Publishing research in English-language journals: Attitudes, strategies and difficulties of multilingual scholars of medicine

Abstract

Over the last few decades a growing number of multilingual scholars have shown anincreasing interest in having the results of their research published in English-languagejournals. Many of these researchers, however, experience difficulties in producing effec-tive research articles (RAs) to meet the expectations of their international disciplinarycommunities. In this paper we report some of the results obtained from the analysis of theresponses to a large-scale online survey [http://eneida.unileon.es/eneidaquestionnaire.php] which was administered to Ph.D.-holding researchers from various disciplines,affiliated tofive Spanish teaching and research institutions. The results we present here arerelated to Spanish scholars of Medicine, afield of research in which researchers are in needof specialized assistance in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP). We focus ontheir motivations for reporting their research in English, their writing strategies, pastpublishing experiences and future needs for training in ERPP. Thefindings revealed anoverall positive attitude towards writing in English, although difficulties with specificdiscourse features and with the most challenging sections and aspects of the RA were alsoidentified. The information derived from this survey should allow us to design trainingmaterials that can be of assistance to multilingual scholars of medicine