Colleagues helping each other to publish in medical sciences: Iranian field specialists' convenience editing strategies

Abstract

This article reports a study into 60 research articles (RAs) authored by Iranian medical researchers and published in high-quality international English journals. It investigated how academic professionals in medical sciences implement peer convenience editing (CE) to improve articles and make them suitable for publication. The research identified nine editing interventions that were categorized as micro-or macro-editing strategies.The findings indicated that the most frequently used strategies are microstrategies of substitution, addition, and mechanical alteration. The study also found that the abstract received the majority of editorial changes (mostly micro), followed by the introduction and then the discussion sections. The findings may help authors and institutions identify which sections and which types of editorial interventions are most likely to be required to ensure that RAs are optimized for publishing in international journals.

International Publishing as A Networked Activity: Collegial Support for Chinese Scientists

“…This reluctance to offer discursive assistance to colleagues has also been noted elsewhere so, for instance, the Iranian healthcare academics in Gholami and Zeinolabedini's (2017) study felt "overtaxed" when asked to edit papers by fellow medical professionals. When they did provide help, moreover, their busy schedule meant they provided very limited textual interventions as we noted above for DS2's paper (Zeinolabedini and Gholami 2016). On the other hand, Lillis and Curry (2010) report how an Anglophone-centre researcher substantially shaped two European academics' manuscript, but we suspect this is not a representative case.…”

“…However, Lillis and Curry (2010), investigating non-Anglophone European academics in education and psychology, conclude that colleagues are the most valuable publishing resource for EAL scholars, a finding echoed by Li (2014b) studying a group of surgeons at a Chinese hospital. Research on Iranian medical scholars, on the other hand, found that colleagues lacked the confidence and literacy skills to rectify their fellow researchers' papers (Gholami and Zeinolabedini 2017;Zeinolabedini and Gholami 2016).…”

Using online machine translation in international scholarly writing and publishing: A longitudinal case of a Chinese engineering scholar

“…To improve the language of their manuscripts, many EAL scholars have turned to fee‐paying ‘literacy brokers’ (Bowker & Ciro, 2019)—a term first coined by Lillis and Curry (2010) to refer to such helpers as translators, proofreaders or editors in the process of publication—or ‘text mediators’ (Luo & Hyland, 2016, 2019), which is similar to ‘literacy brokers’ in denotation but can be either fee‐paying or free. Some have sought convenience editing services from supervisors and colleagues (Luo & Hyland, 2021; Maniati & Jalilifar, 2018; Zeinolabedini & Gholami, 2016) or cooperated extensively with supervisors, colleagues or even students able to improve the language as coauthors (Mu, 2020). Imitation, especially language‐reuse or the use of formulaic sequences has also been a common technique used by EAL scholars in the process of writing or revising manuscripts (Abbas et al, 2020; Flowerdew & Li, 2007; Li, 2005; Mu, 2020).…”

Metadiscourse Markers in the Abstract Section of Applied Linguistics Research Articles: Celebrity vs. Non-celebrity Authors

“…Finally, the Chinese introductions emphasized the use of endophorics, attitude markers, and engagement markers. Zeinolabedini and Gholami (2016) analyzed 60 research articles which were written by Iranian medical researchers in order to examine the role of peer convenience editing in the improvement of medical professionals' articles. This study enumerated nine editing interventions classified into two strategy groups, including micro and macro editing strategies.…”