Genre comparative analysis of English and Chinese medical research articles: a small corpus-based study

Scientific progress is an important indicator for the social and economic developments of any country. According to various reports, worldwide, Iran has the most growth in the field of science due to a high increase in the numbers of publications during the past decade. The aim of this study is to assess not only the quantity, but also the quality of publications of indexed Iranian journals and compare them to Turkey, as an Islamic neighboring country, in addition to the contributions of these two countries to our knowledge. A number of international journals with high impact factors were selected to assess the contributions of scientists from Iran and Turkey to the medical sciences. English medical journals from Iran and Turkey indexed by the ISI Web of Sciences with known impact factors (IF) announced at the beginning of 2010 were included for evaluation. We calculated the number of all articles published from the beginning of 2007 until the October 2010, the number of total citations, and citations from authors outside both countries for each journal. In addition, we selected all articles cited at least six times by authors outside of both countries and discussed their content with regard to originality and novelty, as well as their contributions to current knowledge. Furthermore, 60 international journals in basic or clinical research with IF greater than 6 were selected for the magnitude of contributions of both countries to our scientific knowledge. In 2010, out of a total of 21 Iranian journals indexed in ISI since 2007, only 12 have a known IF with a mean of 0.39 (range: 0.07-0.97), whereas out of 28 Turkish medical journals indexed in ISI, 15 have a known IF (mean: 0.35, range: 0.05-0.82). The total number of articles published since 2007 from Iran, total citations and total citations by authors from outside Iran were 2080, 1218, and 463, respectively. The same data related to Turkish journals were 4876, 2036, and 1331, respectively. Indeed, the mean citations per article by foreign authors for Iranian and Turkish researchers were 0.19 and 0.3, respectively. Of the total articles during this period, only seven from Iran and nine from Turkey have been cited at least six times by authors outside the two countries. Iran had 23 and Turkey 37 original publications in highly reputable international journals. Turkey was more represented in basic research and clinical observational studies than Iran. Despite high numbers of published articles, both countries have medical journals with very low comparable citation rates and IF. Only one out of three Turkish articles is cited once by authors outside of Turkey and one of five Iranian articles is cited by authors outside Iran. The few high-cited articles address new therapies and interventional studies or diseases commonly encountered regionally, and are the results of the efforts of a few individuals in highly specialized fields. Turkish scientists are inclined to publish their scientific works more than Iranians in distinguished international journals. These articles deal more with regional diseases that are not common in Western countries. Developing countries can only contribute to world science when they focus their efforts on teamwork in order to research ways to solve country-specific diseases and their own health problems.

This study investigates how Chinese scholars in Applied Linguistics construct different authorial stances in their English and Chinese research articles (RAs) by using interactional metadiscourse comprising boosters, hedges, and self-mentions. A specially designed corpus of 22 Chinese and 22 English RAs written by the same group of Chinese scholars was compiled and examined for metadiscourse forms and functions. We found that (a) while the Chinese scholars employed similar frequencies of boosters in both their Chinese and English RAs, they used significantly more hedges in their English RAs than in their Chinese RAs; (b) while they used more boosters than hedges in their Chinese RAs, a reverse pattern was found in their English RAs; (c) they used significantly more self-mentions, particularly first-person pronouns in their English RAs, than in their Chinese RAs. These findings indicate that the same Chinese scholars have displayed different epistemic stances and authorial identities in their Chinese-medium and English-medium publications.

Background: Physicians continually need to update their knowledge to ensure appropriate decision making about patient care. Objectives: We aimed to identify and compare information sources used by specialists and residents, their reasons for choosing these sources, and the level of their confidence in these sources. Materials and Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study among specialists and residents using a validated questionnaire in the five academic hospitals affiliated with Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (in northeast Iran). We compared the specialists with residents in term of gender, age, years since graduation, use of information sources, confidence in use of information sources, and reasons for selecting the information sources. Within each group, we also investigated the effect of work experience and gender on frequently used information sources and users’ confidence in them. Results: The questionnaire was sent to 315 physicians, including 155 specialists and 160 residents. One hundred twenty-six specialists (response rate: 81 %) and 126 residents (response rate: 79%) completed it. The most frequently mentioned sources by all specialists included “English textbooks” (84.9%), “web/internet” (74.6%), “English medical journals” (62.3 %), and “discussions with colleagues” (57%). Among residents, “web/internet” (65.9%), “discussion with colleagues” (61.3%), and “Persian textbooks” (50.4%) were the most frequently used sources of information. In both groups, high confidence was demonstrated in “English textbooks,” “English medical journals,” and “international instructions/guidelines.” Both groups counted reliability, easy accessibility, and being up to date as their primary reasons for the selection of their information sources. There was also a significantly negative correlation between using the internet as an information source and age in specialists (Spearman’s rho=- 0.238, p=0.01), but not in residents. Conclusions: Reliability, easy accessibility, and being up to date should be considered in establishing information sources for physicians.

Objective To get to know the genre structure of clinical medical papers in English and to improve the reading and writing abilities of medical workers. Methods Fifteen clinical medical papers from New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association and British Medical Journal were randomly selected and analyzed based on Swale's CARS model; with reference to the language clues, their moves and steps, as well as their language features, were recorded. Results There were 10 common moves-presenting background information, reviewing related research, announcing present research, clarifying study design, performing data analysis, reporting objective result, highlighting overall outcome, explaining main findings, indicating limitations, stating conclusions-in English clinical medical papers, and each move had its own steps and language features. Conclusion The English clinical medical paper has its common genre structures, and understanding their language features will help Chinese medical workers develop high-quality international academic exchanges. Key words: English medical paper; Genre; Move

This article investigated the phenomena of concept similarity and conceptual information alteration in medical translation as information transfer between English and Chinese. The purpose of this investigation was twofold: One was to explore conceptual information alteration through concept similarity in the translation of medical article titles between English and Chinese, and the other was to examine the reliability of inter-judge agreements on concept similarity for assessing conceptual information alteration via English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translation of medical article titles. A research corpus of 100 article titles in English and Chinese were randomly selected from an existing collection of article titles obtained from two English medical journals and two Chinese medical journals. Findings were based on (1) the judges' pairing of concepts in both the original and translated titles, and (2) the judges' judgments on concept similarity of the paired concepts. Cohen's Kappa was used for determining the reliability of the judges' judgments. The results showed (1) the judges' ratings on concept similarity of the paired concepts were substantially reliable; (2) the loss of conceptual information was much greater than the gain in both English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translation; and (3) there were two kinds of conceptual information alteration: One was apparent and the other latent. The results are also applicable to cross-language information retrieval on parallel corpora between different languages as well as between English and Chinese. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This research investigated conceptual alteration in medical article titles translation between English and Chinese with a twofold purpose: one was to further justify the findings from a pilot study, and the other was to further investigate how the concepts were altered in translation. The research corpus of 800 medical article titles in English and Chinese was selected from two English medical journals and two Chinese medical journals. The analysis was based on the pairing of concepts in English and Chinese and their conceptual similarity/dissimilarity via translation between English and Chinese. Two kinds of conceptual alteration were discussed: one was apparent conceptual alteration that was obvious with addition or omission of concepts in translation. The other was latent conceptual alteration that was not obvious, and can only be recognized by the differences between the original and translated concepts. The findings from the pilot study were verified with the findings from this research. Additional findings, for example, the addition/omission of single-word and multiword concepts in the general and medical domain and, implicit information vs. explicit information, were also discussed. The findings provided useful insights into future studies on crosslanguage information retrieval via medical translation between English and Chinese, and other languages as well.

This article investigated the phenomena of concept similarity and conceptual information alteration in medical translation as information transfer between English and Chinese. The purpose of this investigation was twofold: One was to explore conceptual information alteration through concept similarity in the translation of medical article titles between English and Chinese, and the other was to examine the reliability of inter-judge agreements on concept similarity for assessing conceptual information alteration via English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translation of medical article titles. A research corpus of 100 article titles in English and Chinese were randomly selected from an existing collection of article titles obtained from two English medical journals and two Chinese medical journals. Findings were based on (1) the judges' pairing of concepts in both the original and translated titles, and (2) the judges' judgments on concept similarity of the paired concepts. Cohen's Kappa was used for determining the reliability of the judges' judgments. The results showed (1) the judges' ratings on concept similarity of the paired concepts were substantially reliable; (2) the loss of conceptual information was much greater than the gain in both English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translation; and (3) there were two kinds of conceptual information alteration: One was apparent and the other latent. The results are also applicable to cross-language information retrieval on parallel corpora between different languages as well as between English and Chinese. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A corpus-based lexical study on frequency and distribution of Coxhead’s AWL word families in medical research articles (RAs)

Personal view p 1221 My wife is Scottish, making my children half Scottish, I'm a graduate of Edinburgh Medical School and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of...

We used a valid questionnaire to survey Iranian nurses' seeking information behavior and their confidence on different information sources. The frequently used sources were Internet" and "personal experiences" (54.8% and 48.2% respectively). "English medical journals" (61.9%) and "English textbooks" (41.3%) were the least frequently used sources. Nurses felt high confidence in sources such as "International instructions/guidelines" (58.6%) and "English medical textbooks" (50.4%). The main reasons for selecting sources were easy accessibility, being up to date and reliability. Google, Pubmed and Up to Date were the most used electronic sources. In addition, there were differences in terms of using some of these resources and nurse' age and gender. In developing information sources for nurses, factors such as reliability level, availability, and updatedness of resources should be more emphasized.

So many of our readers subscribe to the British Medical Journal and the Lancet that we do not as a rule epitomise original articles which appear in these publications, unless they are of outstanding importance or there is some other special reason for so doing. The same attitude is adopted, but to a less extent, as regards other English medical journals, most of which are easily obtained. Economy, always a necessity, is especially important at present. There are some subjects, however, including contemporaneous movements of moment affecting the psychiatrical world, it is important that members of the Association should be kept well informed of, hence the “Epitome” and many of the items published in “Notes and News.”

For a journal article of quality, an excellent concept and significant results are basic requirements. However, a more important factor is how to make a coherent argument. To explain the article's subject, scientific and logical discourse is necessary. In addition, appropriate quotations are needed to support the key claims because quotations situate the claims of the article within a community of scholars and a history of scholarship. However, if some parts of the text, photographs, and tables are used without the original authors' permission in ignorance of standard citation practices, the outcome could be plagiarism, which is considered a serious offence in the international scientific community. Recently, about 50 new English medical journals have been launched in Korea. In addition, more and more local journals have been listed in database indices such as SCI, Scopus, and PubMed. Through this process, plagiarism, which is a signal of an immature publication, should be eradicated.

The first volume of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1828) contained the following notation, abstracted from an English medical journal. Remarkable Appearance in the Eyes of a Child One of the leading wonders of the day in the French capital, to which the seekers of the extraordinary have been lately attracted, has been an infant of three years of age, who was said to have the words NAPOLEON EMPEREUR very clearly marked in her eyes. Unwilling to allow this lusus to escape us, we took advantage of an opportunity afforded by the kindness of Mr. Guthrie of judging for ourselves. We confess we were before a little skeptical upon this subject. The fact is simply this: The child has light blue eyes, the irides being very strongly striated with irregular white lines which have been thought to constitute the above ominous words. In our opinion, it would require a very poetical vision, and a great deal of imagination to discover them. Some of the lines certainly resemble letters; we endeavored in vain to make out any distinct words. It is true we had no magnifying glass at hand which the mother assured us was necessary to make the letters clearly perceptible. The French police have taken alarm and deemed it prudent to deprive the friends of various certificates which they had obtained from different persons, asserting that they could with facility decipher the much dreaded name. We remember that some years ago, the name of Napoleon was said to have been detected upon a hen egg, in good round German text.

BackgroundThere are a number of sound justifications for publishing nearly identical information in Chinese and English medical journals, assuming several conditions are met. Although overlap publication is perceived as undesirable and ethically questionable in Europe and North America, it may serve an important function in some regions where English is not the native tongue. There is no empirical data on the nature and degree of overlap publication in English and Chinese language journals.Methods/Principal FindingsA random sample of 100 English manuscripts from Chinese institutions was selected from PubMed. Key words and institutions were searched in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, a comprehensive Chinese language research database. Unacknowledged overlap was a priori defined according to International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICMJE) guidelines following examination by two individuals. 19% (95% CI 11–27) of English manuscripts from Chinese institutions were found to have substantial overlap with Chinese published work based on full text examination. None of the manuscripts met all of the criteria established by the ICMJE for an acknowledged overlap publication. Individual-level, journal-level, and institutional factors seem to influence overlap publication. Manuscripts associated with an institution outside of China and with more than one institution were significantly less likely to have substantial overlap (p<0.05).Conclusions/SignificanceOverlap publication was common in this context, but instances of standard ICMJE notations to acknowledge this practice were rare. This research did not cite the identified overlap manuscripts with the hope that these empirical data will inform journal policy changes and structural initiatives to promote clearer policies and manuscripts.

Genre analysis can be used as a means of understanding the communicative practices of specific discourse communities and may therefore be of particular benefit to students in higher education for whom the interpretation and production of discipline-specific texts is paramount. This study takes global medical research as a case in point and examines the generic discourse features of the experimental medical research article (RA), using a systemic-functional and ‘structural moves analysis’ approach. Based on this novel, combined methodology, a sequence of generic rhetorical moves and steps across a series of medical RAs are described in terms of their function and lexicogrammar. The implications of the study are discussed in relation to previous research and their potential pedagogical and methodological applications.