Challenges Faced by Chinese Multilingual Scholars While Publishing in English

Abstract

This chapter reports the challenges and difficulties the participants of the present study have encountered while writing and publishing in English. Firstly, although 92.4% of respondents acknowledged English as a lingua franca in academic communication, only 25.4% of them preferred writing research articles in English, while 51.7% were inclined to write research articles in Chinese. Secondly, 65% of participants reported that they had to spend much more time and effort in writing research articles in English than in Chinese. Thirdly, 61.4% of the participants reported that their submissions were rejected for having research content inappropriate for the journal; 44.7% and 34.2% of them for identified unreliable research design and writing problems (redundant sentences, complex paragraphs, and grammatical mistakes), respectively. Fourthly, the participants reported that the most difficult sections of research article writing are the Discussion and the Introduction, followed by communication with reviewers. Fifthly, research resources are distributed unevenly across different levels of higher education institutions in China. Lastly, the participants in the present study reported that they had limited experience with language editorial services and academic writing/ publication skills training.