CC BY-ND
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https://doi.org/10.17323/jle.2022.14586
Citation: Raitskaya, L., & Tikhonova, E. (2022). An in-depth glimpse into research on academic writing. Journal of Language and Education, 8(2), 5-17. https://doi. org/10.17323/jle.2022.14586
Correspondence:
Elena Tikhonova, etihonova@hse.ru
Received: May 17, 2022 Accepted: June 20, 2022 Published: June 30, 2022
@ ®
An In-Depth Glimpse into Research on Academic Writing
1© 2, 3 ©
Lilia Raitskaya , Elena Tikhonova
1 Moscow, State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), Moscow, Russia
2 National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
3 [
1 RUDN University, Moscow, Russia
ABSTRACT
Background. Though research on academic writing has been in focus for many years, it has been changing recently to embraces new linguistic and pedagogical aspects. The "Publish and perish" concept went global some time ago and became the measure of academic excellence and performance for universities and faculty. Subsequently, the field has widened to include issues of writing for publication, research article structured formats, rhetoric of the scholarly text, genre-specific issues.
Purpose. The editorial review aims to identify and offer the emerging landscapes in academic writing as guidelines for JLE aspiring and recurrent authors.
Methods. The review covers the 167 top cited publications (articles and reviews) selected from the Scopus on the basis of the inclusion criteria (published articles and reviews in the period between 2012 and 2021 in English with more than 14 citations in Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities).
Results and Implications. The initial search for publications on the "academic writing" keyword brought 1,792 as of May 21, 2022.After the inclusion criteria were applied, the list boiled down to 1,002 publications. Based on the prevailing keywords in these articles and reviews, 14 thematic clusters were formed, later increased to 15 to comply with the papers on the selected list. Then the 167 publications were distributed among the clusters, based on the keywords, and focus of the research. An in-depth analysis highlighted the popular aspects and issues within the clusters. Thus, the major directions of research were determined. The review findings contribute to better understanding of the field of AW and encourage researchers to further explore the emerging gaps and challenges in AW. 25 keywords were outlined as the most frequent in the field of academic writing. The major directions of research entail teaching and learning AW in higher education; digital issues of AW; lexical bundles and vocabulary; identity, complexity, stance, and voice; country-related research; genre issues in AW; feedback and assessment in AW; writing for publication; plagiarism and integrity; academic literacies; discourse and metadiscourse; discipline-related issues; citation issues in AW; writing a thesis; and rhetorical aspects in AW. Implications. Following the findings of the JLE editors' review, our readers may get focused on popular and pertinent directions in their future research.
KEYWORDS:
academic writing, scholarly writing, writing for publication, lexical bundle, rhetoric, genre, discourse
INTRODUCTION
Academic, or scholarly, or scientific writing is "a multidimensional activity" and "culturally loaded event" (Sadeghi & Ali-nasab, 2020). Being a lingua franca, English facilitates research collaboration on an international scale. All meta data and most international journals are issued in English. The global academic community is diverse, with specific features across
countries and disciplines. Disciplinary variation in academic writing stems from in a wide range of "communicative purposes, priorities, and conventions" (Lu et al., 2021). The scope and essence of academic writing (AW) seems quite established.
The research field of academic writing embraces various linguistic aspects (discourse and style issues, including com-
mand of English, linguistic repertoire, genres in AW) and strategies to overcome language problems (surface and discourse level errors, poor coherence, grammatical errors, limited or unproper vocabulary). At the same time, AW has been studied for years in educational contexts (levels of education; efficient teaching methods; assessment; courses, and educational outcomes). In addition, most of research on English academic writing focuses on native speakers or compares Anglophone authors with L2 authors (Wu, Maura-nen & Lei, 2020).
With the "Publish or Perish" concept introduced in the academia, "the expectation to create knowledge through research became overemphasized" (Amutuhaire, 2022, p.281). The "Publish or Perish" concept went global and spread across countries and universities, research on academic writing refocused to cover issues of writing for publication, research article structured formats, rhetoric of the scholarly text, genre-specific issues, including lexical bundles, punctuation, and others. At universities, writing-enriched curricula were introduced to promote writing skills across higher education and post-graduate studies. Aiming for academic excellence, universities support their faculty and students in publishing their research outcomes in established international peer-reviewed journals. Publishing in them has become an increasingly widely used measure of academic performance (Wu, Mauranen & Lei, 2020). In the early 2000s, most researchers did not receive "any formal training in academic writing" (Keen, 2007). Due to a changed attitude to academic writing as an integral part of the academic research and publishing process, the discipline of academic writing found its way into university curricula across the globe.
The field has widened. New topics of interest have been emerging. AW is evolving (creativity in AW, requirements for more references, a simplified academic language, a severe fight against plagiarism, etc.). In addition, authors often turn to grammar checkers and other online services. Teaching and learning academic writing have also come to the fore.
Reviews on AW are published regularly (Zwiers, 2004; DiC-erbo, Anstrom, Baker, & Rivera, 2014; Tribble, 2015; Nigar, 2020). It proves both the existing research interest AW and
multiple facets of the field. Some researchers subtly doubt that AW may be defined as one discipline (Zashikhina, 2021), considering that AW is a set of disciplines. Though, it tends to be approached as a multidisciplinary field.
As a journal focused on languages, higher education, and scholarly communication, JLE sees academic writing high on its agenda. We would like to highlight the cutting-edge trends in the field of AW for our readers in hope for more submissions on the topics of prominence related to academic writing. The review aims to tackle the highly cited publications on academic writing in the period between 2012 and 2021 with a view to clustering the directions of research and their key features. In reviewing the publications indexed in the Scopus database, we are to answer the following Review Questions: (1)What keywords best describe the research field of academic writing? (2)What are the prevailing directions of research in the field of academic writing? (3)What are the characteristics of the research field?
METHODS
Databases
A review of publications tends to give a useful hint for researchers as of the scope and other essential characteristics of the research field. To define the scope of the field, its basic characteristics, and major directions of research, we conducted an analysis of the publications extracted from the Scopus database by various criteria. The Scopus database was selected as it covers the leading sources in the field, including the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, Journal of Second Language Writing, Assessing Writing, Written Communication, Asian ESP Journal, and other authorities in the field. Besides, Scopus contains over 4,500 documents related to academic writing.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To make up a list of highly cited publications representing the field research, the following inclusion and exclusion criteria best fit the aim of the review were set (see Table 1).
Table 1
Criteria of Inclusion and Exclusion
Criteria
Inclusion
Exclusion
Database
Language
Levels of Education
Period
Subject Area
Type of Publications
Language-Focus Research
Citation
Scopus English
Higher Education Post-Graduate Education
2012-2021 (10 full years)
Social Sciences Arts & Humanities
Articles Reviews
Academic Writing
15 citations or more
Bases other than Scopus Other languages Other levels of education
Years beyond the period between 2012 and 2021 Other areas
All other types of publications All other aspects 14 citations or fewer
To determine the prevailing keywords, a frequency list of the top 50 keywords was compiled. In addition, the following characteristics of the research field were analysed: (1) geographic breakdown of the publications; (2) leading research centres focused on AW; (3) prolific authors related to AW. The geographic breakdown, prolific authors, and leading centres were identified on the basis of 1,002 search results.
Procedure
The search on the keyword "academic writing" was launched. The publications found as the search results were refined and limited to the period (2012-2021); type of publications (article, review); language (English); subject area (social sciences; arts & humanities).
The keywords outlined in the publications on the highly cited list were analysed and the first 40 most popular keywords were ranked. Then, the analysis was conducted manually based on the clusters, outlined within the keywords of the field. The characteristics of the selected publications were scrutinized and summed up.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the keyword "academic writing", the search brought 1,792 publications as of May 21, 2022.The initial search was limited by the period (2012-2021); language (English); subject area (social sciences, arts & humanities); types of publication (article, review). The results were refined and subsequently reduced to 1,002 publications.
Then the remaining search results were placed by citation, with the publications cited 15 or more times set aside as a final list for further analyses. As 10 citations are generally considered as an essential and influential level of citation for social sciences (education, communication) and arts and humanities (language and linguistics), the authors increased the minimum criterium to suit all subject areas in this review. The list, thus, totalled 185 publications.
At the next stage, the authors manually filtered the 185 publications on the inclusion - exclusion criteria.18 out of the 185 publications were excluded (see Appendix 1). The final list contained 167 highly cited articles and reviews on academic writing. The citations were distributed between 161 and 15.
Keywords Describing the Research Field
The ultimate 1,002 search results included the following highly frequent 40 keywords (the frequency is shown in the brackets): (1) Academic Writing (897); (2) Higher Education (53); (3) Academic Literacies (31); (4) Plagiarism (30); (5) Writing (30); (6) EAP (28); (7) Lexical Bundles (27); (8) Genre Analysis (26); (9) Metadiscourse (26); (10) English
For Academic Purposes (21); (11) Peer Feedback (21); (12) Academic Literacy (19); (13) Corpus Linguistics (19); (14) EFL (19); (15) L2 Academic Writing (19); (16) Stu-
dents (18); (17) Corpus Analysis (17); (18) Identity (17); (19) Research Articles (17); (20) Systemic Functional Linguistics (17); (21) Academic Writings (16); (22) English Academic Writing (16); (23) Human (16); (24) Feedback (15); (25) Peer Review (15); (26) Humans (14); (27) Research Article (14);
(28) Stance (14); (29) Critical Thinking (13); (30) Publishing (13); (31) Teaching (13); (32) Writing Instruction (13); (33) Citation (12); (34) Second Language Writing (12); (35) Writing Assessment (12); (36) Article (11); (37) Assessment (11); (38) International Students (11); (39) Education (10); (40) Academic Writing Skills (9).
The 167 articles and reviews brought the following 40 frequent keywords (the frequency is shown in the brackets): (1) Academic Writing (110); (2) EAP (15); (3) Academic Literacies (11); (4) Lexical Bundles (9); (5) Plagiarism (9); (6) Stance (8); (7) Corpus Linguistics (7); (8) Higher Education (7); (9) Writing (7); (10) Education (5); (11) Genre (5); (12) Human (5); (13) Humans (5); (14) L2 Writing (5); (15) Metadiscourse (5); (16) Doctoral Education (4); (17) Engagement (4); (18) English For Academic Purposes (4); (19) English For Specific Purposes (4); (20) Genre Analysis (4); (21) Peer Feedback (4); (22) Second Language Writing (4); (23) Teaching (4); (24) Academic Discourse (3); (25) Academic Writing Skills (3); (26) Assessment (3); (27) Citations (3); (28) Concordancing (3);
(29) Contract Cheating (3); (30) Corpus (3); (31) Corpus Analysis (3); (32) Corpus Pedagogy (3); (33) Diachronic Change (3); (34) Disciplinary Variation (3); (35) EFL Learners (3); (36) Feedback (3); (37) History Writing (3); (38) Identity (3); (39) MD Analysis (3); (40) Nursing (3).
The frequently used keywords added to defining the clusters of research in the analysis (see below). The following keywords are overlapped in both lists: (1) Academic Literacies; (2) Academic Writing; (3) Academic Writing Skills; (4) Assessment; (5) Citation; (6) Corpus Analysis; (7) Corpus Linguistics; (8) EAP; (9) Education; (10) English For Academic Purposes; (11) Feedback; (12) Genre Analysis; (13) Higher Education; (14) Human; (15) Humans; (16) Identity; (17) Lexical Bundles; (18) Metadiscourse; (19) Peer Feedback; (20) Plagiarism; (21) Research Article; (22) Second Language Writing; (23) Stance; (24) Teaching; (25) Writing.
This list includes the keywords that are outlined by both the highly frequent and most cited articles and reviews on academic writing in the period between 2012 and 2021. While forming the thematical clusters best suit this review, this list was used as a starting point for analysis.
Though after the publications were manually filtered, the headlines of the thematic clusters were revised and extended to describe the sub-fields more precisely. The keywords "human", "humans", "second language writing", "education", and "research article" were taken over by more general themes.
Major Directions of Research
The analysis of the 167 highly cited publications categorised the publications into 15 thematic clusters. The latter were initially formed on the basis of the most frequent keywords (see above).
Identity, Complexity, Stance, and Voice
These sub-fields are thoroughly studied. Though, some fresh-new aspects are emerging with the academic discourse and genres development. Thus, in this cluster, there are publications on changes in the notion of stance in the context of gradual evolution of research genres (Hyland & Jiang, 2018); an authorial voice in PhD multilingual writing (Morton & Storch, 2019); writing with attitude for medical students (Crosthwaite, Cheung & Jiang, 2017); attitudes across disciplinary cultures (Gnutzmann & Rabe, 2014); syntactic complexity and writing quality (Casal & Lee, 2019); noun phrase complexity in AW (Parkinson & Musgrave, 2014); grammatical complexity in L2 English writing research (Biber, Gray, Staples & Egbert, 2020), and others.
Country-Related Research
The review entails research on country-related issues of teaching AW at universities around the globe, including practices from Sweden, UK, China, Hungary, Qatar, Kenia, Hong Kong, Iran, Turkey, Australia, and Taiwan. The details of some publications are given below as there is an overlapping of the clusters.
Teaching and Learning AW and EAP in Higher Education
AW has been approached in the pedagogical contexts for a long time. Research focuses on technologies of teaching, effectiveness of learning, skills, and traits necessary to develop one's AW. The highly cited publications include the ones on self-regulated strategic writing and self-regulatory control strategy in AW (Csizer & Tanko, 2017; Hu & Gao, 2018); an English-medium university as a rich immersion environment and its impact on English proficiency of international students in writing (Knoch, Rouhshad, Oon & Storch, 2015); the effects of strategy instructions on writing strategy (De Silva & Graham, 2015); PhD students' conceptions of AW (Lonka et al., 2013); real-life academic tasks (McCullock, 2013); critical thinking and appraisal in AW (Borglin & Fagerstrom, 2012); potential of mobile learning in teaching ESP academic writing (Zaki & Md Yunus, 2015); gamification in developing AW (El Tantawi, Sadaf & AlHumaid, 2018). Other themes of research cover L2 students' AW from sources in English (Cumming et al., 2018); data-driven learning (DDL) in the academic writing classroom (Chen & Flowerdew, 2018); taxonomy of errors in writing (Salmani Nodoushan, 2018) and software tools of error analysis (Al-Ahdal, 2020); writing across the curriculum (Harper & Vered, 2017) and others.
Software and Digital Issues of AW
Teaching and learning AW widely apply software specially devised to meet various needs. As the publications under review prove that the studies focus on constructing discipline-specific corpora in ASP courses for students to learn to write academic texts (Charles, 2012; Charles, 2014); on the Leximancer text mining software (Hyndman, 2018); on corpus-based analysis of academic vocabulary in research articles (Valipouri & Nassaji, 2013); on AcaWriter, a learning analytics tool on rhetorical feedback (Knight et al., 2020); on software tool of error analysis (Al-Ahdal, 2020); on Turnitin software against plagiarism (Mphahlele & McKenna, 2019); and other technologies used for digital support for AW.
Lexical Bundles and Vocabulary
Academic discourse has its own features, including very specific and science-only vocabulary (terms) and lexical bundles, frequently used combinations of words. The publications encompass research on lexical bundles in AW by native and L2 speakers of English (Adel & Erman, 2012; Shin, 2019, etc.); connecting lexical bundles and rhetorical moves in AW (Cortes, 2013); phrasal complexity through complex phrases constructions (Ansarifar, Shahriari & Pishghadam, 2018); linking adverbials (Lei, 2012); phrase-frame lists in social science articles (Lu, Yoon & Kisselev, 2018); academic phraseology (Vincent, 2013), etc.
Genre Analysis and Genre Issues in AW
Genre analysis often forms the basis for an EAP course. Understanding academic genres is the key to successful writing. The articles in this review contains studies on students' genre uptake (Miller, Mitchell & Pessoa, 2016); on move analysis (Parkinson, 2017); on challenges to genre approaches in EAP (Tribble, 2017); on genre of business case report (Nathan, 2013); on effects of data-driven learning on genre uptake (Cotos, Link & Huffman, 2017), etc.
Feedback and Assessment
The issues of assessment and feedback are a central piece in many instructional methods. They may add effectiveness to the learning process, serving as motivation. The cluster entails various approaches to feedback and peer feedback as well as assessment in AW, including the effects of peer feedback on academic writing (Huisman, Saab, van Driel & van den Brock, 2018; Huisman, Saab, van den Brock & van Driel, 2019); participating in a doctoral writing group and reflective practice skills development (Cahusac de Caux, Lam, Lau, Hoang & Pretori-us, 2017); assessment of writing in an academic writing course (Rakedzon & Baram-Tsabari, 2017); processing written corrective feedback by L2 learners; assessment of metacognitive strategy knowledge about AW (Karlen, 2017); the effects of research evaluation on academics' writing practices (McCulloch, 2017), etc.
Table 2
Thematic Clusters of the 167 Highly Cited Publications on AW
Thematic Cluster Number of Publications on the list Brief Cluster Description
Identity, Complexity, Stance, and Voice 32 Syntactic, lexical, and grammatical complexity of an academic text. Stance expression. Writing with attitude. Research on an authorial voice and voice features. Attitudes across disciplinary cultures
Country-Related Research 28
Teaching and Learning AW and EAP 24 in Higher Education
Software and Digital Issues of AW 23
Lexical Bundles and Vocabulary 23
Genre Analysis and Genre Issues 13 in AW
Feedback and Assessment in AW 11
Publish or Perish, Writing for 10 Publication
Plagiarism, Cheating, and Integrity 10
Academic Literacies 8
Discourse and Metadiscourse 7
Discipline-Related Issues 7
Citation Issues in AW 7
Writing a Thesis 6
Rhetoric. Moves & Steps 6
Publish or Perish, Writing for Publication
Writing for publication came to the fore as the "Publish or Perish" period began. Greater pressures on researchers forced them to publish their research in international
Country-related experiences in teaching and learning AW
Various aspects of teaching and learning of AW. AW at universities. Techniques and technologies of learning of AW. Research related to EAP
Research on software-related issues of AW. Digital support of AW
Lexical bundles in AW. Linguistic resources used in AW. Vocabulary and lexical bundles used in various sections of the research article
Community and identity in genre analysis. Genre uptake
Peer feedback process in teaching AW at universities, its efficiency, and perceptions. Research into the teaching and assessment of student AW
Research on individual and institutional traits of academic publishing, its links to academic literacies. International journals: editing policies, language ideologies, knowledge production, evaluation, and circulation. Peer review: challenges, and functions in knowledge production
Culturally based interpretations of plagiarism. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of blatant and subtle plagiarism. Plagiarism detection
Research on Academic Literacies, an influential model in the UK focused mainly on the situations of "non-traditional" students, and its links to developing a mainstream instructional model. Analyses of academic literacy in all contexts
Discourse analyses in AW contexts. Corpus Building. Corpus-based studies. General and specialized corpora in AW. Studies on the ways in which writers interact through their use of language with readers, i.e. metadiscourse
AW learning and teaching related to various disciplines
Research on multiple citation features, motives to cite, and citation practices. Analyses of functions of citations in theses and research articles
Genre and various aspects of writing a PhD thesis
Research based on Moves and Steps Analysis (Swales, 1990). Rhetoric of research texts
journals, though often negatively motivated (Lambovska & Todorova, 2021). At present, such publications in highly reputed journals, mainly indexed at the international databases Scopus, and Web of Science, are supposed the major results of their productivity. University scholars' funding and
careers as well as the ranking of their affiliated universities are subject to published academic work.
The cluster entails research productivity (Nygaard, 2017); language ideologies enacted in the comments on the submissions to international English-medium journals (Lillis & Curry, 2015) and referees' comments on submissions and indirect requests addressed to authors (Paltridge, 2015); publishing research in the international context (Gea-Valor, Rey-Rocha & Moreno, 2014); the use of English in academic publishing (Olsson & Sheridan, 2012); and navigating scholarly writing and international publishing (Ho, 2017).
Plagiarism, Cheating, and Integrity
The recent research is focused on university teachers' and students' attitudes towards plagiarism (Adam, Anderson & Spronken-Smith, 2017); the effectiveness of anti-plagiarism software, including the most popular service Turnitin used for 10 languages (Stapleton, 2012); intentional, unintentional, and contextual plagiarism; detecting cheating in essay and report submissions at universities (Rogerson, 2017); academic integrity (Morris, 2018); and plagiarism reasoning (Selemani, Chawinga & Dube, 2018).
Academic Literacies
Academic Literacies (AL) as well as English for Academic Purposes are the two dominant approaches to academic writing instruction. The former is applied mainly in the UK, the latter is internationally recognized. Wingate & Tribble (2012) made a review of these two approaches, analysing the shared principles. The other publications on the academic literacies model include studies on a combination of AL with a genre-based model (Wingate, 2012); on a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) approach (Coffin & Donohue, 2012); etc.
Discourse and Metadiscourse
The pursuit to explain the relationship between language and the contexts it is used encourages metadiscourse studies. Researchers face some difficulties in defining and categorising the field. Though new research papers were also published (2012-2021), including studies on a general analysis on metadiscourse (Hyland, 2017); metadiscourse features of successful and unsuccessful writings of university students (Lee & Deakins, 2016) and metadiscourse repertoire (Li & Wharton, 2012); changing patterns of metadiscourse across disciplines (Hyland & Jiang, 2018); etc. Metadiscourse studies form an integral part of discourse analysis.
Discipline-Related Issues
AW is not universal across disciplines. Separate research is required to cover discipline-specific issues. In the review, we outlined research on AW in nursing (Borglin & Fagerstrom,
2012); psychology (Willis, 2018); biological sciences (Divan, Bowman & Seabourne, 2015); etc. The cluster also includes a publication on variations of research articles across disciplines (Gray, 2013).
Citation Issues in AW
The cluster covers studies on multiple citation features, including publications on cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic influences on citation in research articles (Hu & Wang, 2014); rhetoric functions of intertextual links in different academic genres; and citing behaviour, including a taxonomy of motives to cite (Erikson & Erlandson, 2014); development of source use and citation (Davis, 2013; Cumming et al., 2018).
Writing a Thesis
AW is one of the foundations for any research work, including theses. There are a few publications related to writing a thesis. They dwell upon facilitating experiences and strategies for doctoral students' and graduates' thesis writing (Ode-na & Burgess, 2017); specific features of doctoral theses in the visual and performing arts (Paltridge, Starfield, Ravelli & Tuckwell, 2012); challenges encountered by novice doctoral writers (Maher, Feldon, Timmerman & Chao, 2014), etc.
Rhetoric. Moves & Steps
Research on AW tends to include studies of generic structure of articles. It was offered by John Swales as Moves Analysis in 1981 (Swales, 1990). This review entails publications on connecting lexical bundles with moves in research article introductions (Cortes, 2013); strengthening move analysis methodology (Moreno & Swales, 2018); etc.
Characteristics of the Research Field of Academic Writing
The reviewed papers were published in 57 peer-reviewed journals, with 162 research articles (97 per cent) and 5 reviews (3 per cent). Three journals topped the list with 41, 17, and 13 publications respectively. They are Journal of English for Academic Purposes (47), English for Specific Purposes (17), and Journal of Second Language Writing (13). The remaining journals published fewer than 10 articles or reviews.
The most prolific authors in the field of AW (2012-2021) were K. Hyland (12 publications), F. Jiang (7 publications), and J.J. Lee (5 publications). The geographic breakdown is shown in Diagram 1, with the USA, the UK, and China taking the lead.
The distribution of publications by year showed more or less even pattern (See Diagram 2), with hikes in 2017 and 2018. It may begin a new upward trend in highly cited publications on AW. The data are lower for 2020 and 2021 as these were pandemic years and citations on them may rise in 2022 and 2023.
Diagram 1
Geographic Breakdown of the Highly Cited Publications on AW (2012-2021)
Diagram 2
Distribution of the Highly Cited Publications on AW by Year
(2012-2021)
Note. From the Scopus database. Copyright 2022 by the Scopus.
CONCLUSION
The review found that in the period between 2012 and 2021 the key lines of research encompassed: (1) Teaching and Learning AW and EAP in Higher Education, (2) Software and Digital Issues of AW, (3) Lexical Bundles and Vocabulary, (4) Identity, Complexity, Stance, and Voice, (5) Country-Related Research, (6) Genre Analysis and Genre Issues in AW, (7) Feedback and Assessment in AW, (8) Plagiarism, Cheating, and Integrity, (9) Academic Literacies, (10) Discourse and Metadiscourse, (11) Publish or Perish, (12) Writing for Publication, Discipline-Related Issues, (13) Citation Issues in AW, (14) Writing a Thesis, (15) Rhetoric Moves & Steps.
REFERENCES
Note. From the Scopus database. Copyright 2022 by the Scopus.
The JLE editors expect their potential authors will focus in their research on the themes mentioned above as the outlined directions tend to prevail in global AW research in the near future. The JLE sees these sub-fields as promising for the journal scope development. As this editorial review is limited to one database, though essential, further reviews may be conducted on a wider basis. A scoping review could contribute more to a general understanding of the field development.
DECLARATION OF COMPETING INTEREST
None declared. ■
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APPENDIX 1
Articles Excluded from the Highly Cited Publications by Exclusion Criteria
No Publication Description Non-Compliance with the Criteria
1 Allen, D., & Mills, A. (2016). The impact of second language proficiency in dyadic peer feedback. Language Teaching Research, 20(4), 498-513. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168814561902 Scope Criterium
2 Cotos, E. (2014). Enhancing writing pedagogy with learner corpus data. ReCALL, 26(2), 202-224. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344014000019 Scope Criterium
3 Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. M. (2014). Strategies and tactics in academic knowledge production by multilingual scholars. [Estrategias y tácticas en la producción de conocimiento académico por investigadores multilingues] Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa. v22n32.2014 Language Criterium
4 De Bhailís, C., & Flynn, E. (2017). Recognising legal capacity: Commentary and analysis of article 12 CRPD. International Journal of Law in Context, 13(1), 6-21. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S174455231600046X Scope Criterium
5 Gao, Y., Schunn, C. D. D., & Yu, Q. (2019). The alignment of written peer feedback with draft problems and its impact on revision in peer assessment. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(2), 294-308. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1499075 Scope Criterium
6 Ho, V., & Li, C. (2018). The use of metadiscourse and persuasion: An analysis of first year university students' timed argumentative essays. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 33, 53-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.02.001 Scope Criterium
7 Lisle, D., & Johnson, H. L. (2019). Lost in the aftermath. Security Dialogue, 50(1), 20-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010618762271 Scope Criterium
8 Moreno, A. I., Rey-Rocha, J., Burgess, S., López-Navarro, I., & Sachdev, I. (2012). Spanish researchers' perceived difficulty writing research articles for English-medium journals: The impact of proficiency in English versus publication experience. Iberica, 24, 157-184. Language Criterium
9 Naheem, M. A. (2017). Suspicious alerts in money laundering-the crédit agricole case. Journal of Financial Crime, 24(4), 691-703. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-12-2015-0074 Scope Criterium
10 Nordberg, D. (2017). First and second drafts of history: The case of trump, foucault and pre-modern governance. Geopolitics, History, and International Relations, 9(2), 107-117. https://doi.org/10.22381/GHIR9220175 Scope Criterium
11 Peeters, W. (2018). Applying the networking power of web 2.0 to the foreign language classroom: A taxonomy of the online peer interaction process. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 31(8), 905-931. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1465982 Scope Criterium
12 Prahmana, R. C. I., & Kusumah, Y. S. (2016). The hypothetical learning trajectory on re- Language Criterium
search in mathematics education using research-based learning. Pedagogika, 123(3), 42-54. https://doi.org/10.15823/p.2016.32
13 Prasopoulou, E. (2017). A half-moon on my skin: A memoir on life with an activity tracker. European Scope Criterium Journal of Information Systems, 26(3), 287-297. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41303-017-0040-7
14 Ranalli, J., Link, S., & Chukharev-Hudilainen, E. (2017). Automated writing evaluation for formative Scope Criterium assessment of second language writing: Investigating the accuracy and usefulness of feedback as
part of argument-based validation. Educational Psychology, 37(1), 8-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/01 443410.2015.1136407
15 Révész, A., Michel, M., & Lee, M. (2019). Exploring second language writers' pausing and revi- Scope Criterium sion behaviors. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41(3), 605-631. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S027226311900024X
16 Tateo, L., Español, A., Kullasepp, K., Marsico, G., & Palang, H. (2018). Five gazes on the border: A collective Scope Criterium auto-ethnographic writing. Human Arenas, 1(2), 113-133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-018-0010-1
No Publication Description Non-Compliance with
the Criteria
17 Teng, L. S., & Zhang, L. J. (2020). Empowering learners in the second/foreign language classroom: Scope Criterium Can self-regulated learning strategies-based writing instruction make a difference? Journal of Second Language Writing, 48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2019.100701
18 Zhu, Q., & Carless, D. (2018). Dialogue within peer feedback processes: Clarification and negotia- Scope Criterium tion of meaning. Higher Education Research and Development, 37(4), 883-897. https://doi.org/10.108 0/07294360.2018.1446417
