 9 (SSCI=1) 1 0 3 (co-uthored)
Local Publications
0 3 (English) 4 (Chinese) 2 (English) 0
Book 1 (English) 0 3 (Chinese) 0 0
Total Publication
18 12 8 2 3
Data Collection
To analyze the Taiwanese researchers’ writing problems, reviews (N=10) were collected from the five participant researchers (each manuscript had two reviewers’
comments). All the reviewed manuscripts were submitted to SSCI journals; three were rejected by the editors, and the other two were recommended to “resubmit after revision.”
Interviews were conducted by the researcher through phone calls, emails or face-to-face according to the participants’ availability. The in-depth and semi-structured interviews aimed at eliciting participants’ reflections of their publication process, problems encountered during the process, negotiation strategies, contextual constraints and the impact of SSCI publication on their professional lives and the larger milieu. Spontaneous questions also emerged during the interactions between the researcher and the participants. The interviews were conducted in Mandarin informally. During the interviews, the participants were encouraged to self-disclose
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their related experience, stories or opinions. The interviews, without setting specific time constrain, lasted variously from one hour to three hours until the saturation of information was achieved. Follow-up interviews were also conducted for clarification or elaboration purposes when necessary. On average, each participant was interviewed twice.
Data Analysis & Findings
First, I scrutinized the collected review comments and marked each comment with summary words. I then created categories to group similar comments together. Data were sorted and resorted in order to be categorized. If the existed category did not fit the data, a new category would be created accordingly. Thirteen categories were created inductively: grammar, language presentation, journal selection, lack of elaboration or supporting points, theoretical conception, organization, argumentation, clarity, unclear or unconvincing purpose, inappropriate selections or problematic interpretation of literature review, unclear or confusing usages of definitions/
terminologies, unclear method design/research procedure, and unsatisfactory analysis/discussion. The thirteen publishing problems were further grouped into four broader categories: writing skills (e.g. grammar, language structure), community knowledge (e.g. journal selection), domain knowledge (theoretical conception, unclear or confusing usages of definitions/terminologies) and rhetoric (e.g. lack of elaboration or supporting points, unclear explanation of the analysis/discussion).
While writing skills refer to the surface level problems, the other categories indicate
While writing skills refer to the surface level problems, the other categories indicate