Iranian doctoral students’ perceptions of publication in English: Motives, hurdles, and strategies
Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
ISSN: 2050-7003
Article publication date: 14 August 2019
Issue publication date: 2 October 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the English for publication purpose practices of doctoral students in Iran. The overall objective was to explore their motives, hurdles and strategies in academic writing.
Design/methodology/approach
This case study draws on a narrative inquiry to explore nine science and engineering doctoral students’ perceptions of academic publication. The data were analyzed through a hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis.
Findings
The qualitative results showed three dominant themes, namely: motives for publication, hurdles to publication and strategies for dealing with these challenges were extracted. The main sources of motives were students’ desire to publish their works for their graduation, improve their resume, satiate the universities’ evaluation system, and finally share their knowledge worldwide. Their hurdles included: political reasons, language-related problems, center-periphery priorities and the lack of academic writing instruction. In order to overcome these hurdles, the participants employed some strategies in academic writing.
Research limitations/implications
Due to qualitative nature of this study, only nine PhD students were recruited and therefore the research results are not intended to render generalizability. Besides, only narratives were employed to collect the required data. Future researchers can use surveys to collect more data.
Practical implications
The findings are discussed within English for academic purposes discourse and some recommendations are provided to alleviate the plights of non-native-English-speaking academic writers.
Originality/value
The methodology and the higher education context in which this paper was conducted are new to the literature.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the participants who took part in this research, and also to the three anonymous reviewers of the journal for their valuable comments.
Citation
Rezaei, S. and Seyri, H. (2019), "Iranian doctoral students’ perceptions of publication in English: Motives, hurdles, and strategies", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 941-954. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-02-2019-0040
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited