The authors’ research gap strategies in ELT research article introductions: Does Scopus journal quartile matter?

Abstract

Swales’ (1990) Creating a Research Space (CARS) model has spawned a large number of studies focusing on investigations of research article introductions (RAIs), and the reports have given meaningful contributions to guide novice and non-native authors in writing English RAIs. However, the investigation of authors’ research gap strategies in RAIs has so far received little attention. Also, the previous investigations do not account for the way such strategies are applied across the Scopus journal quartiles (i.e., Q1, Q2, Q3, & Q4). Therefore, this study is undertaken to investigate the research gap strategies used by authors who published their research articles (RAs) in Scopus-indexed journals. The strategies found were, then, compared seen from the Scopus journal quartile lens. Forty RAs from eight Scopus-indexed journals in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) were randomly collected and analyzed using Swales’ (1990) framework, taking into account the insights proposed by Lim (2012) and Kwan, Chan, and Lam (2012). The findings reveal that the authors use five research gap strategies to present their research gaps in their ELT RAIs. The comparative analysis shows that there are differences and similarities in using research gap strategies across the quartiles. The findings of this study can assist non-native and novice authors to achieve visibility worldwide by giving closer attention to how to present research gaps using several research gap strategies in RAIs.