Participating in International Academic Publishing: A Taiwan Perspective

520 cope with challenges while publishing in English in international refereed journals in the center.. It ends with suggestions for governments imposing this pressure on local scholars

THE FORUM

TESOL Quarterly invites commentary on current trends or practices in the TESOL profession It also welcomes responses to rebuttals to any articles or remarks published here in The Forum or elsewhere in the Quarterly.

Participating in International Academic

Publishing: A Taiwan Perspective

HUI-TZU MIN

National Cheng Kung University

Tainan City, Taiwan ROC

There has been growing concern among researchers and scholars about how nonnative-English-speaking academics in the expanding circle (Kachru, 2001, p 520) cope with challenges while publishing in English in international refereed journals in the center Most found that academics from peripheral countries where English is a foreign language, compared with native-English-speaking counterparts in the inner circle, suffer from a dual disadvantage: linguistic unsophistication and intellectual estrangement due to geographic isolation It is thus imperative to understand how scholars from these countries address these challenges This commentary focuses on the experiences of a group of applied linguists in Taiwan It starts with an overview of the recent development of a higher education policy in Taiwan that aims

to enhance the quality of local research output and thereby the ranking of local universities among Asian or international top-tier universities Then it addresses this policy’s impact on local applied lin-guists’ choice of venues for publishing research and the challenges they perceive in the process It ends with suggestions for governments imposing this pressure on local scholars to revamp their evaluation standards and for mainstream academia and TESOL professionals and their counterparts teaching English as a foreign language to help these scholars share their voices in the center academia

doi: 10.1002/tesq.154

& In an era of unprecedented globalization of the knowledge indus-try, many Asian countries, including Taiwan, have started pushing their higher education institutions toward greater international

involvement (Mok, 2007) The ultimate aim is to enhance the global competitiveness of their higher education institutions and transform them into world-class universities Very little research has examined the impact of this pursuit for international academic excellence on local academics, especially their perceptions of challenges when they compete internationally for journal publication This article aims to fill this gap

In what follows, I first provide background on recent developments

in Taiwan’s higher education Then I examine, through an analysis of responses to a questionnaire, three major perceived challenges of 38 center-trained nonnative-English-speaking (NNES) Taiwanese applied linguists (ALs) who have been caught between locally imposed pressure to publish in English-medium journals in the center (i.e., developed Western countries) and challenges in attempting to do so I chose ALs because they, like other researchers in humanities and social sciences, may face an additional challenge due to their research focus on local issues

IMPACT OF INTERNATIONALIZATION ON TAIWANESE SCHOLARS

For the last decade, the Taiwanese government has begun interna-tionalizing its higher education institutions Since 2005, its Ministry of Education has initiated a national development plan and allocated US

$1.7 billion to 121 select universities to establish Elite Research Centers, with the aim of enhancing their research performance (Department of Higher Education, 2012) It is hoped that these subsi-dized centers and their affiliated universities can rank among the world’s 100 top-tier universities The impact of this national plan is enormous All universities have since begun to orient themselves toward the government’s internationalization scheme by pushing their faculty, through both tenure-track and monetary reward systems, to publish in internationally refereed journals, especially those journals included in the citation indexes of the Institute for Scientific Informa-tion (ISI) with high impact factors One point that especially needs to

be noted is that pressure to publish did exist before the national plan, but on an individual scale and not limited to ISI journals It is against this backdrop that I report and discuss the challenges confront-ing Western-trained NNES Taiwanese ALs By international, I mean

1 For the 12 research centers, see http://content.edu.tw/wiki/index.php/%E4%BA%94% E5%B9%B4%E4%BA%94%E7%99%BE%E5%84%84%E5%B0%88%E6%A1%88 This is

a Chinese language website.

English-medium journals in the center, understanding their “sliding signifier” function connoting “high quality” and their “contested sta-tus” of being international (Lillis & Curry, 2010, pp 6–7) The specific objectives of my study were to help readers understand the publication dilemma of center-trained NNES ALs in Taiwan and that of scholars facing similar challenges in other countries, and to propose some solu-tions to resolving their predicaments

QUESTIONNAIRE AND DEMOGRAPHICS OF

RESPONDENTS

Via browsing the websites of NNES Taiwanese ALs I met at confer-ences from local universities, I identified 50 who have published at least one article in English-medium journals outside Taiwan during the past 5 years and e-mailed them a 20-item open-ended English questionnaire modified after Duszak and Lewkowicz’s (2008), which was used to examine similar issues in Poland The first 10 questions inquire about educational background, current position, and institu-tional requirement(s) on publications The other 10 inquire about recent publishing experiences (see the Appendix) Thirty-eight schol-ars returned responses, yielding a response rate of 76% Table 1 sum-marizes the respondents’ profiles

Table 1 shows that nearly all respondents had graduate education over-seas, specifically in the United States Many of them (n = 26) published

in both Chinese and English Most (n = 32) were assistant (ASIP) and associate (ASOP) professors, but some were also full professors (FPs,

n = 6) This suggests that their success in publishing in major Western journals played an important role in their career development

In the remainder of this article, I discuss their responses to the second half of the questionnaire, which, as noted earlier, asked about their publishing experiences This is done by exploring the primary themes that emerged from their responses

PERCEIVED CHALLENGES IN PUBLISHING IN

INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

Three themes—language, topic, and perceived bias—recurred in respondents’ replies Other challenges, including reading and synthe-sizing current literature and lack of training, also emerged but did not figure prominently (less than 20%) Given space limitations, I report only the three major perceived challenges

The first perceived challenge was language Thirty (81%) respon-dents, albeit all Western-trained, considered English a major stum-bling block to publishing their papers The following responses capture the main points they indicated: their insecure feelings about their writing (linguistic varieties are kept intact, and respondents’ aca-demic rank and years of research experience are indicated after each quote):

I often have difficulty in selecting appropriate prepositions or words

(ASIP, 5) The most difficult thing for me is to achieve native-like language use

(ASIP, 5)

As a non-native speaker of English, I sometimes feel I can’t express myself well in English

(ASOP, 13) How to write more concisely is my personal difficulty

(ASOP, 5)

One respondent (ASIP, 6) was afraid that incorrect use of English might cause impediments to reviewers’ understanding of the respon-dent’s ideas and therefore incur negative evaluation of the manuscript quality:

TABLE 1

Respondents’ Profiles

Category Type N % Current position FP 6 16

ASOP 15 39 ASIP 17 45 Doctoral degree conferred by USA 36 94

Taiwana 1 3 Age (years) 31 –40 16 42

41 –50 22 58

Research experience (years) 1 –10 20 53

11 –20 18 47 Publishing experience in

refereed journals

Chinese 28 74 English 38 100 Note FP = full professor; ASOP = associate professor; ASIP = assistant professor.

a This respondent obtained an MA in the United Kingdom.

I always spend much time going through my writing, checking the verb tenses, prepositions, and word choices… I spend so much time to proofread because I think if the quality of writing hinder understanding

of the research article, the article may receive an evaluation lower than

it deserves

The collective lack of confidence in satisfying perceived native English (NE) standards of academic writing, such as accuracy, appro-priateness, and conciseness prompted 36 respondents to seek reassur-ing assistance from native-English-speakreassur-ing (NES) proofreaders before submitting manuscripts, but only to find a lack of consensus among proofreaders, reviewers, and editors on what constitutes correct or appropriate academic language An ASIP’s (5) account points to this disparity in standards between academics and reviewers:

In the second review, the same reviewer couldn’t point out specific problems, but criticized on my writing… I wrote to the editor, explain-ing to him that my manuscript was proofread by two native-speakexplain-ing professors from the U.S … The editor agreed with me and accepted

my paper after he reviewed all the comments from other reviewers

This lack of clearly established and universally recognized standards led one ASOP (8) to conclude that the standard “has more to do with the editor’s preference and style.” Subjective as it is, this opinion shows the challenge of satisfying various individuals’ interpretations of

NE standards This perceived challenge differs from findings of extant research indicating that language is not a major concern in reviewers’ and editors’ decision to recommend or reject manuscripts (Belcher, 2007), but it is not without substance Hyland (2007, p 87) has warned that “non-standard language may serve as good a reason as any

to justify rejection” when editors and reviewers “are overwhelmed with submissions and are often looking for reasons to reject manuscripts.” Although Hyland refers to practices in the hard sciences, his point could apply to applied linguistics as well, the linguistic standard of which is equally, if not more, stringent

Topic

Another major perceived challenge was selection of research topics Twenty-nine respondents (79%) reported that finding ideas considered new and relevant to the international readership was a challenge They knew that “simply replicating a study in a local context is not good enough for international readers” (FP, 19) But when they reported issues unique to Taiwan and thus new to international readers, they realized that “particular issues which draw more attention in Taiwan

may not appeal to international English-medium journals” (ASIP, 5) They felt that they needed to shape their papers “into a way that makes sense to the international readership” (ASOP, 9) This posed a great challenge to most ALs because “how to transform a topic or a study developed in this local context and link it to the international litera-ture or discourse takes a lot of time, reading and practice” (ASOP, 8) Trying to accentuate issues of a periphery country and link them to current trends in the center is indeed a daunting challenge Given Taiwan’s “marked” locality different from the default center (Lillis & Curry, 2010, p 154), the ALs need to provide more background and perhaps stronger rationale to justify to international readers why Tai-wanese (rather than Chinese) issues deserve their attention Although NES academics in center localities also face similar challenges, their

“unmarked” geopolitical status “in academic knowledge production and evaluation in the Anglophone center” (Lillis & Curry, 2010, p 154) renders their topics less susceptible to the parochial criticism because issues in center localities are better known to international readers through existing international publishers, rendering them more easily linked and relevant to international readers

Perceived Bias

The third theme overlaps with the first two, with 24 respondents (63%) indicating they had experienced bias against their language and topic, and just more than one third reporting having experienced none Among those reporting bias in these areas, many respondents pointed out that reviewers and editors asked them to find NES proof-readers to check their submissions before accepting them This sug-gests that although native-like English is not necessarily a criterion for rejecting a manuscript, it is undoubtedly an important criterion for accepting one, with a bias in favor of American/British English as the only standard in international journals An FP (12) expressed reservations about this practice:

Few reviewers practice the concept of World Englishes Native-like writ-ing is still the dominant expectation in scholarly publication I am not sure if this is called “biased.”

This acknowledgment of or indirect challenge to the imposition of Anglophone standards on the writing of Taiwanese (or periphery) ALs

in the context of international publication echoes Flowerdew’s (2001) questioning of the appropriateness of equating “the mainstream” with

“monolingual English-speaking countries” (pp 135–136) The “ethical justifications” (Canagarajah, 2005, p 7) for enforcing the linguistic

and rhetorical standards of a local community on international communication are wanting

The other perceived bias reported by respondents (n= 13, 34%) is toward studies of the Taiwanese population They noted what they saw

as some editors’ and reviewers’ dislike for Taiwanese issues

They do not like the local issues in Taiwan, they prefer some general issues

(FP, 15) Some do not like the population being EFL for it cannot be generalize[d] to an ESL environment (most journals like to have sub-jects to be ESL or ENL)

(FP, 12)

Unlike the strong opinions just displayed, an ASIP (8) hedged her unease at a perceived bias of some journal editors’ judgment:

I’m not sure I did receive a couple of comments noting my research wasn’t for the readership of the journals The editors then recom-mended me to re-submit my papers to journals for “regional” readers, which made me a little bit uncomfortable I wonder whether it’s the problem of the samples or it’s the way I presented and interpreted my study that didn’t address to the broader readership If it’s about the sample, then I would think the editor is biased

Implicit in the previous responses is a challenge, stated bluntly or hedged indirectly, to the ideologies underlying the status quo All knowl-edges are situated in and generated from researchers’ perspectives via spe-cific methods in spespe-cific localities Yet a hierarchy seems to exist among

“situated knowledges” (Haraway, 1988, p 575) generated in different localities between periphery and center countries (Lillis & Curry, 2010)

It is a great challenge for these ALs, especially qualitative research-ers studying relatively fewer participants in a periphery locality, to convince reviewers and editors of the validity of their perceptions about acceptable research problems, methods, interpretations, significant findings, and organization and presentation of content (such as styles of argumentation) if theirs are at odds with those of the gatekeepers Some attributed it to differences in culture:

Western thinking is dramatically different from ours and it is hard for them to understand our ideologies immediately They would comment

or critique from their points of view and it is quite understandable… [T]o some extent, it is biased but I would assume that that’s because

we are brought up in different cultures

(ASOP, 5)

Others deemed it a combination of “differences in culture, percep-tions about English words, and knowledge of the issue background” (ASIP, 8) What is not clear is whether only Western readers reviewed these ALs’ manuscripts; thus, it is difficult to ascertain the reason(s) for their responses An interesting point here is that the respondents did not seem to entertain the possibility that scholars with back-grounds similar to theirs, based in other periphery localities, or even

in Taiwan itself, could have been among those reviewing their manu-scripts This is in fact likely, given that more center journals have recently invited NNES scholars, either center or periphery based, to serve on their editorial or advisory boards But even with this develop-ing change, the respondents believed that the center perspective usu-ally surpasses the local one because of its dominance in theories, discourses, and topics in the academic community

It seems less likely that these ALs’ alternative perspectives will be recognized unless they skillfully construct their writing on dominant theories, discourses, and topics, or unless their writing is read by reviewers and editors who are willing to play the “believing game” (Elbow, 2008, n.p.) to entertain ideas from a periphery locality in non-Anglophone academic conventions NES scholars also face similar problems, yet they do not simultaneously experience the double demoralizing challenge as frequently—that is, to argue from or for a different cultural perspective in the periphery and to curb the use of their familiar first language cultural writing strategies in presenting their arguments

APPROACHES TO COPING WITH CHALLENGES

The previous three perceived challenges—nonstandard language, topic based on periphery locality, and bias—have prompted these Tai-wanese ALs to take two disparate approaches: pragmatic and critical (Harwood & Hadley, 2004) Those (68%) who took a pragmatic approach—complying with the academic conventions of the status quo

—collaborated with academics who knew how to imbue their manu-scripts with the dominant perspective in the Anglophone center and sought language assistance from NES proofreaders to change their nonstandard forms and expressions to established American/British English Yet only a select few (21%) meeting the Anglophone criteria

of relevance, convincingness, and linguistic standard succeeded in publishing in ISI journals The majority failed Sundry reasons may have caused their failure, including parochialism, lack of quality research design, and the limited space in international journals The perceived language, topic, and bias issues are also possible reasons

Those who took a critical approach—challenging the status quo-— joined the “centrifugal” forces (Bakhtin, 1981, p 272) underlying regional and national English-medium journals to contest the hege-mony of the Anglophone center Eighteen respondents, five of whom also took the pragmatic approach, have joined 2,390 local scholars in signing a petition to protest the Ministry of Education’s overreliance

on citation-indexed publications as the major evaluation criterion for their research performance They denounced the Ministry’s “centripe-tal” (Bakhtin, 1981, p 272) movement toward the ISI evaluation sys-tem and poignantly pointed out that it was an act of self-imposed colonization This nationwide scholarly initiative has successfully prompted the Linguistics Research Field at the National Science Coun-cil to assign equal weighting to both quality local journals and citation-indexed journals in its evaluation of grant proposals Despite this encouraging development, most surveyed ALs believed that the impact

of ISI continued to reign, because they were still pressured by their universities to publish in citation-indexed journals in the center

IMPLICATIONS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Although my focus is on the publication dilemma in Taiwan, this discussion has implications for other countries and scholars facing sim-ilar challenges The perceptions and experiences reported by these NNES center-trained ALs are likely to be reflective of what other schol-ars encounter in settings similar to Taiwan, where the same kind of pressure to publish in English in center journals dominated by Anglophone expectations is present in their academic lives In this section, then, I explore possible solutions to problems identified in this study as they relate not only to Taiwan These suggestions are targeted at NNES scholars’ governments, gatekeepers of international journals in the center, and TESOL professionals in the center and their counter-parts teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in the periphery First, each government should mandate a reexamination of research evaluation systems at local universities To push for this mandate, scholars worldwide should join together to press their governments to establish standards relevant to local needs They should lobby their legislators to demand that their performance be measured according

to the contributions they make to both local and international aca-demic communities

Second, for international journal publishers, editors, and editorial boards, one would hope that they could consider the possibility of accepting other rhetorical and linguistic varieties besides the Anglo-phone norm, given that a considerable proportion of their contributors

and readers are using English as a second or foreign language or as a lingua franca (ELF) There is also a need for a more inclusive attitude toward research topics and methods that account for those in periphery

as well as center locations My intention is to urge an attitude of openness toward topics important within periphery countries, their rhetorical conventions, and non-Anglophone linguistic standards, with everything else being equal (e.g., quality of research) Such an open attitude would welcome topics rooted in periphery localities as a com-plement to the dominant perspective It would accommodate an intro-duction that does not contain an explicit statement delineating the overall organization of the paper It would consider non-Anglophone linguistic varieties as NNES writers’ resources to negotiate meanings (Horner, Lu, Royster, & Trimbur, 2011) and appreciate nonidiomatic but creative use of “storms of thoughts stampede” (Canagarajah, 2011,

p 407) It would deem statistically demonstrable core features of nonstandard English like using prepositions in different contexts (Kirkpatrick, 2011) as “norms around the globe” (Horner et al., 2011,

p 305) I would also urge those established NNES and periphery aca-demics who serve on the editorial and advisory boards of international journals in the center to take the lead in promoting understanding and acceptance of the statistically demonstrable nonstandard English and rhetorical varieties in NNES scholars’ writing, as well as research topics and methods reflective of local realities and perspectives, at editorial board meetings and push for translation of any perceptual and attitudi-nal recognition into explicit jourattitudi-nal policy

What can TESOL and TEFL professionals do to help? Given that all writers need to undergo a secondary socialization in educational insti-tutions to become academic writers (Casanave & Li, 2008; Mauranen, Hunninen, & Ranta, 2010), one would expect that professionals who teach English for academic purposes can incorporate research on intercultural rhetoric (Connor, 2011), World Englishes (Matsuda & Matsuda, 2010), and ELF into their curricular design in order to stimulate discussion of the kinds of issues raised in this article When engaging students in this secondary socialization, TESOL and TEFL professionals can help cultivate in future academics a pluralcentric perspective on language and writing, an awareness of English varieties and different culturally shaped written rhetorical conventions of achieving effectiveness and clarity, and “respect for perceived differ-ences within and across languages” (Horner et al., 2011, p 304) Hopefully through this education, future academics can develop a more positive attitude toward these varieties and rhetorical conventions when responding to them

One of the purposes of periphery scholars and international jour-nals in the center is something they share The former are motivated