Standards of English in academic writing: The authors respond

Abstract

The response to our recent article on journal submission guidelines (McKinley & Rose, 2018) facilitates an opportunity to engage in further discussion on English language standards in published academic writing. We are grateful to Paul Stapleton for his response, and to the editors of the Journal of Second Language Writing for this further occasion to clarify our position. The main concerns raised by Stapleton (2019) are as follows: 1. That we fail to fully consider the importance of a standard for conveying scientific findings; 2. Disagreement with our suggestion that terms such ‘good’ and ‘error-free’ should be avoided in author guidelines, as it risks eroding academic standards that have been painstakingly established over time; 3. A belief that the introduction of non-standard, but globally-used, forms of language are a ‘slippery slope’ to the degradation of academic writing.