Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars: Insider Perspectives 3030857832, 9783030857837

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Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars Insider Perspectives Edited by

pe j m a n h a bi bi e s a l ly bu rge s s

Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars

Pejman Habibie · Sally Burgess Editors

Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars Insider Perspectives

Editors Pejman Habibie Faculty of Education Western University London, ON, Canada

Sally Burgess Filología Inglesa y Alemana University of La Laguna La Laguna Sta. Cruz Tenerife, Spain

ISBN 978-3-030-85783-7 ISBN 978-3-030-85784-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

I am very pleased to have been asked to write the foreword to this book as it is on a topic that is close to my heart, early-career writers publishing in academic journals. Indeed, I was asked some time ago in an interview around my experience of being a journal editor ‘What is the best part of being a journal editor’ and I replied quite simply ‘Getting beginning scholars published.’ I know what it is like to think ‘All these other people have done it, but can I?’ There are, thus, many experiences recounted in the book that I and other readers can relate to. I remember the anticipation of waiting for reviewers’ reports and nervously opening them when they arrive. I remember the many kindnesses shown to me by reviewers and editors and bruising experiences of being rejected. In saying this, I think of the words of Becky Kwan who discusses the challenges that early career scholars face in dealing with reviewers’ reports. She says: Many first-time writers are confused, discouraged or even shocked by the negative reviews they receive, and the substantial revisions requested … Some never attempt to revise and resubmit their work that reviewers see as having potential for publication. (Kwan, 2010: 213)

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This is discussed in a number of the chapters in this book when the authors talk about being wounded by negative reviews on a paper, even to the point that they sometimes didn’t even notice that they had been asked to revise and resubmit their submission, and it was not actually a reject. This brings me to the hardest part of being a journal editor. For me, this has always been writing rejection letters. I have never used publishers’ template letters which say things like ‘therefore I must reject you’ or ‘you have been denied publication in our journal.’ I always tailored my rejection letters, remembering that there is a person at the end of the message who has been waiting anxiously to hear for me and who will be disappointed with what my message has to say. I had to make it clear the decision is no, but at the same time provide a way forward for the author/s. Sometimes I would sit on a rejection letter for days before sending it until I was sure I had got it right—if one can ever get a rejection letter ‘right.’ Getting published in academic journals, then, is never an easy task. Nicola Johnson (2011) describes the process as ‘negotiating a crowded jungle.’ It can be a rewarding experience, but it can also be challenging, and it requires persistence. It is important, she argues, not to be knocked off the track by what seem to be insurmountable obstacles. These obstacles, she argues, are not as insurmountable as they might seem. While I was doing my Ph.D., I read the following comment by Ros Mitchell who, at the time, was one of the editors of Applied Linguistics. She said: It is important to bear in mind that a rejection from one journal doesn’t mean your paper is unpublishable. … Rejection is common, it is normal, it is frequent and by no means means that the paper won’t find a home somewhere else. (BAAL, 1993: 10–11)

This encouraged me enormously in my early attempts to get published. And as Robert Kohls points out in his chapter, rejection can, indeed, bring about positive change. In his case, he turned a rejection for a special issue of a journal into an idea for an edited book which is about to be published. So, what we have in this book is a set of highly readable accounts of challenges faced by early career researchers in the process of publishing

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their work, ways in which early-career writers get socialized into scholarly publication, and the networks and mentors that play a part in this. We also hear about the development of scholarly identity, voice, and agency in the process of getting published. The importance of self-care is also, movingly, brought out in the book. And we see how beginning academic authors have succeeded in getting their work published in academic journals. Sydney, Australia

Brian Paltridge

References BAAL. (1993). Getting published in academic journals. British Association for Applied Linguistics Newsletter, 43, 9–15. Johnson, N. F. (2011). Publishing from your PhD. Negotiating a crowded jungle. Gower. Kwan. B. (2010). An investigation of instruction in research publishing offered in doctoral programs: The Hong Kong case. Higher Education, 38, 207–225.

Contents

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Scholarly Publication, Early-Career Scholars, and Reflectivity Pejman Habibie and Sally Burgess

Part I 2

Socialization, Networks, Mentorship

Juggling Early-Career Demands: Research Publication Productivity, Strategies, Practices Oana Maria Carciu

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Writing Belonging with Critical Autoethnography Saskia Van Viegen

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Writing with, Learning from, and Paying Forward Mentorship from Early-Career Scholars: My Scholarly Formation into Academic Writing Matthew R. Deroo

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Misguided Allegiances, Misjudged Weaknesses, and Mixed Messages in Peer Review Oliver Shaw

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Contents

Pulling Yourself Up by the Bootstraps: An Insider’s Perspective on Learning How to Publish in the Iranian Higher Education Context Hesamoddin Shahriari Learning to Be a Non-native Speaker: A Retrospective Autoethnographic Account of an Early-Career researcher’s Publishing Trajectory Sally Burgess

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Identity, Visibility, Voice

“Will You Ever Write About This?”: Diagnosis, Self-care, and Writing for Publication Robert Kohls

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Walking the Early-Career Researcher Path in an Adoptive Culture Pamela Olmos-Lopez

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10 The Digitally-Mediated Scholar: Online Identities and Investment in the Discursive Practices of an Academic Community Ron Darvin 11

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Socialization into Scholarly Publication as a Multilingual, Early-Career Scholar Ismaeil Fazel Becoming a Scholarly Writer for Publication: An Autoethnography of Boundary Crossing, Linguistic Identity, and Revising Naoko Mochizuki A Question of Balance: The Scholarly Publication Trajectory of a Dual Profile Language Professional Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo

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Ideology, Power, Struggle

An Account of Bifurcated Senses and Spaces in the Pursuit of Early-Career Academic Publications Kevin Gormley

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Establishing a Track Record in an Age of Precarity Sharon McCulloch

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A Scholar’s Efforts to Increase Margin: Reflection on a Journey of Academic Enculturation Tanju Deveci

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17 Thinking Beyond Ourselves: Career Reflections on the Trojan Horse of Hegemonic Discourses Pejman Habibie, Richard D. Sawyer, and Joe Norris

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

Sally Burgess is a Lecturer in English at the University of La Laguna, Spain. Her main research interests lie in inter-cultural rhetoric, the contribution of language professionals to the preparation of research publications, the teaching of writing in the university context, and the effects of research evaluation policies on Spanish scholars’ publishing practices and professional trajectories. With Margaret Cargill, she organized the first PRISEAL (Publishing Research Internationally: Issues for Speakers of English as an Additional Language) conference in early 2007 and is the book reviews editor of the Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes. Oana Maria Carciu, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Her research interests are in corpus linguistics (phraseology, i.e., collocation, lexical bundles), EAP (English for Academic Purposes), quantitative and qualitative research methods, genre analysis and, communication and publication practices for research dissemination in the multilingual academic environment.

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Ron Darvin is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the English Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. A corecipient of the 2016 TESOL Award for Distinguished Research, he has published in journals such as Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, and Applied Linguistics Review. Matthew R. Deroo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. His research interests include the social and cultural contexts of transnational immigrant youth, critical, digital media literacies, language education, and community-engaged scholarship. Matthew’s work draws upon his ten years of experience as a language educator in China. Tanju Deveci is an Assistant Professor of English. He taught English for academic purposes at Bilkent and Sabanci Universities in Turkey. Since 2012, he has been teaching English and communication skills to engineering students at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi. His research interests include academic literacies, pragmatics, and lifelong learning. Ismaeil Fazel is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education of Simon Fraser University. He has a Ph.D. in TESL and a sub-specialization in Measurement and Evaluation from the University of British Columbia. His main research interests are English for academic purposes, writing for publication, and language assessment. Kevin Gormley is Assistant Professor of Music Education at Dublin City University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Kevin’s work, published in Critical Studies in Education and Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, is concerned with how the concept of creativity is constructed in education policy and practice. Pejman Habibie is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Western University, Canada. He is also a founding co-editor of the Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes. Plus, he is a founding co-editor of the book series “Routledge Studies in English for Research Publication Purposes.” His research interests and scholarly publications focus on the geopolitics of knowledge construction and circulation, writing for scholarly publication, and academic literacies.

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Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo is a Lecturer in the Department of English and German Studies at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain), where she teaches language and linguistics. Her research interests focus on written discourse analysis, writers’ visibility, genre analysis, and digital genres. She is the principal investigator of the project JIUZ-2018-HUM-03, a member of the research group CIRES, and she is currently participating in the national research project FFI2017–84205. Robert Kohls is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at San Francisco State University. His research interests include L1 and L2 writing, teacher written feedback, sociocultural theory, and qualitative research methods in TESOL. He is an associate editor of The CATESOL Journal . Sharon McCulloch is a senior Lecturer in the School of Language and Global Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. Her research interests lie in the ways second language student writers learn to write and the ways in which institutional and social contexts affect professional academic writers. Naoko Mochizuki is teaching at a university in Japan after attaining her M.A. in the USA and Ph.D. in Australia. She had extensive teaching experiences in high schools in Japan. Her research interest includes ethnographic research and sociocultural approach to classroom teaching, especially genre learning and oral interactions. Joe Norris Professor Emeritus, Brock University, is recipient of the 2015 Tom Barone Award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts Based Educational Research from the Arts Based Educational Research SIG of American Educational Research Association (AERA), He has focused his teaching and research on fostering a playful, creative, participatory, and socially aware stance toward self and Other, and has taught courses in drama in education, applied theater, research methods (qualitative and arts-based), and curriculum theory, among others at various universities. His and Rick Sawyer’s pioneering book, Understanding Qualitative Research: Duoethnography, was chosen as the 2015 AERA Division D’s Significant Contribution to Educational Measurement and Research

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Methodology Award. While retired, Joe continues to be active in a variety of education projects. Pamela Olmos-Lopez is a Lecturer at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Lancaster University, UK. Her research interests lie in academic literacies in bilingual/multilingual writers with a specialization in authorial identity in academic discourse. Her research approaches include corpus-assisted discourse analysis, discourse analysis, autoethnography research, and linguistic ethnography. She has published on doctoral co-supervision, undergraduate L2 writing, writer’s identity, bilingual writer’s voice and stance, written academic genres, autoethnography, and team-autoethnographies. Her research interests include doctoral writing, the ethnography of literacies, academic writing, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and multilingualism. Richard D. Sawyer is Professor of Education at Washington State University Vancouver, where he chairs the secondary teacher certification program. He has published a number of books and articles on curriculum theory and qualitative methodologies, including duoethnography. He is co-editor of the Northwest Journal of Teacher Education. With Joe Norris, he was a recipient of The American Educational Research Association’s Qualitative Research SIG’s 2011 Outstanding Book Award. Hesamoddin Shahriari is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate-level academic writing. His research interests include academic writing, learner corpora, and formulaic language. Oliver Shaw comes into closest contact with academia in his role as inhouse editor and translator for a biomedical research institute located in his adoptive city of Madrid, Spain. He has taught secondary-school Spanish, in-company English classes, and both English and Spanish for specific purposes. Saskia Van Viegen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University. Her research focuses on language in education, particularly bi/multilingualism,

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language assessment, and language and content integrated instruction. Her recent book, with Sunny Lau, is Plurilingual Pedagogies: Critical and Creative Undertakings for Equitable Language (in) Education (Springer).

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3

Research quality diagram Google Scholar profile (June 2020) Academia.edu profile (June 2020) ResearchGate profile (June 2020)

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1 Scholarly Publication, Early-Career Scholars, and Reflectivity Pejman Habibie and Sally Burgess

Introduction The primary focus of this volume is the complex yet underrepresented topic of writing for scholarly publication by early-career researchers (ECRs). This initial chapter seeks to address several of the questions that render this area of inquiry as complex as it is. Part of the complexity we seek to address in this chapter and in the book as a whole arises from issues of choice of vehicular language, a choice that can be conditioned by a scholar’s research education and training and the language(s) in which this education and training took place. When we look at our contributors, several of whom refer to their experience of publishing in P. Habibie (B) Western University, London, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] S. Burgess Filología Inglesa Y Alemana, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_1

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languages other than English, their research language backgrounds might be regarded as falling along a continuum. At one extreme, we might find those educated in Anglophone contexts whose exclusive language of research publication is English. At the other extreme, we would place those whose education and research training has taken place outside the Anglophone center and who regularly publish in languages other than English. In the middle ground, we would find those educated both in Anglophone and non-Anglophone settings, who publish in more than one language but whose dominant research publication language is English. Given this continuum, we seek to contest what is often expressed as an Anglophone vs. English as an additional language (EAL) dichotomy, arguing that it fails on two counts as an explanation for the complexities of scholarly publication. Firstly, it leads to an overemphasis on the research publication needs and perceived difficulties of plurilingual scholars using English as an additional language at the expense of Anglophone scholars, many of whom also face challenges. Recently, Flowerdew and Habibie (2022) and Habibie (2019) have called for an inclusive and balanced approach to research in the field of English for research publication purposes (ERPP), where scholarly publication practices of both Anglophone and EAL scholars are explored and investigated. A second and vital strand explored in this introductory chapter is the significance of reflective and dialogic research approaches (such as auto/duo/trioethnography) to scholarly publication practices of earlycareer scholars. We underline the affordances and capacities of such approaches for investigating the production and dissemination of scholarship. Additionally, we discuss the ways in which such paradigms involve early-career scholars in the research process as both researchers and as sites of research and excavation, showing how such approaches allow us to gain deeper insights into academic trajectories and lived experiences of those scholars. Last but not least, we provide an overview of the structural organization of the book and the constituent chapters.

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Academic Publication and Early-Career Scholars Scholarly publication has become a dispositional characteristic of the academic habitus of many scholars in current globalized academia. Such is the extent of demand for publication success that even junior scholars and doctoral researchers are required or expected to possess the necessary literacies before graduating. To gain secure employment in the job markets of the current neoliberal knowledge economy, they are expected to have accumulated the required intellectual capital (see Habibie & Hyland, 2019). There is no doubt that an occluded or semi (occluded) aspect of the lives of many academics, irrespective of their geolinguistic differences, is writing and publishing in prestigious refereed academic venues in a bid to maintain their position or to increase visibility. In other words, as Belcher (2009) says, “[w]riting is to academia what sex was to nineteenth-century Vienna: everybody does it and nobody talks about it” (p. 1) This may have been the case in 2009, but in recent years academics have started talking about their experience of writing for publication more and more as is evidenced by the growing body of research and scholarship aggregated under the now established field of ERPP. This research looks at different dimensions of knowledge construction and dissemination, especially scholarly publication practices of academics in varied geolinguistic and geopolitical contexts. More recently, the pressures on junior scholars to provide evidence of scholarly productivity and awareness of their often peripheral and insecure position in the dynamics of the scholarly productivity game have led to a growing research focus on scholarly publication practices of novice scholars, earlycareer researchers, and doctoral students as a major domain within ERPP (see, e.g., Habibie, 2015, 2016, 2021; Habibie & Hyland, 2019; Li, 2006a, 2006b, 2007a, 2007b, 2014a, 2014b). The resultant scholarship has two overarching objectives: (a) on the one hand, it aims to bring to the fore the experiences of these emerging academics in navigating the construction, adjudication, and dissemination phases of knowledge communication, (b) on the other hand it seeks to help develop sustainable, structured, and research-informed policies and practices that can support and scaffold the socialization and literacy development of these

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scholars, thus facilitating their transition into fully-fledged and productive academics. However, here we would like to draw attention to two major exigencies in the current research orientation in this domain that have also set the scene for the emergence of a naturalistically-oriented (Flowerdew & Habibie, 2022) volume like this. We will discuss the first exigency here and will address the second in the following section. The first exigency concerns what is often expressed as the Anglophone vs. EAL binary. As discussed earlier, research in ERPP in general and in the domain of early-career scholars in particular has tended to focus on scholarly publication practices of multilingual scholars using English as an additional research publication language. To a large extent, left out of the discussion are Anglophone scholars, particularly those in the early stages of their professional lives. The “Lucky Anglophone scholar discourse” (Habibie, 2019) views linguistic competence in English as the most valuable capital in scholarly publication practices and dichotomizes the agents (academics) involved in academic publication field accordingly into native/non-native positions exclusively in relation to English. By the same token, on the one hand, it portrays multilingual scholars who use English as a language of publication as a geolinguistically homogenous population who struggle to attain expertise in academic discourse and literacy and success in scholarly publication and who are consequently disadvantaged compared to their Anglophone peers. On the other hand, similarly, it presents Anglophone scholars as a homogenous mass advantaged in academic productivity thanks to capacities that their first language (English) affords them without acknowledging the capacities and expertise of “native speakers” of other languages. While problematization of the concept “native speaker” has a long history (Davies, 2002; Leung et al., 1997), the Anglophone vs. EAL scholar binary still amounts to what Curry and Lillis (2019) have recently termed an instance of “lore.” The many exchanges among scholars engaged in this debate (Flowerdew, 2019; Hyland, 2016; Politzer-Ahles et al., 2017) attest to the contentious and controversial nature of the polarization (see Burgess & Martín, 2020 for an account of the origins and development of the debate around this issue). As ERPP scholars, we have been involved in these discourses, debates, and discussions and have contributed to them one way or another. In this introductory chapter,

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we seek only to draw a general picture of these continuing debates highlighting what we think are the key issues in these discussions that merit attention without going into detail. What we think seems important at this stage of ERPP scholarship is to consider that many scholars irrespective of their first language are struggling with the requirements of the current academic world and especially its dominant publish or perish ideology. Many of the contributors to this volume and their peers seem to find it difficult to navigate the complexities of academic writing and scholarly publication. As a sizeable community in the global academic landscape, their scholarly publication practices and identities deserve attention and research focus, whether they are seen as advantaged or disadvantaged. Partly because of the abovementioned counter-arguments and in response to the research gap, recent years have witnessed a growing research interest in both in Anglophone scholars and their scholarly publication practices (e.g., Fazel, 2019; Shvidko & Atkinson, 2019) and in plurilingual scholars publishing in more than one language (see Mur-Dueñas & Šink¯unien˙e, 2018). Such scholarship can provide us with a more nuanced and detailed picture of the experiences and challenges of all stakeholders in knowledge production and dissemination and can also provide us with a more reliable, multifaceted, and comparative picture of the realities of the field.

Reflective and Dialogic Approaches The second issue in ERPP scholarship concerns the underrepresentation of reflective and dialogic approaches in examining scholarly publication practices of early-career and novice scholars. Recent years have seen a growing interest in and research calls for more naturalistic and ethnographically-oriented approaches to investigating writing for scholarly publication (Habibie & Hyland, 2019; Paltridge et al., 2016). There is no doubt that the resultant scholarship can complement the knowledge base in broader fields such as English for academic purposes (EAP) that have largely focused, until comparatively recently, on the textual dimension of academic discourse and writing. In other words, naturalistic approaches can shed light on sociopolitical and situated conditions

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in which scholarly practices are embedded and the socio-contextual and ideological dynamics that structure and constitute scholarly publication practices of academics, both established and emerging (see Canagarajah, 2002). Since those structures and dynamics usually evade the research gaze of those adopting textual approaches, naturalistic approaches bring an added value. With that in mind, studies with naturalistic and ethnographic orientations in ERPP have mainly had an etic or outsider approach to investigating writing for scholarly publication rather than an emic perspective (Flowerdew & Habibie, 2022). That is, scholarly publication practices and experiences of academics are filtered through the researcher rather than explored and inquired by the insiders themselves. This highlights the exigency for more and more reflective and dialogic approaches such as auto/duo/trioethnography in ERPP research and scholarship. Autoethnography, both as a research process and a discursive product, means different things to different people. That is, there are different interpretations as to what an autoethnography should include and how it should be theoretically and methodologically framed (Chang, 2008; Ellis et al., 2011; Maydell, 2010; McIlveen, 2008). That is why autoethnographies are conducted and textually realized in different shapes and ways, orienting toward established evocative or analytical models (see Anderson, 2006; Ellis et al., 2011) or incorporating elements of both. Ellis et al. (2011) see autoethnography as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience” (abstract). Pratt (1991, p. 35) characterizes autoethnographic texts as those in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them. Thus if ethnographic texts are those in which European metropolitan subjects represent to themselves their others (usually their conquered others), autoethnographic texts are representations that the so-defined others construct in response to [emphasis in original] or in dialogue with those texts.

Chang (2008) defines autoethnography as “a qualitative research method that utilizes ethnographic methods to bring cultural interpretation to the

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autobiographical data of researchers with the intent of understanding self and its connection to others” (p. 56). That is, autoethnography as “the stories (…) reflected upon, analyzed, and interpreted within the broader sociocultural context” (Chang, 2008, p. 46). She highlights that autoethnography “should be ethnographic in its methodological orientation, cultural in its interpretive orientation, and autobiographical in its content orientation” (p. 48). To Reed-Danahay (2017), autoethnography is a “genre of writing that places the self of the researcher and/or narrator within a social context” (p. 145). In sum, in autoethnography, both the process and the product of research shape and are shaped at the intersection of the individual and the social. Similarly, dialogic approaches such as duo/trioethnography bring together two or three researcher participants who juxtapose their (hi)stories, trajectories, and practices and use them as “research sites” (Oberg & Wilson, 2002) and excavation grounds in order to inform and ultimately transform each other. That is, through dialogue and exchange of ideas, the participants become “the foil for the Other, challenging the Other to reflect on their own life in a deeper, more relational, and authentic manner” (Norris & Sawyer, 2012, p. 10) and “interrogate and reinscribe [their] previously held beliefs” (p. 9). The flexible, amicable, and open nature of duo/trioethnography promotes the dialogic creation of emic meaning and understanding, and “[t]he conversations of duoethnographers assist readers in recalling and reconceptualizing their own stories” (Norris & Sawyer, 2012, p. 10). Just like autoethnography, duo/trioethnography provides the participants with the chance to examine their lived experiences within the constituting contextual and sociopolitical structures and domains. But how can these reflective and dialogic approaches inform ERPP inquiry, and what are their implications for ERPP scholarship? First, they serve as a critical thinking tool and engage one in a unique metacognitive practice through “entailing knowing about one’s own knowing” (Filipovi´c & Jovanovi´c, 2016, p. 1443) and challenging “dominant forms of representation and power” (Tierney, 1998, p. 66). By focusing on our practices and experiences of academic publication from a personal perspective and by communicating our narratives and histories to others, we become more aware of ourselves, our struggles, and possible solutions

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to the problems and challenges we face in the process and practice of writing for scholarly publication. Second, those approaches offer a more holistic, diachronic, and insider perspective on academic trajectories and (hi)stories of scholars and broader sociocultural and socioeconomic, and sociopolitical contexts within which scholarly publication practices are embedded and scholarly products are adjudicated, certified, and disseminated. In other words, reflective and dialogic approaches engage us in the “rigorous self-reflection” that helps us “identify and interrogate the intersections between the self and social life” (Adams et al., 2017, p. 1) as our trajectories and (hi)stories are “never made in a vacuum and others are always visible or invisible participants” (Chang, 2008, p. 69). Given the multicultural nature of globalized academic communities, such approaches encourage “cross-cultural understanding in a culturally diverse society” (Chang, 2008, p. 57). Third, compared to etic and outsider views, reflective and dialogic approaches serve as a means to shed more light on lived rather than assumed experiences and practices of scholarly publication and showcase how scholars develop required scholarly publication literacies; are socialized into target communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991); participate in or resist dominant hegemonic structures, discourses, and practices; and develop and negotiate their identities within power dynamics and structures constituting those communities. Accordingly, they provide ERPP research and scholarship with an opportunity to paint a less biased and distorted and more real picture of scholarly publication practices of both Anglophone and EAL scholars in diverse academic contexts across the globe. This, in turn, helps further decolonize hegemonic discourses, problematize binaries, and modify assumptions about knowledge construction and dissemination practices of each and both of those scholarly demographies. In sum, such approaches invite further reflectivity and reflexivity for both scholars themselves and ERPP researchers. The current volume aims to respond to these two major exigencies and practice what we have preached, so to speak. The book presents a collection of personal accounts to provide a multifaceted and nuanced picture of the situated realities of scholarly publication in different international geolinguistic academic locales and contexts. The chapters adopt

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the methodological framework of self and dialogic study and use the elements of evocative, analytical, and critical auto/duo/trioethnography, including autobiography, self-reflective narrative, and creative writing to share, analyze, and interpret the trajectories and (hi)stories of earlycareer scholars. More specifically, they intend to shed more light on the practices and experiences of a small population of Anglophone and EAL early-career scholars in scholarly publication. They look at a range of topics and issues, including but not limited to: discursive and nondiscursive challenges in scholarly publication; socialization into scholarly publication, and individual and networked mentorship and pedagogical practices that can scaffolded academic publication; the development of scholarly identity, voice, and agency; and ideology, power, and privilege as inherent factors that shape knowledge construction and meaning making in academic discourse and exchange. By bringing together both scholars who fall along the various positions in the continuum proposed above, the book aims to adopt an inclusive orientation stepping beyond the reductionist Anglophone/EAL binary rather than further polarizing the divide. Additionally, it means to highlight streaks of similarity across the (hi)stories of these earlycareer scholars and look at individual, local, sociopolitical, contextual, and global issues that play a role in scholarly publication practices of novice scholars and early-career researchers. That is, a micro and a macro approach where the individual and the social, the local and the global intersect and shed light on each other. Needless to say, that difference is also an inherent aspect and characteristic of the narratives that the chapters share. Although we are not after positivist generalizations, we hope that the narratives of this group of scholars can both project a generic and also specific image of what is happening in the personal and sociallyconstructed academic life of other novice scholars and the global and local dynamics within their academic contexts. By doing so, the book aims to add to the scholarship obtained by the etic approach to the study of academic publication and ultimately inform and enrich the knowledge base of ERPP scholarship and inquiry. In the next section, we will take a look at the structure and organization of this volume and browse the content of the constituent chapters.

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Overview of the Book Apart from this introductory chapter, this volume consists of sixteen chapters. These we have organized into three thematically-organized parts. The first brings together chapters that address the topics of socialization into a community of practice, the role of networks in that process and how those who take on the role of mentors contribute to an ECR’s professional and research publishing development. The second part explores the ways in which ECRs establish and construct identities, how the various channels of communication play a role in the construction of these identities and in making a scholarly publishing trajectory visible to others. A third consideration in this part is how authorial voice(s) evolve(s) through time and changing circumstances. The volume concludes with a part devoted to questions of ideology and power in relation to the research publication trajectories of ECRs. The chapters in this part also explore some of the struggles scholars experience both within the institutional contexts in which they work but also in balancing the pressures to achieve neoliberal constructions of academic success with challenging circumstances in their personal lives, contextualizing these struggles in the negotiation of power relations. Carciu’s chapter opens the first part of the book. As a plurilingual early-career scholar of Romanian origin working in a Spanish university, Carciu charts her journey through the sometimes-conflicting demands of institutional recognition on the one hand and publishing productivity on the other. Her autoethnographic account makes use of two main theoretical concepts, “community of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the “inventorying self” perspective (Canagarajah, 2012). Her exploration of the genres and venues for publication most likely to contribute to institutional recognition makes plain the vital role a community of practice can play in helping junior scholars unravel constructions of success in academia. Van Viegen, in her chapter, the second in the part, draws on critical autoethnography (Aoki, 2003; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Pinar, 1994) to reflexively engage with narratives of the self and relations with others. She examines the way in which her privileged status as a white, first language user of English alongside her experience as a “first in family” student

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both construct her trajectory as one entailing the negotiation of participation and belonging. Like Carciu, Van Viegen addresses the critical importance of mentoring relationships and social support networks and offers suggestions for faculty on how these mentoring relationships might better aid students and ECRs, particularly those whose full participation is constrained by marginalization or minoritization. Deroo, in his account, provides an example of how a mentoring relationship can offer the kind of support called for by Van Viegen, Carciu, and many other contributors to the volume. He too draws on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of situated learning to highlight how his participation in various communities of practice provided him with the wherewithal to successfully navigate the challenges of academic writing and publishing. In tracing his learning journey alongside his advisor and fellow graduate students, Deroo highlights the way in which knowledge and learning about academic writing were mutually co-constructed and how aspects of the hidden curriculum associated with academic writing and publishing might be made explicit. Response to peer review, an element in Deroo’s hidden curriculum, is addressed by Shaw in his chapter. Shaw’s account chronicles a failed first attempt at publishing an article from his doctoral thesis in a peerreviewed journal. He draws on his correspondence with the journal editor and reviewers, a research journal, and emails exchanged with his support network to identify the “missteps” made along the way and to suggest how novice scholars might better interpret and respond to peer review. As a practitioner and academic, Shaw foregrounds the importance of continued support for early-career researchers, particularly those like himself who have more limited access to their communities of practice. Shahriari gives readers of his chapter an intimate glimpse into the challenges facing emerging researchers in the higher education context of outer-circle countries such as Iran, among them the acquisition of the required research publication skills. Shahriari’s Bourdieuan analysis of his experience helps shed light on the types of economic, social, and cultural capitals that shape the habitus at Iranian universities. His linguistic background and time spent at academic institutions abroad allow for the

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creation of a narrative which invites comparisons across varied academic contexts, including those of the other four contributors to this part. Burgess shares with Shahriari the experience of academic institutions in three geographical locations. Employed initially by her current institution on the basis of her privileged status as a “native English speaker,” Burgess struggled to acknowledge, accept, and embody a new identity as a multilingual, non-native speaker of Spanish fully engaging with the Spanish academic community. Applying the theoretical lens of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) to the previously unexamined narrative of her publishing trajectory, she acknowledges the role of three mentors, each of whom contributed to the development and questioning of identities she adopted over the course of the early part of her publishing trajectory. In the first of the chapters in the second part, Kohls examines his experiences as an older, early-career scholar teaching, publishing and fulfilling his professional obligations while coping with a chronic illness. Using evocative autoethnography (Ellis & Bochner, 2000), Kohls introduces the concept of “researcher self-care” as an approach to connecting life and research by writing with mindful intention about diagnosis, illness, and healing not only for oneself but for others who find themselves in a similar situation. Through his own process of writing about diagnosis, Kohls suggests that the powers of investigation and reflection can open up possibilities of understanding crisis, trauma, and risk in ways that create new knowledge and offer up new opportunities for research, collaboration, and mentorship. This chapter contributes to the growing call for autoethnographic scholarship of affective aspects of scholarly publication trajectories largely understudied in English for research publication purposes. Olmos, in the second chapter in part two, centers her attention on the analysis of authorial identity in the articles published, accepted, and submitted over a three-year period applying Ivaniˇc’s (1998) framework to these published outputs. Olmos, like Kohls, uses autoethnography to explore affective aspects of research publication. She charts her feelings of satisfaction and frustration while writing the papers and her responses to acceptance and rejection of her manuscripts. Olmos embeds the account in her negotiation of two academic identities: as a returnee academic

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regarded as a senior scholar in Mexico, her home country and as an ECR at home with the values and practices of UK academic culture acquired while a doctoral student. The negotiation of academic identities through the use of online platforms such as Google Scholar, Academic.edu, and ResearchGate is the focus of Darvin’s chapter, the third in the second part. He examines the extent to which the designs of the platforms shape this process of negotiation, drawing on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment. Competing and colluding ideologies, embedded in the sociotechnical structures and algorithms of these platforms, are shown to position scholars and accord symbolic value to their work in new ways. Darvin argues that for scholars to invest in the discursive practices of their academic communities and to claim their legitimate place, they will need to navigate these online spaces more strategically and understand how power operates in networked participatory scholarship. Fazel’s chapter also employs Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model alongside the notion of academic discourse socialization as articulated by Duff (2010) and Kobayashi et al. (2017). Through these theoretical lenses, Fazel analyzes how his ongoing investments in writing for publication have contributed to and constructed his scholarly identity and how they have facilitated his socialization into scholarly publication. His autoethnographic account charts a period of 15 years in which he transitioned from being a novice Iranian writer interested in getting published to a published author and early-career scholar in Canada. Fazel thus shares with Olmos an exploration of the tensions involved between identities established in one’s place of origin and then in an adopted country. Mochizuki too discusses the crossing of borders, both geographical and symbolic, in her account of becoming a scholarly writer. In common with Olmos and Fazel, she identifies twists and turns in her trajectory. These twists and turns she sees as deriving from decisions she made in the course of her career, first as a secondary school teacher, later as a doctoral student in Australia and finally as an ECR at a Japanese university. She uses the writing of the chapter to illuminate for herself and others the essential role that social interactions and identity negotiations play in the lived experience of becoming a scholarly writer.

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Herrando-Rodrigo reflects on what were originally tensions between two identities she shares with Mochizuki, namely that of a language teacher at a secondary school and an ECR employed by a university. Through the lenses of Legitimate Peripheral Participation and Identity, the chapter draws attention to the crucial role played by participation in different communities of practice in Spain and England. The analysis of her identity negotiation with colleagues, mentors, and reviewers, together with her publishing experiences, reveals that her dynamic multiple identities have fed into each other, crafting what has become a deservedly audible authorial voice. Like Mochizuki and Burgess, Herrando-Rodrigo reflects that the writing of an autoethnographic account allows one to see what might otherwise have remained beyond the reach of one’s awareness. Gormley, the first contributor to the third part of the book‚ observes that the neoliberal context in which we live and work, obliges scholars to negotiate multiple power relations. Framed as “middle ground” writing between analytical and emotional dimensions of autoethnography and drawing upon Foucault’s idea of power/knowledge, Gormley’s chapter provides a situated account of the contingency and constructedness of his writing. In common with other contributors to the volume, Gormley presents his account from the vantage points of the tensions arising from the cross-disciplinary nature of his research and his contractual obligations to publish. The chapter discusses how dealing with power relations, which are distinct to the position of early-career researchers, creates a sense of bifurcation. Criteria laid down by gatekeepers and the researcher’s own writing style or preference are simultaneously navigated. The tensions Gormley identifies as core to his experience of writing for publication in a context where neoliberal values and discourses hold sway are also addressed by McCulloch in her chapter. Her account covers the period from the final stages of doctoral study to the point where she became a senior lecturer. Grounding her analysis in literacy studies, McCulloch analyzes the sociopolitical factors that influenced her scholarly publishing trajectory. A particular focus is an exploration of the role that language, geographical place, and geopolitical forces, including the competitive academic job market and the pressures of research evaluation systems, can play in enabling or constraining early-career scholars’

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publishing. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the practical and emotional costs of establishing a track record in an age of precarity and thus echoes the concern with affectivity addressed in several other chapters. The penultimate chapter in the volume, that of Deveci, underscores the central role of publications in determining success in academia while also addressing the emotional costs of striving to achieve this success. Institutional expectations that hinge on the production of publishable work are burdensome for all, but for those who have to balance the struggle to acquire academic literacy skills with the care of relatives suffering chronic illness, the burden is all the more significant. Deveci critically reflects on his journey of academic enculturation, a journey marked by his father’s illness and his desire to pursue Ph.D. studies. In doing so, he uses McClusky’s (1974) Power-Load-Margin Theory, a relatively underdeveloped theory of adult learning. Habibie, Sawyer, and Norris have the last word—or words—in a trioethnography which explores resistance to hegemonic discourses and practices in relation to research and research publication. The three scholars, rather than addressing their audience, as socially-distant and detached authors speaking univocally as if as a single being, choose to engage in a conversation to which the reader is invited. The resistance they analyze and explore is seen as disrupting the unexamined boundaries and constraints of tribalized communities of practice. They celebrate auto/duo/trioethnography as a means of challenging these orthodoxies. It is hoped that in some small measure this is what the volume we present has done.

References Adams, T., Ellis, C., & Holman Jones, S. (2017). Autoethnography. In J. Matthes, C. S. Davis, & R. F. Potter (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of communication research methods (pp. 1–11). Wiley. Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35, 373–395.

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Habibie, P. (2015). An investigation into writing for scholarly publication by novice scholars: Practices of Canadian anglophone doctoral students. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Western Ontario, Canada. Habibie, P. (2016). Writing for scholarly publication in Canadian higher education context: A case study. In C. M. Badenhorst & C. Guerin (Eds.), Research literacies and writing pedagogies for masters and doctoral writers (pp. 51–67). Studies in writing series. Brill Publishing. Habibie, P. (2019). To be native or not to be native: That is not the question. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 35–52). Palgrave Macmillan. Habibie, P. (2021). Knowledge construction and dissemination: The narrative of a multilingual early career academic. In L. Muresan & C. Ornamontesions (Eds.), Academic literacy development: Perspectives on multilingual scholars’ approaches to writing (pp. 229–247). Palgrave Macmillan. Habibie, P., & Hyland, K. (Eds.). (2019). Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers. Palgrave Macmillan. Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. Ivaniˇc, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Kobayashi, M., Zappa-Hollman, S., & Duff, P. A. (2017). Academic discourse socialization. In P. Duff & S. May (Eds.), Language socialization, Encyclopedia of language and education (3rd ed., pp. 239–254). Springer International. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Leung, C., Harris, R., & Rampton, B. (1997). The idealized native speaker, reified ethnicities, and classroom realities. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 543–560. Li, Y. (2006a). Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15 (3), 159–178. Li, Y. (2006b). A doctoral student of physics writing for publication: A sociopolitically-oriented case study. English for Specific Purposes, 25 (4), 456–478. Li, Y. (2007a). Apprentice scholarly writing in a community of practice: An interview of an NNES graduate student writing a research article. TESOL Quarterly, 41(1), 55–79.

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Shvidko E., & Atkinson, D. (2019). From student to scholar: Making the leap to writing for publication. In P. Habibie, & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication. Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 155–177). Palgrave Macmillan. Tierney, W. G. (1998). Life history’s history: Subjects foretold. Qualitative Inquiry, 4, 49–70.

Part I Socialization, Networks, Mentorship

2 Juggling Early-Career Demands: Research Publication Productivity, Strategies, Practices Oana Maria Carciu

An Academic Journey of Transitions The origin of my story is not only multiple in space but also in time and its history is a series of new starts in different places and new communities. At the end of 16 years of formal education in Romania, I had a BA in French Language and Literature and English Language and Literature (The University of Bucharest). I had successfully gained school competences in these languages: a well-developed capacity to read formal texts in English and French, to translate a fixed body of texts and to perform grammatical analysis on them, but only a modest capacity to speak in English, French, and German. This placed me on the path of a career in teaching French or English, which was something that had never appealed to me in the slightest. Instead of pursuing this path, I capitalized on my language skills to land a job in marketing. It was a rich O. M. Carciu (B) Department of English and German, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_2

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experience; in one year, I made new friends and professional connections, developed new skills and knowledge. Yet, I felt like I did not belong. My father encouraged me to study abroad because this was seen as a stepping stone to a good job, so I went online for information about masters programs in three locations where he had acquaintances: Graz (Austria), Florence (Italy), Zaragoza (Spain). I don’t remember why I chose Spain or English Studies; it must have been a pragmatic move at that point, to learn and expand my horizons. Yet, as I begin to recount my career journey, it becomes clear to me now that I had never considered a career in academia. Backpack full of hope, I took the first step in my academic career path in the fall of 2007 when the quest for a genuine international educational experience pushed me to do a Master Degree in English Studies at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). This was my first transition to a geographically mobile graduate student. It was also during this transition that I developed genre knowledge and academic literacies in English. On completion of my master’s, I was awarded a competitive four-year PhD fellowship in Spain, which marked a new beginning in a new community. I felt a sense of accomplishment and recognition, but most importantly, I felt support and a sense of belonging when I joined the research group that guided my socialization and integration into the academic culture. During the doctoral journey, I transitioned from a graduate student to an early-career academic. This transition entailed multiple identity, language, and workplace adjustments to successfully navigate doctoral education. But what I had not realized at the time was that the key adjustment issue had to do with the system of evaluation of the PhD fellowship program that demands productivity and competitiveness. It was not only about PhD training but also about building a research and academic writing portfolio and aligning my publication practices to the official research publication policy of English as the “default academic language” (Bocanegra-Valle, 2014). Research publishing in English in top-ranking journals is an official quality objective for the academic career model. This (job) requirement is already encoded in supranational, national, and institutional higher education policy documents in Europe (Bocanegra-Valle, 2019; Burgess, 2017; Curry & Lillis, 2014). For early-career academics, too, scholarly writing productivity is the single most important marker of achievement—apart

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from holding a PhD—upon which they are assessed in order to gain employment in higher education in Spain and break through to senior positions later on (Burgess, 2017). Yet, as I hope to show here, knowing but perhaps not fully grasping the significance of this central concern early on in the socialization process in academia can have detrimental effects on publication output.

Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks There are two main concepts that form the theoretical framework of this chapter, that of “community of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the “inventorying self” perspective (Canagarajah, 2012). When individuals join a new community, they learn to make sense of their new surroundings and practices through participation in that community. My notion of learning a discipline is thus grounded in the metaphor of participating in a community of practice. The concept of community of practice is a central notion in Lave and Wenger’s (1991) social practice theory that means situated learning through participation in the activities of the community, which includes specialist language, skills, and knowledge. Its explanatory power comes from considering the relations among community members, their activities and artifacts “over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice” (p. 98). Communities are assumed to consist of and depend on membership, including its specific biographies, relationships, and practice. Membership in a community of practice, therefore, rests on participation at multiple levels, but not on “co-presence, a well-defined, identifiable group, or socially visible boundaries” (p. 98). In this view, newcomers engage with dynamic, open communities of practice and form network ties within and across diverse communities. Networks of peers represent the people who scholars share ideas with, collaborate on research projects, review papers for, discuss ideas and get feedback from. Enculturation and socialization in a community is rather seen as a continual process in which newcomers and old members (re)produce their practices and their communities.

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To explore what my career publication trajectory has been like over the decade which I had spent studying and working in Spain, strategies, and mentorship practices, I adopted Canagarajah’s (2012) “inventorying self” perspective. This consists of gathering personal memory data and write it down as textual data. From this perspective, personal memory is the primary source of information in research, which enables the use of the past to give a context to the present self. It directs the researcher toward data from within, such as past experiences and personal interpretations of those experiences that are relevant to the study. This activity involves not only collecting but also evaluating and organizing data. In doing so, the inventorying investigation tries to connect two elements of experience, lived experience and perspectives gained in the context of that experience. I adopted an autoethnographic approach that entails the use of self as data (Canagarajah, 2012). My aim was to gain insight into publication productivity, an issue which I sought to problematize in relation to my scholarly publication trajectory for self-monitoring purposes (Franke, 2019; Herman & Nicholas, 2019). The focus on publications is hardly surprising, with early-career scholars’ assessment of research quality for hiring, tenure, and promotion widely seen as contingent on this particular research achievement (Burgess, 2017; Curry & Lillis, 2014; Sutherland, 2015). However, although this demand is clear when it comes to the area that determines career success, for me, it is not clear how much, how often, what type of outputs, and in what publication outlets to publish. To attempt an answer to these questions, I looked at my publication output data available on social networking sites in which I was digitally present: two academic databases, Google Scholar and Web of Science, and two academic social networking sites, ResearchGate and Academia.edu. I gathered different types of data such as number and type of outputs, citations, altmetrics, and links to publication outlets. I relied on these digital platforms because they code academic writing-specific social practices (Djonov & Van Leuween, 2018) and mediate earlycareer academics’ efforts to build, showcase, and monitor their reputation (Nicholas et al., 2018). After collecting the data, I tried to organize and map these publication-related measures of career success that count in evaluation

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and promotion (Sutherland, 2015) on a diagram. This diagram, which I called the “research quality diagram,” was a means of evaluating and visually organizing the results. The organizing principle was that of themes that together cover the categories of research output, peer esteem and contribution to a research environment. Elements included in the diagram, such as, for instance, the local, national, and transnational scales, afforded a scalar analysis of my publication trajectory, while the integration of measures (e.g., scores, the number or articles, number of languages of publications, number of transnational projects, etc.) enabled quantification. This diagram was also used to trigger memories (of conflict or concern) that could help understand strategies and mentorship practices that gave shape to my scholarly publication trajectory. In what follows, I focus on research outputs, quality indicators, and the experiences attached to these outputs.

Publication Outputs, Strategies, Practices A Research Quality Diagram Writing and publishing productivity is a central theme of the earlycareer academic experience. What does productivity mean to me? I learned that I have to write for publication relatively early during my transition to PhD training, but I assumed this was part of learning and participating in my community and not a mechanism for demonstrating productivity. I realize now this is just one aspect of productivity, or a personal definition of productivity. During PhD training I had little or no acquaintance with professional productivity or quantitative productivity measures of research evaluation. It was not until late in the course of my socialization into my academic career, when I was putting together my CV to apply for evaluation and accreditation by the Spanish National Quality Assessment and Accreditation Agency (Agencia Nacional de la Calidad y la Acreditación, ANECA), that it became clear to me that professional productivity coded in policy and institutional documents as research quality meant research impact, measured in terms of the number and type of publications I had, the number of citations

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each publication had received and the ranking of publishing outlets. This definition of productivity I found in the ANECA program for early-career academics was reinforced by the social semiotic resources that academic social networking sites make available (Djonov & Van Leuween, 2018; Francke, 2019). Based on information supplied by the system and by myself or others on these digital networks, I was able to map a research quality diagram (Fig. 2.1) that inventoried research genres, metrics and academic publishers, digital scholarship, research skills, as well as languages and communities.

Fig. 2.1 Research quality diagram

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As shown in Fig. 2.1, the research quality diagram in which I organized and presented information from the angle of a professional definition of productivity encompassed the types of outputs that build my early-career scholarly publication trajectory. They lay bare practices that favor writing and publishing research articles and conference papers—less prestigious kin of research articles—for research dissemination; closely followed book reviews, and unsurprisingly, just one conference poster. This range of genres indicates that the geopolitics of research and supranational policies (Curry & Lillis, 2014) had a direct relationship to my publication practices and the way I managed my CV so as not to invest in conference posters. Surprisingly, I did seem to invest in book chapters, although they do not attract citations to the same extent as research articles (Burgess, 2017). Bearing in mind that these publications reported on results of ongoing research work for a PhD thesis (and, therefore, published before its completion), they illustrate a path from research work to publication in my journey that went through conference presentations. I capitalized on the opportunity to publish my conference presentation as post-conference contributions gathered in an edited volume, which seemed fair at the time; it was about participating in a practice that members of my community were also doing. This publishing strategy shows how the social practices of research communication are projected into new participant frameworks (from conference participants to edited volume contributors) in events separated across periods of time and distance. But more importantly, as a novice, I learned about the conference as a nodal point in the scholarly publication trajectory of an early-career scholar from where writing can branch into different directions or research achievements. Has this emphasis on quantitative measures of productivity in policy and academic social networking sites affected me personally and intellectually? The data supplied by digital networks and the requirements for promotion and tenure has certainly led to a change in my understanding of productivity. It has exacerbated an awareness of the expectation to publish original empirical research in academic journals. While edited volumes might be the right direction for established researchers to pursue, a strategic direction that early-career scholars should travel seems to involve rescaling conference presentations as research articles (Castelló

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et al., 2017). The research quality diagram of my scholarly trajectory also supported this hypothesis as the citation score of my publications based on data supplied by digital platforms make plain that it pays to get work published in English-medium journals. The score illustrated in the diagram corresponds almost entirely to the Web of Science citation score of my first publication, a research article written in English and published in an English-medium ISI-indexed national journal in 2009. As I was managing my CV, the question that arose was whether the other articles had been cited or not. Google Scholar provided the citations for another article that appeared in 2013 in an English-medium national journal not included in ISI indexes but rated as an A category journal, the highest at the national level. In addition, I drew on the digital semiotic resources these networks provide to identify other impact indicators. For example, I explored the treemaps that can be generated in Web of Science for the citation network of a paper to visualize the journals, countries/regions, or languages of publications that cite my article. I also checked the “Impact” feature on Academia.edu that lists for a profile 30-day visitors information broken down by countries, cities and visitors, research field, and job titles, as well as downloads and views. These webometrics and altmetrics (alternative metrics) help paint a more complex picture of (the impact of ) professional productivity than the citation score that policy documents value. For example, a finding worthy of note is that this picture confirms that the research articles published in English-medium national journals, ISI indexed or not, will have more reach and are likely to get more citations than work published in monolingual or multilingual local journals that operate within the limits of the local community. Another impact-related challenge I managed to identify in relation to my research outputs concerned academic publishers. The analysis of the citation network of these outputs foreshadowed that my research papers appeared chiefly in local outlets that were open access but did not comply with the quality assurance criteria that enhance visibility and impact in global scientific communication (e.g., reach of the journal, English titles which are prioritized in databases, the institutional affiliation and internationalization of peer-reviewers and researchers on editorial and advisory boards, see Bocanegra-Valle, 2017). As an early-career academic,

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knowledge of the reputational model in which Anglophone high-impact factor journals are positioned as more significant players at a global scale (Curry & Lillis, 2014; Lillis & Curry, 2010) became thus an essential part of learning about publication practices and productivity. Estimating productivity in a counting way also changed the way I saw career success as measured by policy and academic institutions. My publications outputs did not seem successful enough when measured against research evaluation standards. Personally, I associated number of citations with peer esteem. Therefore, after looking at the citation data of my publications, I was plagued with a profound feeling of self-doubt and I experienced a decline in self-worth. Papers on education and learning did not get visibility, which led me to conclude that educational research is not high on the agenda, and the time invested in it felt like spending time doing unimportant research. This focus on counting and metrics as a measure of productivity also left me with a feeling that I was unproductive and did not contribute to my disciplinary scholarship. I told myself that I was unproductive because of lack of time or because I did not use writing time efficiently. While trying to cope with the fear of a lack of ability to write or failing despite evidence to the contrary as I continued to write book reviews or peer reviews for journals or other pieces often under significant time pressure, I came to the realization that I needed to reevaluate my goals and become more strategic in relation to my scholarly publication trajectory. These feelings grew stronger during an assessment for promotion in 2019. I had come to what I saw as a crossroads situation in my career, similar to the one I experienced back in 2014 (the year of my PhD viva). That year was a one-year period of experiencing unemployment because I had decided to be resilient in my quest for an academic career rather than seeking employment in a different sector. Back then, it seemed all about learning the genre of job application letter and identifying my research achievements in relation to the topic of study embraced during doctoral training. Today, I am learning to understand my academic career trajectory within a reputational model that places emphasis on productivity, research quality, and academic success measures. These issues have become a key challenge for me as an early-career scholar.

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The quantified story of my research outputs that I was able to showcase here via the mediation of digital networks seems to fit easily into nationwide or supranational official objectives for research quality. However, these networks ultimately proved a strategic resource on the path to tenure. Not only did they facilitate monitoring, but they were also conducive to self-reflection in relation to the narrative of scholarly publication available to me as an early-career scholar over the course of my journey of academic writing. What the research quality diagram revealed is how many boxes I managed to tick in terms of external official measures of success. What it obscured is the transitional moments accompanied by changes in personal and work circumstances and the demands of the many adjustments that mediated these publication outputs. Ultimately, this inventorying of digital platforms drew my attention to the fact that the main asset in the transition from novice to established member of a scientific community is belonging to multiple communities of practice, which will be discussed next.

Multi-membership in Communities of Practice There are three main factors that influenced my scholarly publication trajectory as an early-career scholar and had positive effects on my publication productivity: mentoring, department culture, and collaboration. Heeding the advice of my PhD advisor, I engaged in scholarship to become a published writer early in my doctoral journey. My first publication was based on my master’s thesis and appeared in an ISIindexed national journal with a rising international standing in the disciplinary community of Languages for Specific Purposes (Carciu, 2009). My advisor played an important role in my socialization as she provided considerable support at various stages of getting published in an academic journal, such as identification of a suitable target journal that matched the paper, feedback on the draft of the paper prior to its submission, and dealing with the publication and peer review process. On the one hand, the comments and suggestions for revisions I received during the process of drafting the paper contributed to the development of authoring skills and writing effectively within the conventional

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article sections. Yet, more importantly, writing a research paper felt like a collaboration at all stages. This first experience was crucial and created a pedagogic context for my learning about writing and publishing in which our combined efforts resulted in a successful outcome. It shaped my view of writing for publication. It taught me that it is not a solitary process, rather it takes place in an environment of mentorship. While the initial transition to scholarly publication was successfully completed, I engaged in the production of other academic texts that support an academic career, such as a series of conference papers, articles published in open access non-ISI English-medium journals or conference proceedings, and book chapters. These publication outputs were the result of situated learning and guided by scaffolding interactions typical of academic life. Many of these interactions were mediated by national and international conferences and research projects, research group formal and informal meetings, research stays at prestigious academic institutions and collaborative networks. They provided me with resources (i.e., both tangible, material and intangible ones, in particular, professional experience, skills, and relationships) from a variety of people and communities that helped me progress to doing research independently in some areas in English, Spanish, and my native language, Romanian. How did this multi-membership in three communities of practice (English, Spanish, Romanian) create opportunities for learning that scaffolded my scholarly publication practices and shaped my trajectory? As a graduate student in English Studies, a lot of learning opportunities stemmed from interactions with senior faculty and pre-tenure peers at my home university in Spain as well as at two prestigious UK-based universities I visited for research stays. Mentors and peers I met at these institutions made a difference to the sum total of my knowledge about research facilities, infrastructure, and funding. Informal and formal regular meetings were settings in which I received feedback on my research data, or I got to learn about my peers’ research and data. Other areas of development were related to access to and use of appropriate literature, conferences, new software or tools and methods that helped in the treatment and analysis of data, or training workshops that contributed to gradually building up my skills in my research area. However, given the focus on learning technical knowledge and skills in

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my field of research, my publications from this period are situated in a dominant discourse of monolingual (English-only) publication practice. I learned to become first monolingual, and then move gradually to being a multilingual academic publishing in English and Spanish in a supportive, welcoming department culture and climate at my home university in Spain. The English Studies department actively assisted its members to develop collaborations and integrated graduate students and early-career academics in projects that sought to achieve quality teaching and learning in undergraduate and graduate level programs. The active and institutionalized formal peer-mentoring program in the department also played a key role in my socialization during graduate studies and in the development of scholarly partnerships. This new learning was not modeled or practiced; it was generated in working with early-career peers from other fields of English Studies (i.e., culture and film, literature) in collaborative projects or co-authoring conference presentations. This community also provided a significant source of emotional support, including reassuring and respect, or sharing their own biographies and stories of publication and workplace successes and failures over a coffee. For me, department-level projects to improve teaching quality and the formal peer-mentoring program were also instrumental in establishing an academic writing portfolio of Spanish language co-authored publications that contributed to knowledge within the local Spanish communities of practice. These publications add diversity to my scholarly publication trajectory and they are a capital I can rely on to succeed whenever my Spanish written language competence is questioned within the local academic setting. Belonging to the Romanian community opened new avenues for participation in the professional research networks of my Spanish community that had established partnerships with Romanian scholars. These partnerships enabled me to compare experiences and become more involved with the Romanian community. The outcome of this involvement was co-authored publications that contributed to research in the field and strengthened the ties among Spanish and Romanian members of the professional research network. More importantly, I learned that publication is an activity that demands a single representation of information obtained from the integration of distributed skills and capabilities

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between my mentors and co-authors and me. One example is carrying out interviews in Romanian or Spanish and then translating excerpts from these interviews and writing research that reports results in English. Of note, previous to this experience, I had not valued these publication practices that I created in working with Romanian academics and which entered my repertoire as a multilingual scholar as a result of collaboration across communities that do not share the same language. In addition, I realized that my position as an international researcher enabled me to participate in both the Spanish and the Romanian community as an information broker, controlling the flow of information from one part of the network to another by sometimes translating from one language to another materials that we shared to conduct interview-based research. This experience highlights the impact on my trajectory of interpersonal relationships and networks that acted not only as facilitators of socialization but also as mediators of positive outcomes such as research publication productivity. Unfortunately, at the end of this academic apprenticeship period, I found that academic positions are scarce, and a job in academia in Spain depends ultimately on the existence of a job opening. The selection process reinforces the role of research publication productivity in the transition to full-time employment. A series of unsuccessful job applications or part-time academic jobs constantly reminded me of it. It was only almost three years later that I was able to secure full-time employment at the same university from which I had graduated. In this position, I was expected to publish regularly and develop an academic career. Yet the essence of this period can be summed up as zero publications in ISIindexed journals despite the pressure to publish, struggling with teaching and coming to terms with my expectations and the reality of a job in higher education in an unfamiliar institutional context. Therefore, in the absence of a sustained quality publication record, this transition from a graduate student to an early-career academic is no longer about promotion and career development, but instead is about job insecurity (Castelló et al., 2017; McCulloh, this volume) and feeling anxious about how much I haven’t done (Gormley, this volume; Warren, 2017). It became clear to me that the graduate program served to socialize me into an academic career partially.

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I also learned about the dauntingly individualized reward structures of academic work used to determine pay, promotions, and job security in universities. Initiating and sustaining interpersonal relationship as a new faculty who enters tenure-track positions following graduate programs appears to contradict policy which actively discourages activities that help with network development and productivity; this policy states clearly that the bulk of our work should be sole-authored. The focus on sole-authored publications is likely to belie the fact that in some institutional contexts, research productivity tends to be an activity in which researchers engage only when workload devoted to teaching and service is completed. As early-career academics, too, we are more likely to spend more time on teaching and service rather than on building a reputation that comes from publications, contact with peers, and involvement in research projects (Sutherland, 2015). To apply for promotion, I needed to tick boxes in the areas of teaching and service. This demand gave me new goals to work toward; however, they were not easy to incorporate into my intentions. Engagement in academic activities such as teaching, supervising undergraduates, and sitting on departmental committees involved resistance given the deep sense of belonging to a community of researchers rather than to that of teachers, a sense that I developed during PhD training and a goal signposted by official demands. The process of acculturation I experienced as an earlycareer academic was not as comfortable as the one I experienced as a graduate student, and the work environment lacked many of the practices that enhanced publication productivity during my doctoral studies such as research stays. These experiences brought me to the boundaries of very different communities of practice rather than that of a romanticized academic community and kept me on the periphery of participation and publication. My engagement in academic work and making time for publication was also constrained by the need to make personal adjustments through re-locations. Re-locations are shifts of place accompanied by shifts in role in communities (McAlpine et al., 2014). The geographical re-location has been an overriding theme in my academic journey of transitions that determined the interference of personal life in my intentions. It was taken for granted but had an impact on my struggle to create boundaries

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between work and personal life. I failed to achieve a balance between personal and academic desires, and evidence of it was the constant time pressure and people close to me saying I work and sacrifice too much for my job. Other demanding adjustments I had to make in the transition to an early-career position were commuting to a nearby city and moving within the same institution to a different Faculty. This adjustment to a different Faculty (institutional re-location) also meant adjustment to its disciplinary culture (intellectual re-location). During this transition, the local, daily experience of work changed as regards the organizational system, resources, and responsibilities. Another type of re-location I experienced was a cultural one. Moving from Romania to Spain required adjustment and changes in common practices, and it may remain challenging throughout the career span (Burgess, this volume). However, the most important transition was the fact that the university position I had managed to secure was in the field of education. I belonged to a different research culture, so I was not able to enhance my identity as a researcher in the field and member of this community of practice. I also lacked a feeling of belonging in the workplace and worked to improve feedback from students. All the demands of this position competed with my efforts to advance my research. Thus I continued to be deterred from taking ownership of and manage my career progression and set realistic and achievable career goals. However, after investing in development as a teacher in the field of education for three years—the time it took to settle into the job role—I also feel that as I gained experience and moved through different roles, I gained a growing sense of confidence. I hope that this will enable me to manage work demands to make more time for publication and take up research intentions again. The story of my academic journey showed that having a clear sense of purpose about which opportunities to pursue and the ability to capitalize on the semiotic resources coded in academic social networking sites to inventory and make visible practices that enhance research publication productivity will have an impact on the story that an early-career scholar will be able to tell about her/his scholarly publication trajectory. More specifically, it highlighted the impact of factors that add value to a scholarly publication trajectory, such as mentoring, department culture, and collaboration networks.

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Reflection This autoethnography showcased my early and continuing attempts to publish as a multilingual early-career scholar in the absence of a clear idea about what exactly was needed to achieve in relation to research productivity to succeed and the detrimental effects on publication output of the lack of clarity as to what productivity is and how to improve it. This was but a brief glimpse into my scholarly publication trajectory, one that I hope will contribute to unravel constructions of success in academia and struggles for visibility, but also demonstrate how we continue to learn through time and across roles as novice members of multiple, dynamic, open communities of practice. In this chapter, I also highlighted the influence of factors associated with research publication productivity (mentoring, supportive department culture, collaborative networks) on my scholarly publication trajectory. Corroborating KaplanBerkley et al. (2019), I also hope to have made a case that digital technologies can help following the doctoral journey to identify strategies and resources to remain part of a community of practice and form network ties within and across diverse communities. A case in point is the reliance on the information encoded by academic social networking sites to track the transition from novice to established scholar, validate definitions of career success and reputation in academia, or at least help the early-career researcher get a better grasp of research outputs, practices, strategies (Tusting et al., 2019). The personal data that an early-career scholar can collect from a personal web profile may enable monitoring of one’s scholarly publication trajectory and not only help expand understanding of the social practices that shape academic writing (Curry & Lillis, 2014) but also lead to reflexivity about the meaning of research outputs, peer esteem and contribution to research environment, changes in time and the link between personal life and academic work (McAlpine et al., 2014). Once again, through critical examination of one’s own experiences as an early-career scholar, one can discover alternate pathways for building and shaping a scholarly publication trajectory (Habibie & Hyland, 2019). This alternate pathway is likely to rely on factors such as the scaffolding of a community of practice, reliance on web

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affordances for self-monitoring of research quality, and the power of inventorying and self-reflection.

References Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2014). ‘English is my default language’: Voices from LSP scholars publishing in a multilingual journal. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 13(1), 65–74. Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2017). How credible are open access emerging journals? A situational analysis in the humanities. In M. Cargill & S. Burgess (Eds.), Publishing research in English as an additional language: Practices, pathways and potentials (pp. 121–150). University of Adelaide Press. Bocanegra-Valle, A. (2019). Building a reputation in global scientific communication: A SWOT analysis of Spanish humanities journals. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 44 (1), 39–66. Burgess, S. (2017). Accept or contest: A life-history study of humanities scholars’ responses to research publication policies in Spain. In M. Cargill & S. Burgess (Eds.), Publishing research in English as an additional language: Practices, pathways and potentials (pp. 13–32). University of Adelaide Press. Canagarajah, S. (2012). Autoethnography in the study of multilingual writers. In L. Nickolson & M. P. Sheridan (Eds.), Writing studies research in practice: Methods and methodologies (pp. 113–124). Southern Illinois University Press. Carciu, O. M. (2009). An intercultural study of first-person plural references in biomedical writing. Ibérica, Journal of the European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes, 18, 71–92. Castelló, M., McAlpine, L., & Pyhalto, K. (2017). Spanish and UK postPhD researchers: Writing perceptions, well-being and productivity. Higher Education Research & Development, 36 (6), 1108–1122. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. M. (2014). Strategies and tactics in academic knowledge production by multilingual scholars. Education Policy Analysis, 22(32), 1–24. Djonov, E., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2018). Social media as semiotic technology and social practice: The case of ResearchGate’s design and its potential to transform social practice. Social Semiotics, 28(5), 641–664. Francke, H. (2019). The academic web profile as a genre of “self-making”. Online Information Review, 43(5), 760–774.

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Habibie, P., & Hyland, K. (2019). Novice writers and scholarly publication. Palgrave Macmillan. Herman, E., & Nicholas, D. (2019). Scholarly reputation building in the digital age: An activity-specific approach. Review article. El profesional de la información, 28(1), e280102. Kaplan-Berkley, S., Strickland, C. M., & Dimartino, L. (2019). Postdissertation: Surviving and thriving amidst doctoral transition. Reflective Practice, 20 (6), 705–719. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge. McAlpine, L., Amundsen, C., & Turner, G. (2014). Identity-trajectory: Reframing early career academic experience. British Educational Research Journal, 40 (6), 952–969. Nicholas, D., Herman, E., Xu, J., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Abdullah, A., ´ Watkinson, A., Swigo´ n, M., & Rodríguez-Bravo, B. (2018). Early career researchers’ quest for reputation in the digital age. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 49 (4), 375–396. Sutherland, K. A. (2015). Constructions of success in academia: An early career perspective. Studies in Higher Education, 42(4), 743–759. Tusting, K., McCulloch, S., Bhatt, I., Hamilton, M., & Barton, D. (2019). Academics writing. Routledge. Warren, S. (2017). Struggling for visibility in higher education: Caught between neoliberalism ‘out there’ and ‘in here’—An autoethnographic account. Journal of Educational Policy, 32(2), 127–140.

3 Writing Belonging with Critical Autoethnography Saskia Van Viegen

Introduction I had never considered a career in academia, mainly because I didn’t know such opportunities would be available to someone like me. I became a teacher like my mother. When one of my undergraduate professors suggested I apply for a Master’s program, I took the advice. The rest of my career proceeded in a similar fashion—when I embarked on doctoral studies to investigate questions relating to my teaching practice and become a better educator, it was only when my doctoral supervisor, Dr. Jim Cummins at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto asked whether I was interested in an academic position that I seriously considered the idea. Today, I am a junior faculty member at a large Canadian university. I S. Van Viegen (B) Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_3

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contribute to three programs in our languages and linguistics department, including our undergraduate programs in English as a Second Language (ESL), Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and our graduate program in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics (LAL). The broad purpose of my scholarship and teaching is to support equity and inclusion in multilingual education contexts and to counter monolingual, monoglossic orientations to language teaching and learning. Working in research-practice partnership and in collaboration with educators, I endeavor to push back against the impact of broader policies and social discourses that contribute to the marginalization of students and families from minoritized social, cultural, and/or linguistic backgrounds. At the same time, this work connects with significant moments and experiences in my life—underpinning my interest in critical pedagogy and advocacy for re/making education a site for building on, witnessing and expanding learners’ diverse experiences. Sharing insights from and documenting these efforts, my experience in writing for scholarly publication includes several single and co-authored publications, including articles in referred journals, chapters in edited volumes, a co-edited journal special issue and a co-edited book. Presently, I am a co-editor of an international journal and participate actively in peer review of manuscripts for publication in journals in my field.

Critical Autoethnography as Homework Writing has become an ongoing practice for me, taking time, attention, and engagement to foster. When reflecting on critical moments in my writing for publication during my doctoral studies, my postdoctoral work, and in my first years as tenure-track faculty, I can identify the importance of scaffolding, mentorship and relationships in initiating and facilitating my writing development. However, writing, like research itself, “takes place in the material world and engages socially oriented bodies, living in geographies and histories” (Bazerman, 2011, p. 8). With this understanding in mind, I draw on the writing of feminist and cultural studies scholar Aimee Carillo Rowe, to engage in homework,

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that is, examination of the connections among self, community, theory and justice, Doing homework is about making the familiar strange, of revisiting home to unearth what is at stake in its making…the sites of our belonging constitute how we see the world, what we value, who we are (becoming). The meaning of self is never individual, but a shifting set of relations that we move in and out of, often without reflection. (Rowe, 2005, p. 16)

This lens provides a frame for me to turn inward and reflect on my experience in response to the question of what has been my journey to writing for publication purposes, to consider both discursive and nondiscursive challenges of academic writing (Habibie & Hyland, 2019), and the process of coming to belong in the academic community. To do so, I turn to critical autoethnography (Aoki, 2003; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Pinar, 1994) to reflect upon my experiences. Ethnographic approaches to writing research see texts as embedded within the social and material lives and circumstances in which they are created, emphasizing a contextual view of academic discourse and its development (see, for instance, Duff & Bell, 2002; Flowerdew, 2014; Lillis, 2008). Autoethnography situates the researcher centrally in this production of knowledge, an opportunity to write and reflect on narratives of the self and relations with others. As both process and product, method and text, autoethnography engages an insider view and makes visible the researcher’s lived experience to engage, self-reflexively, in thinking and writing about how experiences of race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, education, and/or religion inform their work (Hughes et al., 2012). Critical autoethnography, in particular, aims to address unfair or unjust social conditions, to shed light on inequities, regimes of knowledge and social practices that limit understanding of particular identities and communities (Madison, 2011). Importantly, critical autoethnography engages with researcher positionality and the responsibilities of representation to not only share and reflect on personal experience but also to expose the material effects of particular subjectivities and intervene in marginalizing practices. This discussion of positionality is important to critical autoethnography in that researchers

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must consider how representation is tied to dominant and hegemonic discourses, requiring researchers to account for issues of power, privilege and bias—“turning back” on oneself to account for the challenges of social representation and interpretation (Davis, 2008). This critical lens raises questions about autoethnography, including “who gets to speak, who is invited to contribute, and the nature of the stories” (Burdell & Swadener, 1999, p. 25). Reflecting on a set of narratives about my experience moving toward greater participation in the academic community, my aim is to add nuance and complexity to understanding writing for publication purposes as a social practice, and to articulate opportunities to mentor and support students in finding belonging in academic spaces. Importantly, I hope my experience can contribute to the question of what gets left out when belonging is assumed as starting point for theorization (Rowe, 2005).

Coming to Writing My path to academic work was unexpected; a child of immigrant parents raised in a small town in southern Ontario (Canada), I never imagined myself working at a university much less conducting research and writing scholarly publications. Living with and through Dutch and English, language was situated in particular places and spaces, enmeshed with affect and relations with certain people—enfolding me at my Oma’s kitchen table and blossoming around her garden where my brother and I picked vegetables at her side. My linguistic ecology was steeped in immigrant experience, strong like our food and coffee, and slowly watered down over time. These early experiences of sociolinguistic and cultural difference rooted in me, sparking a lifelong interest in and curiosity about language and migration in society. I was the first person in my immediate and extended family to attend university. Most people in my family worked in service or administrative capacities at nearby companies or the local hospital, in manufacturing at the nickel refinery or the steel plant in the next town over. Some ran their own small businesses, including my father. My mother, however, was a teacher from back when a university degree was not a required qualification for the job. It is she who made books and reading an important part of my life.

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Books and stories became my friends and my escape when my family faced hard times—in the pages of a book, I could lose myself and the difficult world around me. Throughout much of my childhood, I witnessed my father’s physical and emotional violence towards my mother. Languages materializing anger and rage, switching omdat de kinderen luisteren, to hide words and draw a boundary around what stays private. Play in the basement while the adults talk, alstublieft. Stay outside where it doesn’t matter what language they are speaking. Under the bed you can’t hear. My second grade teacher noticed that each time it was my turn for ‘show and tell’, I brought nothing from home to share. Home was often too chaotic to prepare for participation in this otherwise simple class activity. She gave me a book of riddles to keep in my desk for those days, so I could borrow the words and stand at the front of the class with something to say. My mother was able to separate from my father when I was six years old, but like many women and children experiencing family violence, the coercive control and its effects remained (Campbell et al., 1998). For three years, we lived in various temporary housing arrangements. Staying with family, friends and in short-term rental accommodations, we seldom stayed anywhere for more than several months at a time. We moved to an Indigenous community that was part of the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in the northern part of the province of Manitoba (Canada), 3,000 kilometres away, where my mother took a teaching job and we gained deeper understanding and experience of the legacy of settler colonization of Indigenous people, land and knowledge in Canada. There, I attended the local school and began learning the Cree language through emerging friendships and relationships in the community. Making pathways between our houses, exploring the woods and visiting kohkum for snacks after school, we ran, played and wandered as packs of children. My favourite place was the local library. From my child’s eye, it seemed as though books were piled high to the ceiling in the little trailer that was the library. The librarian let us stay for what seemed like hours, sitting cross-legged on the floor to read. One day my father showed up. Inexplicably, he took my brother and me for the weekend, never to return. We didn’t see my mother again for months. I went to five primary schools in 6 years. Maybe that is how it is when your mother is running, when you are like another bag hurriedly packed.

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Other teachers in my life opened my eyes to the power of writing. My fourth-grade teacher ran an ‘authors in the classroom’ program, and this is when I began to write for an audience. She taught us about imagination and explained that our experiences, dreams and ideas could be shared. We wrote stories, designed book covers and read our writing aloud from the author’s chair at the front of the classroom. Later, I found out that she had contributed one of my poems to a book of poetry published by the school board—my first publication. Domestic or family violence is understood as one partner’s attempt to take control over the other, which serves as a context for physical and/or sexual violence. This control extends to emotional and economic abuse, isolation, and intimidation. Where children are involved, they too are drawn into this web of abuse and control, with the perpetrating partner threatening to hurt them or take them away (Johnson, 2007). Whereas some theories foreground the intersection of gender and domestic violence, gender alone inadequately accounts for such experiences, which can overlap with and compound other aspects of social marginalization relating to social class, race, sexuality, ability, and so on, which shed light on these understandings. As an anglophone and white cis-gender female in Canada, my settler-colonial identification brought particular privileges and affordances. Despite the family violence and its effects, school provided a way through and past the difficulties of my experience, offering stability, consistency, and security that I needed. I had some teachers who saw me, noticed me, and supported me. Although I never told them anything about my life, it seems I didn’t have to. They heard me anyway. As homework (Rowe, 2005), these reflections make visible and bring to consciousness how my “being” is constituted not as an individual self, but through “being with” others. Drawing on Althusser (1971) and Sandoval’s (2000) idea of “reverse interpellation,” which recognizes one’s positioning within webs of social power, Rowe (2005) articulates subjectivity as an effect of belonging. She writes that power lives in these intersubjective relations, calling attention to what is at stake in belonging and envisioning alternative relations.

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Being Seen Fast forward years lived as September to June, where in school I could make life into something different. Always comfortable in classrooms, it is unsurprising that I chose to become an educator—to be the kind of teacher who made a difference for students who, like me, needed school for more than just curriculum content. I was privileged to feel accepted in school spaces, my whiteness a ticket to belonging that I didn’t have to earn. Unsatisfied with the inequities I witnessed in educational contexts, I looked to graduate school as a place to go deeper in working to engage in equitable practice in my teaching. Central to my experience was working as a graduate student researcher, part of a research team. My supervisor provided the same kind of mentorship and support that my other teachers had, not only involving me in fieldwork and data collection activities but inviting me into the dialogue around me and helping me see myself as capable of contributing. Importantly, this work provided an opportunity to participate in, rather than just read about, critically oriented research. I understand these engagements as situated social practice. This conceptualization draws upon Lave and Wenger’s (1991) perspective on legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice, wherein novices move from peripheral to deeper affiliation and involvement. From this lens, mentors play a critical role in apprenticing novice scholars to develop knowledge, power, and identification with the academic community to which they aspire to contribute to. This perspective underscores scholarly writing as a social practice, position, and stance, facilitating identity negotiation and even personal transformation. A key milestone for me was during a major research project, when our team was required to draft a technical report of our work. My supervisor asked the graduate student researchers to prepare a list of all of our work to date, which would be used to articulate an account of our data collection activities. In considering writing this list, I thought that it might not represent fully the many steps we had taken in our work. Cautiously, I suggested that I myself and another research assistant could do more and actually draft the report based on a first-hand account of our activities. I was surprised when this suggestion was accepted, a moment which marked both the first time I

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would write about research for an authentic audience, and the beginning of a shift in my identity as a writer. The writing was easier than I thought. I welcomed the challenge and was keen to show my supervisor that I was capable of accomplishing the task. I saw the work as a pathway to future writing opportunities, and an opportunity to collaborate with the research team in a new way—not just conducting research but documenting and articulating the research process. Much of what we wrote was incorporated into the final version of the report submitted to the project funders, revised to accommodate the deeper theoretical framing and analysis that the principal investigators contributed. Since the report was technical, the writing was rather straightforward, descriptive and not requiring a significant literature review to situate the emergent findings in the extant research literature. This last point is important, as in my capacity as a graduate student I was still developing an understanding of the scholarly conversations that the project might contribute to, theoretically and methodologically. However, having been part of the research team from the beginning, I was aware of the issues that our report aimed to address, which were more concrete than abstract. My supervisor’s explicit encouragement and mentorship made all the difference in this writing process—through explicit guidance and feedback, I recognized a belief that I was capable of scholarly writing. This support extended to my doctoral thesis writing, which became what Cummins and Early ( 2010) call an ‘identity text’, that is, the product of students’ creative works in which their identities are reflected back in a positive light; albeit not fixed identities, but across the layers of identity categories that are revealed in daily practices and affective ties (Rowe, 2005). Developing competence in writing for publication involves relationships, construction of identity in relation to a community, and development of shared practices and ways of doing things. Such practices are not without critique. Academic communities have contributed to racialized linguistic hierarchies and have tended to reproduce the hegemonic dominance of English in the Western academy (Belcher, 2007; Curry & Lillis, 2004; Kubota, 2003; Lillis & Curry, 2010). Whereas all students need to master communication skills and conventions unique to their specific disciplines, students from marginalized or minoritized social and language backgrounds face different and perhaps greater

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challenges writing for publication (Flowerdew, 2019). Critically, these challenges can comprise not only textual or linguistic aspects of writing, but social and affective dimensions of experience in academic spaces. Writing for an audience in a specialized discourse community, with shared conventions (Casanave & Vandrick, 2003) is facilitated by inclusion and collaboration with mentors who can scaffold and support these processes. I was developing knowledge of academic genres, particularly understanding the differences among various types of scholarly texts and the accompanying rhetorical moves constituting these texts. For instance, when we later developed the technical report into a scholarly manuscript, I recognized that the structure of manuscripts differed significantly among empirical reports, review, and theoretical articles. I became familiar with the purpose of different sections of an empirical article and recognized why these sections were critical to disseminate knowledge to other scholars. Finally, I came to understand what comprised an academic audience; that is, I discovered that each scholarly journal has a particular audience. I began to notice and learn more about the journals we aimed to publish in, looking up the members of the journals’ editorial boards and reading other articles published in the journal. These activities helped me understand how to frame my work, using concepts, arguments, and literature that potential readers might be familiar with. At the same time, mapping this learning onto the shape of my affective and social engagements reveals how they have always been embedded in white-settler colonial relations, prompting consideration of how spaces of belonging are precarious and racialized, even as they are transformative (Rowe, 2005).

Participating Following completion of my PhD, I took a post-doctoral research position. At this stage, I was beginning to conduct research projects myself and was part of other larger projects with teams of stakeholders. One of these projects was a collaborative inquiry involving policymakers, school district leaders and teachers to identify and document multilingual teaching strategies

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across different school districts to synthesize approaches for teaching newcomer students who had recently migrated to Canada. My role in this work was to gather and analyze data for research. Reflecting upon the findings emerging from the project, I suggested to the team that we consider disseminating our findings not only through planned professional learning activities, but also through scholarly presentations and publications. I was delighted when the team accepted this idea, and we began a new phase in our collaboration. Despite significant experience facilitating professional learning both within their districts and at the system level, the team was just developing experience writing for publication purposes. As a first step, I suggested we submit a proposal to an upcoming academic conference. I wrote an abstract for a proposed paper and shared it with the group for feedback. Our submission was accepted, and several months ahead of the conference, we began meeting to prepare our conference paper. We set aside several hours at a time to identify the content, the narrative and finally, the text and slides for our paper. The team reported that the preparation and presentation for the conference was a welcome opportunity for reflective engagement and collaboration; they shared that they rarely had time for this kind of activity, as they were so busy leading the work. Our experience working together was so positive that we presented at two additional international conferences. Subsequently, I found a call for papers for an upcoming special issue of a scholarly journal and asked the team if they were interested and willing to write a manuscript together. Although the team had some trepidation about the amount of work involved, we were eager to share the results of both the project and our ongoing collaboration. I agreed to draft the paper for the team, and we continued to meet on a monthly basis, focusing each meeting on reviewing a different section of the manuscript. Prior to each meeting, I sent a draft of one section, which each team member read and edited carefully on their own. At our meetings, each person shared their feedback and suggestions, which we then incorporated into the draft. At times, the high level of scrutiny and attention to my writing was hard to take; however, I recognized the importance of faithfulness to the collaborative nature of our endeavor. In the end, each person was satisfied with our submission to the journal and felt that it captured and represented our different viewpoints.

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This collaborative writing invited apprenticeship among members of the project team, with leadership and expertise distributed across team members who each brought different perspectives but shared aims to the writing process. As expert peers, we supported one another’s participation. Entering into and gaining legitimacy in an academic community demands engagement with multiple aspects of knowledge production and dissemination, including traditional and privileged discourses and conventions, and social interactions and relations. Duff (2007, 2010) discusses the critical role of socialization into academic discourse communities, emphasizing development of tacit cultural knowledge through interaction and activity. Central to these processes is the role of scaffolding and enculturation on production of target genres and tacit cultural knowledge. Broadly, this process encompasses developing particular identities, stances, and behaviors, gaining competence, acquiring practices, and achieving legitimacy. More specifically, the process comprises various forms of modeling, feedback, and uptake, along with an accompanying negotiation of power and identities—which may entail conformity and reproduction, or resistance and contestation of dominant norms. In writing for publication purposes, submission of a manuscript is really only the beginning of a much longer process. We received feedback and suggested revisions from anonymous reviewers and the special issue editor, who can be viewed as non-immediate members of our community of practice. Although I was used to the process of revision, the rest of the team was surprised by the feedback on what they thought was a well-written paper. Initially, they were discouraged and worried that our efforts were not being recognized by the journal. By way of mentoring the team through the revision process, I assured them that external peer review is an important part of scholarly publishing, and that addressing the feedback would strengthen our manuscript. A further issue at this stage was negotiating the reviewers’ request for providing more contextual information in the manuscript and naming the challenges associated with the project; while these were manageable revisions, the team was reluctant to put more of the story of the research in the manuscript, for fear of saying too much information or being seen as critiquing the work of the school district teams. Suggesting that challenges and limitations are part of all research projects, I helped the team recognize

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that demonstrating awareness of the challenges and limitations of our work would actually strengthen our claims and their potential usefulness to others. Finally, we were able to construct a comprehensive version of the manuscript that addressed the feedback to the satisfaction of the editors, and to the team and their leadership who approved its dissemination. At this stage in my writing practice, challenges relating to my writing for publication comprised facilitating and negotiating collaborative writing. I recognized that collaborating and co-publishing with my doctoral supervisor helped me transition to being an independent researcher; the mentorship had helped me gain autonomy both as a researcher and as an academic writer. I had learned to write independently for multiple publication purposes, from technical reports to shorter articles for practitioners, and then to more conceptual work. I followed a similar process to that which had been scaffolded throughout my doctoral program, and I now endeavored to engage with co-authors to support their writing for publication in a similar way. This effort was reciprocal, part of my commitment to participatory, collaborative knowledge generation and to mobilizing and disseminating important insights from practitioners and policy makers engaged in fieldwork. Doing collaborative writing for publication was somewhat more challenging than writing on my own. It required a long cycle of engagement that depended on a positive relationship among all collaborators, requiring flexibility, openness to feedback, and mutual respect for one another’s strengths and contributions. We facilitated a productive, supportive, and enthusiastic approach to teamwork, resulting in mutual benefit. This collaborative work underscores that writing for publication is not just a technical activity or transaction; the motivation extends to an interest in knowledge mobilization, particularly in an applied field where the aim is to improve policy and practice.

Belonging Beginning a tenure-track position, I had developed a process in writing for publication that worked for me—scaffolding the composition of manuscripts first as abstracts for conference presentations, then as conference papers, and

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finally as full-length manuscripts. Breaking writing for publication down into these steps not only made the process manageable, but also helped me to get feedback at every stage. I recognize the value in having others read and critique my work and began to see the time and effort reviewers and editors put into articulating feedback and suggesting revisions as a gift. Moreover, I had come to enjoy the writing process, including struggling with producing initial drafts through reading and rereading my work to refine and add nuance to the ways I articulated my thinking. Most importantly, I had come to see myself as a writer and to see writing as an integral component of my academic work. Assuming academic discourse is learned through participation, not everyone is participating in similar ways. Opportunities to participate are shaped by investments in the writing and learning process, and by specific interactions, discourses, and ideologies which connect the self with broader socio-political realities (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Writerly identities thus are not static; they shift and change according to multiple community affiliations, and the relational, symbolic, and material aspects of these affiliations. Considering how subjects are produced in and through discursive structures requires asking how individuals as subjects identify (or do not identify) with the positions to which they are designated. Kramsch (2006) describes symbolic competence as the ability to reframe an interaction according to the needs of the moment—to reposition oneself and others, question rules of communication and have sensitivity to negotiation of symbolic power. Once again, I wonder how to account for the politics of relation in reconfiguring a politics of location (Rowe, 2005) in these processes? My writing for publication practice changed in important ways once I began my university position. The privilege of an academic position brings institutional support, opportunities for funding and possibilities to create a team of graduate student researchers. Stable and secure employment provided both a safety net and a foundation on which to grow. However, I quickly learned that although I thought I was busy during my doctoral and postdoctoral work, my available time for writing during those years had, in fact, been a luxury. Establishing myself at a new institution, conducting empirical research, fulfilling commitments to teaching and service work, supervising and mentoring graduate students, and attending committee meetings added significantly to my schedule. Further, my writing activities now

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extended to include funding applications and administrative paperwork associated with teaching and managing research activities. Suddenly, I found my writing practice tested by competing demands, although the change was by no means unexpected or exceptional for a junior faculty member. At the same time, my experiences teaching and evaluating academic writing and reviewing abstracts and manuscripts for conferences and scholarly journals have contributed to my ongoing development as a writer. I see these activities as peer mentorship, carefully engaging with other scholars’ writing and providing thoughtful, supportive feedback. This work also helps me reflect on my own writing style, as well as the conventions and discourses used within my field. Supporting academic colleagues and graduate student researchers has mutual benefit, reminding me how writing for publication is dynamic, temporal, situated and bound up with material, sociocultural and socioemotional considerations. These shifts have not changed my identification as a writer; rather, I feel closer to other writers in the ongoing struggle to write for publication.

Concluding Remarks For those who, like me, identify themselves as new to academic work, mentorship of more experienced peers and expert scholars is critical to bridging entrance into academic discourse communities. The opportunity for apprenticeship, with scaffolded experiences of engaging in research and research writing can pave the way for deeper participation and investment in writing for publication. At the same time, mentors can play an important role in helping students who are first in the family or first-generation university students to see themselves as legitimate members of the university community. Taking the time to identify students’ potential or foster their interest in pursuing academic work can help to expand participation in the academy, bringing much-needed new and different voices and perspectives and opening traditional and privileged academic discourse communities. These efforts underscore the non-discursive dimensions of academic writing, particularly the contribution of academic discourse socialization. Students need support and practice to develop the identities, stance, and behaviors associated with

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scholarly writing and to gain competence in the practices associated with writing for publication. Despite these insights, constructing my experiences as normative can overlook how the practices and processes that support development of writing for publication are socially contingent and nested within particular experiences, especially access to and participation in academic communities and relationships that foster the development of a writerly identity. As stated earlier, seeing writing as a social practice involves mastery of discourses and activities that are not only linguistic and textual, but enmeshed in the distribution of symbolic power. Contributing to research and writing for publication as a doctoral student can provide legitimate peripheral participation in an academic community, scaffolding entry to the field and supporting participation in the distribution of symbolic power that is associated with writing for publication. Students need opportunities to not only engage in scholarly conversations, but also to position themselves as part of the dialogue and community. Negotiating these spaces is socially contingent, as novice scholars from marginalized or minoritized backgrounds or circumstances may be systematically misheard or devalued, particularly without mentorship or opportunity for participation. Writing for publication is not just a technical or instrumental activity involving mastery of academic discourse; rather, it is a critical social activity that develops theoretical and conceptual knowledge. I return to an important piece of advice given to me by Dr. Merrill Swain, another mentor in my academic writing development, who said when stuck in your thinking, you can “write your way through it” (M. Swain, personal communication, 2012). This message seems to align with Swain’s concept of languaging (2006), wherein language mediates thinking, including cognition and emotion, allowing one to work out one’s thoughts and come to know what they mean. This perspective further aligns with the idea that developing academic discourse knowledge occurs in and through activity and interaction, whether this activity is an intra- or inter-mental process. Rereading my reflections, I see how these processes were fostered, inspired, and enriched by collaboration with others across various stages in my academic career. Indeed, writing with colleagues brings me immense satisfaction, countering what is an

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otherwise solitary process by adding greater opportunity for generative, collective engagement and discussion.

References Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and the ideological state apparatuses. In J. Storey (Ed.), Cultural theory and popular culture: A reader (pp. 153–164). University of Georgia. Aoki, T. T. (2003). Locating living pedagogy in teacher ‘research’: Five metonymic moments. In E. Hasebe-Ludt & W. Hurren (Eds.), Curriculum intertext: Place/language/pedagogy (pp. 1–10). Peter Lang. Bazerman, C. (2011). Standpoints: The disciplined interdisciplinarity of writing studies. Research in the Teaching of English, 46 (1), 8–21. Belcher, D. D. (2007). Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16 (1), 1–22. Burdell, P., & Swadener, B. B. (1999). Book reviews: Critical personal narrative and autoethnography in education: Reflections on a genre. Educational Researcher, 28( 6), 21–26. Campbell, J. C., Rose, L., Kub, J., & Nedd, D. (1998). Voices of strength and resistance: A contextual and longitudinal analysis of women’s responses to battering. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 13(6), 743–762. Casanave, C. P., & Vandrick, S. (Eds.). (2003). Writing for scholarly publication: Behind the scenes in language education. Routledge. Cummins, J., & Early, M. (2010). Identity texts: The collaborative creation of power in multilingual schools. Trentham Books Ltd. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2004). Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: Negotiating interests, demands, and rewards. TESOL Quarterly, 38(4), 663–688. Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 36–56. Davies, C. A. (2008). Reflexive ethnography: A guide to researching selves and others. Routledge. Duff, P. A. (2007). Second language socialization as sociocultural theory: Insights and issues. Language Teaching, 40 (4), 309–319. Duff, P. A. (2010). Language socialization into academic discourse communities. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 169–192. Duff, P. A., & Bell, J. S. (2002). Narrative research in TESOL: Narrative inquiry: More than just telling stories. TESOL Quarterly, 36 (2), 207–213.

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Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). Sage. Flowerdew, J. (2014). Academic discourse. Routledge. Flowerdew, J. (2019). The linguistic disadvantage of scholars who write in English as an additional language: Myth or reality. Language Teaching, 52(2), 249–260. Habibie, P., & Hyland, K. (Eds.). (2019). Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers. Springer. Hughes, S., Pennington, J. L., & Makris, S. (2012). Translating autoethnography across the AERA standards: Toward understanding autoethnographic scholarship as empirical research. Educational Researcher, 41(6), 209–219. Johnson, M. P. (2007). Domestic violence: The intersection of gender and control. In L. L. O’Toole, J. R. Schiffman, & M. L. K. Edwards (Eds.), Gender violence: Interdisciplinary perspectives (2nd ed., pp. 257–268). New York University Press. Kramsch, C. (2006). From communicative competence to symbolic competence. The Modern Language Journal, 90 (2), 249–252. Kubota, R. (2003). New approaches to gender, class, and race in second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(1), 31–47. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lillis, T. (2008). Ethnography as method, methodology, and “Deep theorizing” closing the gap between text and context in academic writing research. Written Communication, 25 (3), 353–388. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge. Madison, D. S. (2011). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and performance. Sage. Pinar, W. F. (1994). Autobiography, politics, and sexuality. Peter Lang. Rowe, A. C. (2005). Be longing: Toward a feminist politics of relation. NWSA Journal, 17, 15–46. Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed . University of Minnesota Press. Swain, M. (2006). Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. In H. Burns (Ed)., Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky. Continuum.

4 Writing with, Learning from, and Paying Forward Mentorship from Early-Career Scholars: My Scholarly Formation into Academic Writing Matthew R. Deroo

Introduction The China-Eastern Boeing 737 descends through fog and haze on a late-mid November evening in 2011. I am landing at Capitol International Airport in Beijing following a three-day visit to a team of North American English teachers working at a private Chinese university in Harbin, Heilongjiang. At the baggage claim, my phone buzzes with a text message confirming a latenight meeting with Dereck Kent (pseudonym), director of a consulting firm hired to guide the non-profit teaching organization I worked for through a structural reorganization. Tired from travel, and aware that my current position will likely be eliminated, I sit, two hours later, in a florescent-lit conference room, rocking slowly in a leather office chair and attempting to pay attention as Mr. Kent guides me through the organization’s potential M. R. Deroo (B) Department of Teaching and Learning, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_4

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restructuring plans. Towards the conversation’s end, he inquiries about my future plans. I surprise myself with the decisive statement that rolls out of my mouth: “I am leaving the organization a year from now to pursue my PhD.” Researchers are often asked to consider how they “enter the field.” For some, it might mean a cross-cultural move where the individual leaves their passport-holding country to move “abroad.” For me, it was the opposite. I returned to the United States, my country of birth, after ten years living overseas. Specifically, I recognize how my lived experiences in China profoundly shaped my life and are foundational to my language and literacies-based research. In generating this chapter by reflecting on my formation as an early-career scholar, I harken back to that evening, understanding how the situation described above was the nudge I needed to leave China and English language teaching to pursue a long-held desire to become a university lecturer and academic writer. I began my doctoral education in August 2013 as a first-year, firstgeneration PhD student in Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education in the College of Education at Michigan State University (MSU). That is, while I was supported toward college-going, neither my parents nor my grandparents had participated in higher education. A family friend once shared that she thought one day I would write a book. I responded, “I’ll just be happy if one day I write a dissertation.” Navigating a higher degree was new to me, and across my first year of graduate school, my expectations that I would get support to grow as a writer were mostly unmet. My advisor, someone I had identified in my statement of purpose because her research aligned with what I thought I wanted to learn at the time, was away at Oxford on a Fulbright. She sent two emails wishing me happy holidays, but apart from those brief touch-ins unrelated to my academic formation, I was mostly on my own. Coursework shaped my reading in various fields and supported my academic writing to a degree that first year, but as a former leader at a non-profit entity in China heavily invested in mentorship, I knew I had to advocate for more support if I wanted to grow. I sought expertise for how to become a qualitative researcher, a person I believed whose main job was to engage in meaningful theory-building and storytelling, but I was not gaining access to this expertise. Therefore, at the start of my second year, I switched advisors to work with Dr. Alyssa Hadley

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Dunn, who had just secured a job at Michigan State. I sent Alyssa, who encouraged me to address her by first name, an e-mail at the start of our advisor/advisee relationship with the following questions: Apart from the summer research development fellowship I received, I am not currently joining any faculty in their research or other projects. Do I need to position myself so that this happens, or will we have opportunities to make that work? I want to gain experience writing but I am not sure how much is based on one’s active pursuit of said opportunities, and how much is due to natural affinities (i.e.-someone gets a research assistantship to work with a professor?). (M. Deroo, personal communication, September 2, 2014)

My new advisor replied, “these are REALLY important questions; we can definitely talk more about them” (A. Dunn, personal communication, September 5, 2014). In essence, my e-mail was a plea for mentorship into research and academic writing based on felt needs. To guide the work of this chapter, I ask: How did learning with peers and from a more experienced scholar support my own socialization and formation into academic writing and publishing?

Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks This study draws on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of situated learning through “legitimate peripheral participation.” Fittingly, this is one of the first theories of learning I encountered in graduate school in a course taught by Dr. Sandra Crespo, who would serve as an informal mentor and confidant during my first year at MSU in lieu of my advisor, away in the UK. Work by Lave and Wagner centers on building a community of learners and was informed through anthropological work that examined apprenticeship. In short, the theory advances the process in which a new entrant to a workplace or activity gains the knowledge, skills, habits, and dispositions necessary to become a “full participant.”

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Specifically, Wenger (1998) noted that the foundation for “social participation as a process of learning and knowing” is established through “learning as social participation” (p. 4). According to Lave and Wenger (1991), practical knowledge of learning originates within the context of a community of practice. That is, learning takes place through apprenticeship-like relationships with the established members of a community. In the case of my experience, a group of doctoral students (my peers at the time, now Drs. Scott Farver, Amy Gunther, and Lindsay Wexler) meeting with their academic advisor in her office, or through a shared mediated space, such as Google Drive, to focus on the task of scholarly writing. Importantly, this learning is situated and cannot be separated from both the cultural and historical knowledge of the learning participants—in this case, four graduate students and their advisor (Lave, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Furthermore, Lave and Wenger (1991) argued meaningful events, situated within a context, or “legitimate peripherical participation,” allow for multifaceted processing supporting the personal construction of knowledge. While traditional learning occurs through graduate school coursework, the process of becoming an academic writer is often beyond the scope of graduate school seminars. That is, coursework alone does not fully equip one for the demands of academic publishing. Therefore, the theory of peripheral participation is a beneficial lens for my analysis here, for it recognizes how engagement in the practices of one’s community works to support, guide, and clarify the formation of new knowledge based on the combination of previously constructed knowledge, while simultaneously attending to an individuals’ historical and cultural backgrounds. From a critical perspective, Lave and Wenger (1991) further understand that communities of practice, as social entities, must attend to relations of power, including understandings for how experiences of legitimate peripheral participation may lead to “empowering” or “disempowering” (p. 36) experiences. In the context of this chapter, I am grateful to draw upon the ways in which my experiences in Dr. Dunn’s community of practice empowered me as an emerging academic writer. In alignment with the scope of this edited volume, this chapter draws on an autoethnographic approach. As Austin and Hickey (2007) noted, the use of autoethnography supports self-understanding and

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allows the individual to reflect upon socialization processes. Specifically, autoethnography is a powerful means for engaging with issues related to identity and identity formation (Boylorn & Orbe, 2014). Furthermore, because the identities of the researcher, as an academic writer, are continually shifting and subject to ongoing negotiation (Gunasekara, 2007; Norton & Early, 2011), the method: opens us to rethink the possibilities and meanings of human experience because it provides an open and malleable frame in which a person struggles to come to terms with an ever-changing, ever-reconstructed, and reconstituted reality…and the struggle towards self-understanding. (Bochner, 2007, p. 207)

With these methodological considerations in mind, the work of this chapter allowed me to revisit an earlier stage in my life to self-reflect and interrogate questions of identity: “Who was I at the start of this journey? How did my multiple and subjective positions shift across graduate school and how are they shifting now? Moreover, how did power differences shape what I was becoming?”. To engage in the reflective practice needed to do this autoethnographic work, I initially attempted to create a written timeline of memorable movements in my scholarly development as a writer. I wanted to identify between seven and ten instances or moments that resonated in my memories, instances where I knew I was participating in practices that would foster and develop my skills as an academic writer. After plotting points on a timeline to map out my trajectory, I revisited old e-mails from graduate school to confirm dates. A quick keyword search of “Alyssa” and “writing” returned 451 results. I stopped, shocked at the number. Emboldened by the rich history contained within these former e-mails, I systematically re-read the subject field and preview lines for each returned result. I opened a Word document. When a subject line garnered interest, I re-read the e-mail, then cut and pasted snippets of this old correspondence to support my recollections. I ended up with nearly 40 pages of instructive, didactic, reflective, and supportive examples contributing to my growth as a writer. In seeking to center my experiences, now two and a half years out of graduate school, I recognize

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the powerful ways my advisor and peers scaffolded my understandings about academic writing and publishing. Specifically, I see how my desire to understand the inner and outer working of the process has helped me to the position I am at today. That is, in reading and re-reading the questions, concerns, thoughts, musings, and uncertainties I brought before my advisor and her timely, caring, critical, thoughtful, and thoughtprovoking responses, I was able to note patterns and see a trajectory that aligns with the theoretical framing for this chapter. In short, my formation and movement from novice to more confident academic writer was steeped in care and grounded in the paradoxical tensions of love for and exasperation with the craft of writing. Furthermore, in reflecting back, I see how many of my experiences in graduate school mirror many of my current practices. In this chapter, I trace a trajectory across time, beginning in Spring 2015 when Alyssa formed a writing group and research team of doctoral students to support our development through a community of practice to the present. I also reflect upon the ways I leveraged learning from my participation in a community of practice as a graduate student to currently enact the role of a more experienced mentor in support of the academic writing formation of my own doctoral advisees.

Entering a Community of Practice In alignment with my desire to grow as a writer, my advisor intentionally welcomed me to develop writerly skills by asking me to write in collaboration with her and other graduate students, which sometimes meant literally writing alongside her. This was meaningful to me, because even though I had been able to engage in academic writing through a summer research development fellowship, I wrongly believed at that time that there was one right way to engage in academic writing. I wanted to make sure I was doing it correctly, unaware that there was no simple formula to follow that would result in perfection of the craft. In late December 2014, my peers and I received an e-mail from Alyssa asking us to think “about our work together next semester- perhaps around writing development.” She offered a variety of academic writing

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genres (i.e., empirical articles, book reviews) we might explore together. More importantly, to show my peers and me the ups and downs of the process, she reflected on her own “work in progress”: For better or worse, I had two papers rejected last week alone! Ouch! I also got one “revise and resubmit” that I will hopefully resubmit before the [holiday] break is over. It’s that time of year when all of the journals are catching up on their manuscript reviews. I’m pretending it’s like a band-aid, getting all of the bad news over at once! ☺ But, of course, this is part of academic life. (A. Dunn, personal communication, December 23, 2014)

In this moment, my understandings about rejection were expanded. Alyssa normalized the process of rejection for me, even though she noted the painful feelings it provoked for her (“Ouch!”) were still there. This sharing resonated with me because it aligned with a concern I held at the time; how does anything ever make it to press? I had raised this concern over e-mail: What I feel I am doing is student work that won’t really go anywhere or get published. Perhaps this comes on the heels of my American Educational Research Association [conference proposal] rejection, but I just want to really shore up my abilities as a researcher. (M. Deroo, personal communication, November 7, 2014)

Alyssa’s caring response came with an offer for me to send her course papers and a preliminary manuscript draft I had written so she could go through them, provide comments, and meet with me. In allowing me to draw upon her experiences and expertise as a more knowledgeable mentor, I was supported to move my early work toward publication and further enhance my emerging analytical research skills. This offer shaped my learning and expanded my understanding; that academic writing is a collaborative process, and that even behind solo-authored publications are a group of scholars (i.e., peers, reviewers, editors) who support the writing across the process. My entrance into a community of practice started in Spring 2015, as Scott, Amy, Lindsay, and I joined a project Dr. Dunn was developing

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around teacher’s resignation letters, many which were publicly posted on social media accounts and had gone viral (Dunn Deroo et al., 2017; Dunn Farver et al., 2017). What began as an initial group e-mail to the research team with logistical details laid the foundation for shared correspondence. We quickly established a group text chain, a space to raise questions, and offer support across the research to publication process, a practice we continue to this day. Meeting in a College of Education conference room, we sat around a table as Alyssa opened up a shared Google Drive folder containing organized subfolders for data (i.e., teachers resignation letters); consent forms (i.e., signed Institutional Review Board letters); literature (i.e., PDFs on neoliberal framing of schooling), and theory (i.e., PDFs of chapters about agency, participatory democracy). She had also created empty subfolders (i.e., data analysis, researcher memos) that we would populate together. As a more knowledgeable subject, Alyssa used an online community of practice and modeled for us the types of approaches and folders we, as emerging academic writers, could use to manage our own work. Moreover, while I used Google Drive in China for organizational and administrative purposes, I became newly attuned to features and functionalities previously unconsidered. For example, I learned about use of the “suggesting feature” where edits become suggestions, with space for commenting. This approach allowed me to see the efficacy of Google Documents for supporting academic writing, including line by line and even word by word edits that could be used to strengthen arguments, make writing active and agentive. In short, the use of this approach gave me insider knowledge for writerly moves I could make later on my own. During our first formal research team meeting, Alyssa, Scott, Amy, Lindsay, and I read through the corpus of teacher’s resignation letters and discussed how we might use the collected letters for a series of manuscripts. In this moment, through participation in a community of practice with my peers, I learned from Alyssa how a data set could be used for more than one study. This learning was important because, as a second-year student, I wanted to better understand research trajectories and gain insider knowledge for how different lines of inquiry and research could support and sustain an academic career. At this point in time, I was wary of whether I could ever publish enough to gain tenure if

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afforded the opportunity to secure a tenure-earning position. I had only recently learned that if you do not achieve tenure, you are effectively fired from your institution. Therefore, I asked Alyssa to share how she got to the point of guiding us toward sustainable ways forward in academic writing. While I was uncertain if I wanted a writing-intense career as an academic, I knew I needed to be well-equipped should I decide to go that route. Secretly, I nurtured an unspoken desire that I too might engage in a similar apprenticeship with my own doctoral students one day. I was just afraid of the prospect of failure. Following that meeting, our team received a series of documents from Alyssa in response to the query I raised. Alyssa shared candidly, I realized I never knew what [a trajectory] meant exactly or how to do it until I was going on interviews and having to do it for myself. I’m here to make sure you don’t have to do the same and make stuff up on the spot! (A. Dunn, personal communication, February 4, 2015)

Later, she passed on additional resources noting, “I was thinking that I wish I had known these insights about research universities ahead of time” (A. Dunn, personal communication, February 19, 2015). Participation in this apprenticeship resulted in mentor texts and insights regarding how I could frame future lines of inquiry or talk about a research trajectory. I recognize in sharing resources for writing, Alyssa provided artifactual support my peers and I could return to in the future. Ultimately, the provision of resources was done in the hope that we could land pieces in top-tier journals. Through this process, I also came to understand, in Alyssa’s words, how one, “can make a solid argument that you’ve extended and enhanced your research over time” (A. Dunn, personal communication, February 19, 2015), including the use of logic models to advance theory. In her correspondence via e-mail, Alyssa cautioned us about quantity over quality, noting we should seek balance in where and when we published. Along with resources attached to the e-mail, Alyssa shared a manuscript she was working on for a different project. She wrote, “hopefully seeing a draft of #4 will make you feel better about your own work, as you can see that it’s still a bit disorganized

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and in need of editing before submission.” She continued, “I’ll likely ask for your honest feedback on this manuscript or another one!” (A. Dunn, personal communication, February 15, 2019). While Lave and Wenger (1991) would frame Scott, Amy, Lindsay, and I as novices in comparison with Alyssa, she specifically positioned our emerging expertise as valid. Ultimately, she modeled for us, equalizing the power dynamic by opening herself up to our feedback. Perhaps one of the most important factors in my formation as an academic writer was how Alyssa centered her apprenticeship by filling in gaps in her own training. Shortly after sending our research team her “trajectory” materials, Alyssa recounted when she had returned a manuscript with a “revise and resubmit” decision back to the journal without a cover letter addressing her changes. Therefore, Alyssa invited us to join her as she completed a peer review for a blinded manuscript submitted to the academic journal Teaching and Teacher Education. Unsurprisingly, two weeks later, Scott, Amy, Lindsay and I found ourselves seated around a “U” shaped set of tables in front of a 65inch TV with the de-identified manuscript under review projected on the screen. Alyssa was committed to showing us her process and the forms, methods and approaches one could use when reviewing manuscripts for journals. From this experience, I learned the distinction between reviewer comments made to the author and those shared with the editor(s) (i.e., “you can be more frank”). In helping to demystify the review process for us, I gained important learning about the review process. Consistent with her commitments to equalized power dynamics, despite the fact that we were new to the process, Alyssa asked each of us to render our own decision for the piece. We wrote our decisions and rationale on slips of paper, and Alyssa read them out loud. We had cohesion of consensus, and everyone agreed the piece needed major revisions or should be rejected. Collectively, these activities, completed in a community of practice alongside my peers, scaffolded my learning regarding the various skills needed to be socialized into the field of academic writing. Our research team later received a follow-up e-mail stating, “I went to my professors’ writing group this afternoon and was bragging about how brilliant all of you are and how much I love ‘thinking aloud’ together” (A. Dunn, personal communication, February 10, 2015). I remember

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scoffing. I knew it was not in Alyssa’s character to pander to us, but I felt far from brilliant. I recoiled, having a hard time believing she was being honest. However, in reflecting on our community of practice across that semester, I simultaneously recognize how Alyssa continued to position us as not only capable but as essential in strengthening the field of teacher education. Moreover, I learned time and again the importance of having a community of peers, such as Alyssa’s professors’ writing group, to support one in academic writing and publishing. That is why I am grateful that I can still send out a group text or e-mail for emotional support many years later following a difficult rejection after major revisions at a top journal in our field. Better yet, the group quickly helps me identify what feedback I should take up or ignore and gives ideas for where I might send the piece next. Learning across the spring 2015 semester culminated in mid-April at the annual American Educational Research Association [AERA] meeting in Chicago. Alyssa invited the team to attend a sponsored session she organized with other junior scholar colleagues entitled: Cultivating the Writer Inside of You: Planning, Strategizing, and Giving and Taking Feedback. This invitation was a means to learn additional tips and tricks for navigating academic writing. Importantly, Alyssa introduced us to her colleagues to further support our socialization into the academic community at AERA. I recognize from this moment and others, even at times where we were not actively working on a writing project, having a community of practice and a more experienced mentor supported ongoing professional learning.

Expanding Communities of Practice Across New and Broader Fields In reflecting upon how my doctoral education experiences, through participation in a community of practice that led to shared publications with my peers, scaffolded my scholarly publication development as an early-career researcher, I am unable to draw a distinct dividing line. That is, even with my PhD degree in hand, I continue to grow as an academic writer. Although English is my first language, I still grapple

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with the many challenges of the academic publishing process. From a linguistic perspective, this means growing a repertoire of language moves to use in academic writing (As I learned from Alyssa, “here, I argue”; “yet less is understood”). However, despite these moves, I still struggle with register. I want my writing to be accessible, but I also want it to fit the proper conventions for the audience I am addressing. I also find myself perplexed with the many different genres of academic writing (i.e., the recommendation letter, the grant proposal) that one is expected to master without much prior experience or exposure, including genres which cannot be fully covered during graduate school training. To command so many different forms of writing in high stakes, highly competitive environments connected to funding and/or promotion are daunting. Most often, I face resistance in my own will to write. While I write collaboratively with peers or independently three to four days a week, I still want to run away from the challenges I face in building theory and in properly attending to all of the feedback I receive from editors and reviewers. In short, I continuously grapple with the fact that as I continue to gain experience as an academic writer, the process is never really easy. I also wrestle with the malaise that comes with being in and out of different manuscripts each week as I collaborate with co-researchers across disciplines, often at a distance, but connected through a shared Google Document writing synchronously in real time. While I have met initial successes in publishing, especially through collaboration, and established an interdisciplinary line of inquiry contributing to the fields of language, literacy, and social studies teaching and learning, I am still very much in the process of becoming. In the section that follows, I highlight how I have drawn upon the care I received in my own formation to preserve in my own writing and pay forward my learning with my own doctoral advisees. I begin by centering my ability to rebound from rejection. One of the first pieces I wrote, based on data modified from my dissertation, was rejected by three different journals before publication in a fourth (Deroo, 2021). This series of rejections included one instance where the manuscript sat for nearly four months before getting a desk rejection from the editor. Based on the confidence and boldness I gained from Alyssa, who was not afraid to speak truth to power, I advocated for

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myself. I reached out to the editor via e-mail, noting that timely feedback and decisions from journals are essential for early-career scholars on the tenure track. In short, I made it clear that I did not have time to waste in moving pieces forward. The editor apologized profusely for having kept me waiting so long on a desk reject and provided his ideas on areas I could attend to in the manuscript. He encouraged me to resubmit the piece once it was better aligned with the scope and aims of the journal. I attended carefully to his feedback, resubmitted the revised piece to him, and got another desk reject two weeks later. In moving this piece toward publication, I drew upon prior learning to solicit additional feedback from a more senior colleague. I reached out to a mentor from the Writing and Literacies Special Interest Group at AERA, and she provided line by line feedback to my manuscript, raising thoughtful questions to help me strengthen the work. Although it would have been easy to give up on the piece ever getting published, and I was tempted to do so, I remembered Alyssa’s sharing that “every piece can find a home.” In fact, I recalled getting an e-mail from Alyssa during my first year at the University of Miami about persevering. She recounted the four years it took to finally land a piece, across a time when she made a cross-country move, started a new job, and had two children. Her email to me, Scott, Lindsay, and Amy closed with encouragement: “push to keep going and stay hopeful about anything you’re currently working on” (A. Dunn, personal communication, October 9, 2018). I continue to draw upon this admonition, including in my current work as I train doctoral students. A recent co-authored piece has already gotten rejected from two publication houses and was just rejected at a third following major revisions. So we “stay hopeful [and] push to keep going.” Although not part of my training at MSU, in order to normalize rejections, acceptances, and the waiting process in-between, I have taken to Twitter, as a new community of practice, where I tweet about the roller coaster of emotions the academic publishing process evokes for me. I want to join others in the #AcademicTwitter community to further support the demystification of academic publishing. This is especially important to me because, across graduate school, I believed that published articles arrived complete and fully formed. I want to “pull back

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the curtain” and show the messiness, the many revisions, and complications of the process. In short, I hope other early-career scholars, and even those more experienced, feel a sense of solidarity in getting their work out in the world despite the many ups and downs of the process.

Peripheral Participation Comes Full Circle In late spring of 2019, one year after being granted my PhD, and eight years from when I decided to pursue a PhD, Edgar Diaz, a second-year doctoral student and I sit across from one another at a small table in the front of my third-floor office. The moment is comfortably familiar, one similar to what I had experienced with Alyssa at MSU. Natural light from a bank of windows pours into the space, the bright orange blossoms on a Royal Poinciana tree glistening in response to the Miami sun. I now take part in a new community of practice, one where I am the more experienced member. Calling upon the track changes feature in a shared Google document, I work to reposition an argument and model scholarly writing moves for Edgar as we extend an argument drawing from the theory of systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1978). Edgar analyzed three US history textbooks and, in our writing, together, we are working to demonstrate how textbook publishers used word choices to position Latin identity across the texts (Diaz & Deroo, 2020). As we work, I look up and over to Edgar, asking him, “What are you thinking as I‘m doing this?” He responds, “I’m just watching, kind of wondering about the moves you’re making, how you pull it all together.” A broad smile crosses my face. “I used to sit across from my advisor and wonder the same thing. I questioned if I would ever be able to do this. She told each of us to pay it forward, and now I am.” In late summer, our manuscript is returned from the editor of the Theory of Research in Social Education (TRSE) journal. We were asked to do major revisions ahead of potential publication. However, since TRSE uses the term “reject and resubmit,” I assure Edgar this is a very hopeful decision. I specifically encouraged us to push forward, knowing the journal has a low acceptance rate. At this moment, I recount to Edgar how my advisor had erroneously sent a piece back to a journal without

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addressing the changes she made. Then, following the approach modeled for me by Alyssa, I set up a revisions table with editor and reviewers’ feedback. Edgar and I address how we would take up, or not, the critiques of our piece and spend the next twelve weeks, either in my office or over FaceTime, attending to those changes. After we completed a top to bottom re-write of the manuscript, we sent a detailed, fifteen-page cover letter back to the editor. Ahead of publication, we went through one more round of minor revisions. Apart from our shared writing, I followed what was modeled for me by introducing Edgar to members of the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA), the research body for social studies educators. We presented work from our in-progress manuscript at CUFA’s annual conference in Austin, Texas to support Edgar’s socialization into a broader community of practice. Moreover, in further alignment with what Alyssa taught me, I helped Edgar to understand how he could extend his linguistic analysis of the three textbooks into multiple publications across varying lines of inquiry. Edgar has already begun to pay forward this learning through his own, newly formed community of practice with a fellow doctoral student. They are planning to present a paper at the next AERA annual conference as they work to move that manuscript forward toward publication.

Implications Collectively, the autoethnographic work shared here has centered on the collective and collaborative processes that have shaped me as an earlycareer scholar. While solo-authored pieces are one outcome of academic writing, even those pieces are developed in concert with a variety of inputs from more experienced outsiders. Therefore, I am increasingly convinced of the strength of this approach for early-career academic writing development. I realize that my personal trajectory and growth closely aligns with what was modeled for me, but I also firmly believe that I would not have been able to achieve such a high level of earlycareer success without the careful, explicit modeling and increase of responsibility provided to me through apprenticeship.

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Therefore, the reflective work of this chapter holds important implications for what it may mean to support early-career scholars to develop their abilities to become successful academic writers, especially as this relates to communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). While emerging scholars are socialized into academic writing through a variety of means, including those not as favorable as what I experienced, the following recommendations are still productive even if they are not generalizable. First, novice academic writers benefit from participating in communities of practice where they have opportunities to write with their advisors and peers. This includes co-writing simultaneously in shared documents where they can gain knowledge and skills as they witness writing moves unfold in real time. Second, they gain insights through resources that support writing, such as helping them to take part in the peer-review process and through invitations to writing-specific professional development events where they can gain further socialization into broader communities of practice. Third, by centering their expertise and by recognizing the talents of novice academics, even those new to academic writing, power differentials are shifted. Knowledge and learning are mutually co-constructed. Fourth, by explicitly stating and revealing aspects of the hidden curriculum associated with academic writing and publishing, early-career scholars will not be destined to make similar mistakes their mentors had made. Finally, by asking early-career academic writers to pay forward the intentional care and support they receive across their formation, more equitable, just, and supportive practices can be realized where writers are welcomed into the profession, instead of learning through trial and error or by being hazed.

References Austin, J., & Hickey, A. (2007). Autoethnography and teacher development (Doctoral dissertation, Common Ground Publishing). Bochner, A. P. (2007). Notes toward an ethics of memory in autoethnographic inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & M. D. Giardina (Eds.), Ethical futures in qualitative research (pp. 196–208). Left Coast Press.

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Boylorn, R. M., & Orbe, M. P. (2014). Critical autoethnography as a method of choice. In R. M. Boylorn & M. P. Orbe (Eds.), Critical autoethnography: Intersecting cultural identities in everyday life (pp. 13–26). Left Coast Press. Deroo, M. R. (2021). Seeking truth about Muslims? Critical media literacy in an era of Islamaphobia. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 13(3). Diaz, E., & Deroo, M. (2020). Latinx in contention: A systemic functional linguistics analysis of 11th grade U.S. history textbooks. Theory of Research in Social Education, 48 (3), 1–28. Dunn, A. H., Deroo, M., & VanDerHeide, J. (2017). With regret: The genre of teachers’ public resignation letters. Linguistics and Education, 38, 33–43. Dunn, A. H., Farver, S., Guenther, A., & Wexler, L. J. (2017). Activism through attrition? An exploration of viral resignation letters and the teachers who wrote them. Teaching and Teacher Education, 64, 280–290. Gunasekara, C. (2007). Pivoting the centre: Reflections on undertaking qualitative interviewing in academia. Qualitative Research, 7 (4), 461–475. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. University Park Press. Lave, J. (1996). Teaching, as learning, in practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3(3), 149–164. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Norton, B., & Early, M. (2011). Researcher identity, narrative inquiry, and language teaching research. TESOL Quarterly, 45 (3), 415–439. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.

5 Misguided Allegiances, Misjudged Weaknesses, and Mixed Messages in Peer Review Oliver Shaw

Introduction When I began this autoethnographic examination of my experiences as an early-career researcher in August of 2019, I could not have imagined the extent to which the upcoming academic year would go awry, both globally and for me personally. Now, with the summer of 2020 in full swing and amidst ongoing uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic, here I look back upon an unfortunate experience with peer review in which a paper initially believed by the reviewers to hold promise for publication was swiftly rejected. The paper drew on the findings of my doctoral research obtained using a modified version of the text histories approach (Lillis & Curry, 2006, 2010), an analytical tool that examines the evolution of academic O. Shaw (B) Health Research Institute-Fundación Jiménez Díaz, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_5

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texts and the many factors and agents who intervene in the production of published research. For the overall study, ten of my institutional colleagues provided me, the in-house editor, with a range of written materials related to a single research article they had submitted to a peerreviewed journal; nine of these authors had previously sent a draft or drafts to me for editing. Swales (1990, 2004) move-step analyses were used to describe the texts’ most salient rhetorical traits and map their evolution over time. Observations reached during this textual analysis were then discussed during author interviews aiming to elicit insider accounts on the authors’ writing practices, the beliefs and lived experiences that informed their approach to writing, and whether the authors welcomed or challenged input from non-authors, including language brokers (Lillis & Curry, 2006) such as myself. In studying processes in which I had taken part, my doctoral research set up a space in which informants were free to evaluate my contributions to their publication efforts. This, however, created a complex set of interpersonal dynamics within the interview setting, as any views expressed during the interview could inform my ongoing relationship with the authors outside of the study context. Cognizant of the potential implications of this dual role of analyst and object of analysis, the paper I wrote focused on the social relationships enacted in interview discourse using politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1978,1987) to contextualize the statements discursively. It contained two sections of data: one in which I revisited moments of interviews in which the informants and I discussed whether to hold the interview in their native language (Spanish) or mine (English), and another in which the informants offered explicit assessments of my role in their publication efforts. Together, I believed, these moments could reveal how the informants and I oriented to each other as individuals, colleagues, and collaborators. The paper was mostly well-received by both reviewers in the first round of peer review, and both explicitly stated that the paper would be publishable if I could revise the text appropriately. To my dismay, however, my revised version was rejected by the journal in the second round of peer review. As I will detail below, my great disappointment was amplified by my belief that I had engaged with the reviewers’ feedback earnestly, as I had comprehensively revised the text following the

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recommendations of one reviewer instead of basing my revision on the more minor modifications requested by the other. Using self-reflective autoethnography (Canagarajah, 2012) as my method of inquiry, in this chapter, I base my analysis on a reflective research diary I maintained from August 2019 to June 2020. Entries to this diary, which I wrote for the purposes of this study, evidence how I inhabited the novice researcher’s “state of mind” (Anderson & Glass-Coffin, 2013). As a second data source, I reviewed the emails I exchanged with academic peers and near-peers to vent frustration and seek guidance. Though previous studies employing autoethnographic methods (Wolfenden et al., 2019) have productively interrogated textual evidence from submitted manuscripts when analyzing negotiations between authors and gatekeepers, in this study, I limit my focus to the occluded genres (Swales, 1996) of author-editor correspondence, reviewer reports, and point-by-point replies. Where relevant, written correspondence with journal gatekeepers is provided. This methodology has enabled me to explore my actions and reactions when drafting and revising the paper, allowing me to identify areas of improvement for future publication attempts. Taking legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as my theoretical framework, I explore the opportunities for community participation afforded and denied by this experience and the implications that these events have for my evolving place in the community. An aspiring “pracademic” (Posner, 2009) with years of exposure to peer review through the texts I edit professionally, I chose to navigate the writing and revision process mostly independently, and took few measures to counter my geographical separation from other community members who could have guided me through the process. My analysis reveals that I am a competent academic writer, although on this occasion, my reluctance to take an authoritative stance in peer review and my failure to seek guidance when interpreting reviewer reports may have diminished my chances of succeeding.

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Professional and Academic History An Aspiring Pracademic “Is academic research a good fit for me?” I’ve pondered this question countless times since late 2017, when I completed my PhD in English studies. Going into my doctorate, I was aware that earning a PhD would have little or no immediate impact on my professional circumstances, though I had—and continue to have—reason to be grateful. Regardless of my academic achievements, I would continue as an in-house editor and translator of research texts at the Spanish health-research institute, where I have enjoyed a respectable standard of living and job stability since 2009. As the sole provider of this service, over time I have developed a considerable understanding of research texts and the social and private concerns encoded in authors’ academic writing. While my interaction with some authors is merely transactional, with others, I have built relationships that transcend the professional: of their own volition, these colleagues provide me with periodic updates on how past manuscripts have fared or how ongoing writing projects are progressing, often volunteering personal accounts of their motivations, successes, and failures in the process. Given that my services come at no cost to authors and require no administrative procedures, my professional role has enabled me to accumulate experience over time while shielding me from the market pressures faced by my freelance colleagues, whose livelihood often depends on their ability to produce satisfactory results and secure a continued source of income. I had pursued a doctorate mostly to transfer research-driven expertise on editing and writing to my own setting and earn the credentials necessary to transition to university-level teaching in some capacity, however limited. Though drawn to higher education, my current age (43), my life circumstances, and the comforts of my current role have discouraged me from pursuing a full-time career as an academic. To forsake stable employment for a chance at a scholarly career may lead to years of precarious work conditions and significantly reduced income as I build up my qualifications, with no guarantee that my efforts would bear fruit. As I neared the completion of my PhD, however, I began to value the

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data I had gathered and was encouraged by the many ways my thesis evaluators believed I could continue to work with it. Since that time, I have held on to the idea that my research could make valuable contributions on multilingual writing for publication, particularly because of the sensitivities and real-world experience I bring to the table. However, publishing has proven to be an arduous task, and many times I have wondered whether my efforts to become a better editor would be more effective if I undertook projects that are more immediately relevant to my day-to-day professional concerns, such as learning more about statistical methods or mastering the tools and other resources used by language service providers. Additionally, the completion of my doctoral studies marked the culmination of a fruitful and supportive academic apprenticeship with my thesis supervisor at a university in another Spanish city, and now if I am to launch my career in academia, it must be from a greater geographic and social remove from the support that she and her collaborators gave me as a student. In addition, I am inexperienced at publishing my own research, as most of my efforts as a doctoral student were focused on writing the thesis. During my formal education, I produced only one peer-reviewed article and one book chapter, the former based on preliminary findings from my thesis and the latter a co-authored study of editing practices that is not directly related to my thesis.1 Since completing my PhD in 2017, my conference attendance has slowed and I have not published since. Despite the disappointment I felt at my failure to reach my research goals in the period between late 2017 and the summer of 2019, this study begins at a time in which I had resolved to try my hand at research and ends with a failed first attempt.

1 Interestingly, both of these publication opportunities emerged during the 3rd PRISEAL Conference in Coimbra (Portugal), which on this occasion was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of Mediterranean Editors and Translators (MET), an association of translators, editors, and other language professionals working with or into English, many of whom support multilingual academics in their publication efforts.

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Theoretical Framework The theoretical construct of LPP (Lave & Wenger, 1991) views all learning as an induction of the learner into a new sociocultural group. Under this social theory of learning, learners are conceptualized as newcomers to a community of practice (CoP), and their goal is to develop an identity of mastery over the activities in which fellow community members engage. To do this, initiates to the CoP are engaged in master-apprentice relationships which provide learners with opportunities to learn by performing tasks of increasing complexity. In the case of academic study, such milestones may include completion of undergraduate study, the master’s thesis, or the doctoral thesis. The period examined here can be conceived of as a process of LPP if we see my history and initial efforts to publish as stages of academic apprenticeship (Eckstein, 2019; Flowerdew, 2000). Beyond this, certain factors specific to my career path and scholarly pursuits resonate well with LPP, beginning with my pre-existing membership in the CoP of academic editors and translators; indeed, previous research (Lee & Roth, 2003) has framed induction processes in overlapping communities as potential sites of identity struggle. Secondly, my employment as an editor of academic texts afforded me an earlier apprenticeship, during which time I acquired skills related to publishing (Willey & Tanimoto, 2013) without publishing much myself. Thirdly, in contrast to my doctoral work, during which I developed under the personal guidance and feedback of my supervisor, my attempt to publish independently resulted in a number of written exchanges with full CoP members, which, if examined closely, may serve as a stand-in for more personal mentor-novice interactions from earlier in my career (Eckstein, 2019).

Irreconcilable Reviewer Feedback In the first round of peer review, both reviewers believed my paper would be appropriate for the journal if I could revise the text appropriately. Reviewer 1 (R1) remarked that my research added “an interesting perspective on the subject,” calling it “well placed” in the journal and

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“publishable.” Reviewer 2 (R2) found it “well within the scope of the journal” in that it drew on pertinent data from valuable sources, a point seconded by R1. In their view, my observations were mostly convincing and analyzed reflexively, and the reviewers commended the quality of my writing. These were welcome remarks, as they allayed the concerns I had noted in my journal as to the quality of my writing: Since I committed myself to finishing this paper by the end of the month, I have felt more insecure when writing (…). As the sentences appear on the screen, I am filled with a sense of worry that they are nonsense or poor or unoriginal. I have felt this most acutely when trying to get the paper written, though I also had this sense when I wrote a tweet just now.

In revising, I decided to follow the advice of one reviewer, who I believed to be more benevolent but who also encouraged me to revise my paper comprehensively. This misguided decision was partially motivated by my hope that in choosing the more difficult path, I would make both gatekeepers see my willingness to engage with them and thus earn the opportunity to work with the text until it was published. In the end, this strategy failed, leaving me with feelings of betrayed trust and heightening the demoralizing effect of rejection. In the following sections, I will begin with an analysis of this underlying miscalculation and then go on to describe two related dilemmas which stemmed from the irreconcilability of the two peer reviews sent by the journal; for each, I will describe how I handled the situation and the outcome of my actions.

Problem 1: Misplaced Allegiances and My Search for Guidance The reviewers expressed contrasting views on how I could realize the paper’s potential—a common source of frustration in early-career researchers (Fazel, 2019). R1’s report seemed to indicate that the text’s two major flaws could be resolved by updating my analysis with more recent contributions to politeness theory and by adding a Discussion section in which I could draw connections between my findings and previous research. R2, on the other hand, saw a mismatch between the

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two sections of data (negotiating interview language and author views of language brokering) and believed that only the former lent itself to analysis using politeness theory. To remedy this, R2 encouraged me to either fashion two articles out of my originally submitted manuscript or improve the focus of the article by spelling out my contributions to the field. If I were to opt for a more radical revision, R2 suggested reworking my data and analysis to detail some of the challenges of using text-based interviews as methodology, a part of which would include the issue of selecting the appropriate interview language (i.e. English or Spanish). As an alternative, the reviewer envisioned a more narrowly focused paper on the politeness negotiations surrounding language choice when interviewing multilingual participants. As for a potential topical paper, R2 argued that I should recast data on authors’ views of language brokers as part of an analysis of these agents’ contributions to the overall phenomenon. Rather than prioritizing the recommendations of the more positive reviewer (Eckstein, 2019), I was inclined to adhere more closely to R2’s suggestions, as they were more carefully rendered and, perhaps more importantly, could lead to two publications rather than one. In succumbing to the temptation of more output, however, I disregarded the fact that as a pracademic, I am mostly immune to publication pressure and, as such, am free to publish as much or as little as I want. I decided to rewrite the paper focusing on negotiations surrounding interview language as suggested. Interpreting contrasting reviews using shared points of criticism (Kamler, 2010) reveals two interconnected flaws: an outdated theoretical framework and a weak connection between my data, how I analyzed it, and how these conclusions could be relevant to work on multilingual academic writing in English. Attempted publications by other earlycareer scholars (Belcher, 1994; Kamler, 2010; Mur-Dueñas, 2019) have received similar criticism. Comments like these resonate with doubts I have concerning the applicability of my research to my daily work. Worried that I lacked a convincing message, I spent an inordinate amount of time writing the introduction rather than my analysis, as I journaled prior to the original submission:

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I’ve hesitated to write up the results. Hesitated a lot. I think that I am more comfortable talking about other people’s work than my own, which is why I have dragged my feet so much. This is a curious contradiction, though, as the results are the meat of any scholarly text, right? Some say that they write the results—or even their tables/graphs—first and then write the rest of the paper around that. Not me.

This passage and the self-concept behind it are evidence of the difference between what Lave and Wenger refer to as “talking about” and “talking within” the community (1991, p. 109), that is, the degree of expertise that separates more peripheral members from those who can advance claims and move the community forward. Before continuing, I wish to argue that assuming ownership of my failure does not invalidate the critique of other aspects in the peer-review process. In offering this account of how I ended up writing two papers rather than one, and to no avail, I make no claim that the outcome is attributable to the gatekeepers or the journal. I nonetheless feel that I could have been spared the ordeal. In the following section, I will recount some of the thorny issues that I encountered in revising my manuscript and the measures I took to simultaneously heed R2’s advice to produce a more narrowly focused article on interview-language negotiations while appeasing R1.

Problem 2: Theory as Achilles’ Heel Having digested the first round of peer review, I was most concerned by the reviewers’ suggestion to update the body of theoretical work I had used, as I had no exposure to this more recent scholarship and feared that I would be unable to familiarize myself with this literature, rework my analysis, and write up my conclusions before my deadline. In prioritizing theory, however, I lost sight of the fact that theory is only useful inasmuch as it can be used to connect research findings to disciplinary discussions. To my dismay, the journal rejected my revised submission, a decision that the editor informed me had been based on a lack of “a clear [disciplinary] focus.” This assessment, together with the lower prominence of theory in the reviewers’ justification for their decision in round

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two of peer review, suggests that I had mistakenly prioritized the learning of theory over its application. The structure and wording used by R1 in the first round of peer review lend themselves to misinterpretation, as the report seemed to background certain issues that would later be viewed as major flaws on second evaluation while prioritizing other concerns that appear to have had little impact on the reviewer’s final assessment of my paper. (The first such area of confusion, the issue of theory, is the focus of this section, and in the following section, I will revisit the ethical concerns expressed by this reviewer, which also led me to misread their primary points of critique.) The first report by R1 contains a single paragraph of running text followed by a list of ten “detailed comments”; based on this wording, I understood that the core points of critique would appear in the opening paragraph and that the numbered list expanded on the items in the running text and commented upon more minor areas of improvement. For instance, in the opening paragraph, the reviewer stressed that the article needed to be “much more based in current [theoretical] work.” The reviewer’s second area of focus in the first paragraph was the absence of a Discussion section, a space in which I was expected to compare my findings against existing literature. The numbered list made reference to issues with vastly different degrees of importance, including two typos, a lack of evidence to substantiate background claims, the need for a deeper explanation of one of the analytical tools used, the absence of transcription conventions, inconsistency between the paper’s title and its contents and, once again, the need to include a Discussion section. Though there are a number of points that I do not contest, it is clear that there is a great difference in importance between fixing a typo and adding an entire section to a research paper. I therefore understood my most challenging tasks to be those in the opening paragraph, that is, to understand and apply these more recent theoretical approaches and then to analyze my data through these perspectives, with particular focus on the ways this analysis contributed to the scholarly community. My worry over whether I would have time enough to familiarize myself with this literature and then complete all the other steps involved soon turned to panic, as I assumed I would have to devote an enormous amount of time to the revision process while honoring the various

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commitments I had at the time. Additionally, as a researcher with no direct university affiliation, I had limited access to libraries and digital resources, a key non-discursive challenge that early-career scholars, especially off-network ones, may face (Adamson et al., 2019; Lillis & Curry, 2010). As my worry turned into despair, I wrote the following email to a colleague: We’ll have much to discuss in Madrid in a few weeks’ time. Right now I have a case of the revise and resubmit blues, as the reviewers—one of whom with utmost care, clarity, and concern—have recommended a near wholesale revamping of my article, meaning I only get 2 months to read 3–4 books, several articles, and then rework my entire analysis. This comes at a terrible time for me, as I am teaching [my class] until December 12. Bother.

Despite this circumstance, I focused my efforts on a thorough study of theory. As I came to realize that this was occupying most of my time, I began to doubt myself and considered withdrawing the text from consideration or requesting an extension. I eventually asked for a five-week extension, which the editor kindly granted. My efforts to improve my theoretical grounding failed to impress the reviewers. R1 recognized the improvement I had made in my theoretical grounding but complained that I had crafted a paper that no longer was relevant to the journal’s areas of interest. R2, on the other hand, remarked that the updated section applying theory had once again failed to “[make] explicit how the theories as described relate to the data and [the topic]” and went on to stress that the implications for my research had only been cursorily developed and discussed. From these brief evaluations, it appears that R1 found fault with the revised focus of my manuscript, which they believed no longer fit within the journal’s scope, while R2 argued that I had failed to isolate the methodologically novel points made in the previous version and analyze them in a way that would be relevant. The discrepancy in criteria between the two could have been remedied by closer communication between the editor and me, and I believe that this is one of the primary failures of this opportunity for LPP.

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The editor offered no guidance on how to interpret the reviewers’ texts despite the sharply contrasting advice they contained. Rather, the editor commented that both reviewers offered feedback that would be of value to me as I revised the paper, which I took as a recommendation to some way reconcile the two in my revised submission. Previous publications analyzing researcher experiences with peer review (Adamson et al., 2019; Kamler, 2010) illustrate the added burden shouldered by authors when editors do not mediate in cases of mixed messages such as this one, and I believe that I would have felt considerably more confident in revising the paper if the editor had weighed in. Unaware that authors can query editors in predicaments like these, I assumed that novice researchers like myself must plan their course of action based entirely on the gatekeeper feedback given to them, with no recourse to editorial guidance. Had I been more proactive in digesting these evaluations by seeking the advice of seasoned members of the CoP, I may have successfully queried the editor and received a helpful response, possibly increasing my chances of publishing my work. My experience with this opportunity for LPP suggests that I should also be more thorough in evaluating the literature before settling on a theoretical approach so that in future experiences, I may engage with reviewers from a more authoritative position. More importantly, however, I would be well-served to revisit literature to examine the ways in which researchers construct strong, relevant links between theory and empirical data.

Problem 3: Misleading Feedback and a Textual Balancing Act R1’s feedback during the first round of peer review contained a question concerning the measures I had taken to protect the participants in my study from unethical practices. As described in the previous section, the positioning of this request, in which the reviewer encouraged me to “explain how [I] dealt with the ethics side of the project where the interviewees were in a dependent relationship with the researcher,” seemed to signal that this was a minor issue, though I had no qualms with providing

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this explanation, as it appeared to be a legitimate concern. In their feedback, R2 also remarked on the implications of the dual role described previously. Unlike the other reviewer, R2 made no mention of the ethicality of my research or the supposed position of dependence that my participants held in the study setting, a position which I assume R1 believed I could have unethically exploited for my interests. Given the phrasing and positioning of the original comment on ethical considerations by R1 and the complete absence of such concerns on the part of R2, and reassured of the ethical appropriateness of my study, which had been evaluated favorably by four disciplinary experts as part of my doctoral studies, the comment made by this reviewer in their final report is troubling, as it shows how I only learned of the standards against which my paper would be evaluated after the fact. This reviewer’s final comments read as follows: (…) the author didn’t really answer my ethics question. It appears there was no institutional approval given for the project which was my key concern. The biomedical research institute where the study was conducted must have formal ethics procedures so I am surprised that institutional permission wasn’t sought (and given) for the project. Many academic journals would not accept the paper for publication for this reason.

It remains unclear to me at what point during peer review the reservations of this gatekeeper went from the aforementioned request to “explain how [I] dealt with the ethics side” to a supposed failure to answer their “question.” More importantly, the view that the lack of institutional approval for my research would disqualify it from publication in “many academic journals” casts doubt on my prospects for publishing research stemming from this project in any peer-reviewed journal. Further adding to my confusion is the following catch-22: after arguing against the appropriateness of my manuscript for the journal, the reviewer then suggests two alternative, first-quartile journals as being better suited for my submission, which begs the question of whether this issue of ethical approval would be a sine qua non for these journals as well.

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My perplexity at this apparently major area of criticism can only be understood with a brief explanation of the events that led up to this statement and a summary of the nature of my point-by-point response to the two reviewers, which I had to write twice. As indicated previously, an important part of my work in revising the paper was to expand my description of the measures I had taken to safeguard ethicality. Sensing an overlap between the ethical concerns of R1 and the role-shifting that R2 believed had implications for my analytical focus, I decided to address these two issues in a single section, which I added to the article. In this section, I gave a detailed account of my role as an employee of the institution, my evolving relationship with author clients, how authors with whom I had developed a relationship over time made them better candidates for my study, as well as the measures I had taken to ensure anonymity and the voluntary nature of my project. In the accompanying point-by-point reply, I informed R1 of this added detail, calling it “a comprehensive treatment of the interplay between my institutional role and the research undertaken here.” Some five weeks after I sent the journal a revised version of my manuscript and a carefully worded point-by-point response in which I informed R2 that I had taken up their suggestions nearly to the letter and explained to R1 that in reworking my paper, many of their previous comments had become irrelevant, the journal editor informed me that “one of the reviewers” found they could not evaluate the second version of my manuscript until I “responded to their detailed comments” and that my prior explanation in which I indicated that I had substantially revised the paper had failed to address their concerns specifically. Unaware of which reviewer had voiced these reservations, I revised my previous point-by-point reply to both. With regard to the issue of ethics, the revised reply outlined the contents of the new section and explained how my embeddedness in the institution favored mutually beneficial relationships between my informants and me, and that these relationships rested on professional camaraderie and support for academic inquiry. Both reviewers reacted negatively to this attempt to incorporate their feedback in particular, and to my revised text as a whole. R2 believed the newly added section to be one of several “digressions away from what

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is now the main focus (…) without spelling out the relevance of this to the topic.” Written more perfunctorily than the first, the feedback report from R1 showed that they had also soured on my submission, at least in part due to the sweeping changes I had made. Apparently in reference to the query I had received from the editor, the reviewer complained that I had evaded their question in my point-by-point response. R1’s lack of transparency in probing my research methods limited my chances to capitalize on this instance of LPP to its fullest. The structure and wording of the first report hinted that ethics were of minor importance, though in the second round, the reviewer seemed eager to foreground this matter as justification for their recommendation to reject. Further complicating this matter, the editor did not indicate which of the two reviewers believed my point-by-point response to have been insufficient, leading to additional time wasted on redrafting my point-by-point reply to both. Again, had I taken the initiative to ask that the editor specify which reviewer believed my rebuttal to be incomplete, the eventual rejection would have been less discouraging. Lastly, the lack of consensus around ethics between those who evaluated my thesis and R2 on the one hand, and R1 on the other, suggests a division in the CoP, and this absence of clear standards further complicated my efforts to achieve mastery on this occasion.

Conclusions Regardless of the outcome of my publication attempt, this autoethnographic exercise has provided me with an opportunity to evaluate my performance as an academic writer and to explore the dynamics of peer review as both an observer as well as a stakeholder. I have identified certain strengths and weaknesses in my writing, revising, and resubmitting and have recognized the importance of strong arguments linking study data and analysis to ongoing disciplinary discussions. My data also suggests that my geographic and cultural remoteness from the university setting and, by extension, from other members of the discourse community hampered my efforts to access bibliographic resources and may have deprived me of the emotional support that comes with close

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personal contact with like-minded peers. Lastly, my account of this experience reveals some of the ways in which communication may break down between evaluators and the evaluated, particularly when novice researchers like myself do not challenge their own assumptions about the process. It is my hope that these lessons will lead to continued investigation into the challenges facing early-career academics and inform the practices of other aspiring (pr)academics, their mentors, and academic gatekeepers.

References Adamson, J., Stewart, A., Smith, C., Lander, B., Fujimoto-Adamson, N., Martinez, J., & Masuda, M. (2019). Exploring the publication practices of Japan-based EFL scholars through collaborative autoethnography. English Scholars beyond Borders, 5 (1), 3–31. Anderson, L., & Glass-Coffin, B. (2013). I learn by going: Autoethnographic modes of inquiry. In S. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 57–83). Left Coast Press. Belcher, D. (1994). The apprenticeship approach to advanced academic literacy: Graduate students and their mentors. English for Specific Purposes, 13(1), 23–34. Brown, P., Levinson, S. C., & (1978 [1987]). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (2012). Autoethnography in the study of multilingual writers. In L. Nickoson & M. P. Sheridan (Eds.), Writing studies research in practice: Methods and methodologies (pp. 113–124). Southern Illinois University Press. Eckstein, G. (2019). Excessive peer review and the death of an academic article. In T. Ruecker & V. Svihla (Eds.), Navigating challenges in qualitative educational research (pp. 167–179). Routledge. Fazel, I. (2019). Writing for publication as a native speaker: The experiences of two Anglophone Novice scholars. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 79–95). Palgrave.

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Flowerdew, J. (2000). Discourse community, legitimate peripheral participation and the nonnative-English-speaking scholar. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (1), 127– 150. Kamler, B. (2010). Revise and resumbit: The role of publication brokers. In C. Aitchison, B. Kamler, & A. Lee (Eds.), Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond (pp. 64–82). Routledge. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lee, S., & Roth, W.-M. (2003). Becoming and belonging: Learning qualitative research through legitimate peripheral participation. Paper presented at the Forum qualitative Sozialforschung/forum: Qualitative social research. Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2006). Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars: Interactions with literacy brokers in the production of English-medium texts. Written Communication, 23(1), 3–35. Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context : The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge. Mur-Dueñas, P. (2019). The experience of a NNES outer circle novice scholar in scholarly publication. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 97–115). Palgrave. Posner, P. L. (2009). The pracademic: An agenda for re-engaging practitioners and academics. Public Budgeting & Finance, 29 (1), 12–26. Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. M. (1996). Occluded genres in the academy: The case of the submission letter. In E. Ventola & A. Mauranen (Eds.), Academic writing: Intercultural and textual issues (pp. 45–58). John Benjamins. Swales, J. M. (2004). Research genres: Explorations and applications. Cambridge University Press. Willey, I., & Tanimoto, K. (2013). “Convenience editors” as legitimate participants in the practice of scientific editing: An interview study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(1), 23–32. Wolfenden, H., Sercombe, H., & Tucker, P. (2019). Making practice publishable: What practice academics need to do to get their work published, and what that tells us about the theory-practice gap. Social Epistemology, 33(6), 555–573.

6 Pulling Yourself Up by the Bootstraps: An Insider’s Perspective on Learning How to Publish in the Iranian Higher Education Context Hesamoddin Shahriari

Introduction I am a corpus linguist and a quantitative researcher by training. I have spent years of my academic career building corpora, generating tables with type and token counts, and not to mention relying on statistical analyses for any form of interpretation. What little qualitative research I have carried out involves distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews mostly to complement, or in some cases triangulate, the quantitative findings of my research. Therefore, you can imagine my hesitation when being offered the opportunity to contribute an autoethnographic account of my experience as an emerging researcher. Abandoning objectivity, which had always been a cornerstone of my epistemological outlook, for the sake of proximity (Conquergood, 2002) was a challenge. Nevertheless, considering my interest in the field of H. Shahriari (B) School of Advancement, Centennial College, Toronto, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_6

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English for Academic Purposes and English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP), I decided to move out of my comfort zone and provide an autoethnographic account of my academic journey and publication history as a graduate student and faculty member in an Iranian university. In this chapter, I intend to provide readers with a detailed account of my own experiences as I slowly and quite painstakingly learned the ropes and found my way in the world of academic writing and publication. Through this, I hope to provide a glimpse into the world of a novice scholar situated at the perimeter of the outer circle’s eccentric orbit. I also wish to reflect on the socio-cultural variables that underlie my motivation to continue publishing my research findings despite all of the hurdles I have been facing through the years. While some autoethnographers prefer not to include research questions, either because these are unknown at the outset of their projects or because they believe posing questions in advance will cause a disruption in the flow of their narrative (Adams et al., 2015), I will attempt to outline the main aims of my chapter here. I will begin by describing my own learning experience, including my language learning background as someone who learned English in an English-speaking country but completed higher education in Iran, and the types of instruction and training I received as a graduate student at Iran University of Science and Technology and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. I will then provide a description of my own personal experience teaching academic writing to graduate students at my alma mater and how this practice was impacted by the challenges I had previously encountered. Finally, I will focus on the strategies and solutions I came to use in order to overcome the challenges I encountered and my sources of motivation for soldiering on in spite of all the obstacles I faced both as a graduate student and later as a faculty member. I should point out that what you are about to read is a chronicling of my personal experiences and might not reflect those of other graduate students and faculty members. However, I hope that my narrative will provide readers with a nuanced, specific and personal insight into the meandering path towards initiation and recognition as an emerging researcher.

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Methodological Framework and Theoretical Perspective As a form of narrative research, autoethnography aims to present a wellrounded and meaningful story that provides a means of understanding and making sense of the world around us (Trahar, 2009). Autoethnography is an effective way to connect empirical knowledge with personal knowledge that is rooted in a thick description of intimate, personal and participatory experience (Conquergood, 2002). Even though numerous criticisms have been leveled at this approach (see Roth, 2009), it can be an effective tool for critiquing established ways of thinking and exposing the dynamics of power relations (Denshire, 2014; Young, 2008), especially when composed by an insider who is well-versed in the theoretical foundations of the subject matter. There are two broad strains of autoethnography: analytic and evocative. The former refers to a brand in which the researcher is an insider participant and makes use of reflexivity, coupled with the views of other participants, to shed light on broader analytic issues (Anderson, 2006). Evocative autoethnography, on the other hand, brings personal narratives to the forefront and uses literary techniques and evocative stories to expose the researchers’ vulnerabilities and emotions (Ellis, 1999). For his chapter, I have adopted the analytical approach to autoethnography as I believe it is better suited to the aims of the chapter and allows me to shed light on my experiences by drawing on theories that could possibly help explain them. For this, I will specifically draw on Kachru’s (1992) classification of inner-circle vs. outer-circle countries and will analyze my experiences through the lens of what it means to be part of an outer-circle community of academics. In his discussion of World Englishes, Kachru (1985) drew a distinction between inner-circle, expanding-circle and outer-circle countries. The Innercircle refers to countries that are the traditional bases of English, where the language is spoken as a native language. Expanding circle nations, such as Pakistan and Hong-Kong, are those in which English has been established throughout their history of colonialism. In outer-circle countries, English is spoken as a foreign language and is rarely used outside the academic or educational setting. It has been

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argued that scholars from outer-circle countries face additional difficulties when going through the already cumbersome process of publication, largely due to the challenge of overcoming the language barrier. Due to its socio-political isolation, I would argue that Iran is an outer-circle country among other outer-circle countries, which is why it is important to recognize the unique struggles faced by Iranian researchers. I will also be drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984, 1988) socio-cultural analysis framework to interpret my experiences in terms of the motivational elements underlying my efforts. Bourdieu (1984, 1988) examined academic identity through the lens of economic, social and cultural factors claiming that the behavior and status of a disciplinary group depends largely on the type of capital to which they lay claim. The concept of habitus lies at the center of Bourdieu’s framework and it refers to a system of dispositions guiding individual’s choices and attitudes and shaping their preferences, ideals and overall ways of being (Bourdieu, 1984). According to this theory, it is the environment and people living in similar life conditions that socialize an individual, steering them towards developing a similar habitus and thus adopting similar lifestyles. In other words, people’s preferences and behavior tend to become structured based on their position in social space defined by the amount and composition of social, economic and cultural capital. Those who possess similar amounts and compositions of these three forms of capital tend to be closer in social space. Bourdieu’s framework can be effective when retroactively reviewing decisions and analyzing motivational elements as it can help one better comprehend the practical logic behind events in a reflexive way.

Early Accumulation of Capital I would like to begin by explaining about my language learning background. While I completed part of my secondary—and all of my higher education in Iran, I had the opportunity to learn English growing up in an English-speaking country, and this set me apart from most of my peers. However, as described below, I still had many language barriers to overcome while navigating the publication process. Born in Mashhad ,

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a metropolitan city located in the north-eastern province of Khorasan Razavi, Iran, I grew up as a monolingual Farsi speaker. At eight years old, I moved to Adelaide, South Australia, where my father studied for a PhD at the University of Adelaide. There, I began learning English through attending grade three primary school with local children and simultaneously taking part in supplementary ESL classes. Thanks to the exposure I received at school and the inordinate number of hours spent watching television programs in English, within a period of eight months, I began speaking English fluently and no longer needed to take part in ESL classes. Upon returning to Iran and completing my high school studies there, I was admitted to the undergraduate program in English literature at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) and then later went on to complete my master’s and PhD in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) and FUM, respectively. Unlike many other university programs in Iran, these degrees were offered in English, meaning all instructions, evaluations and assignments were in English. Prior to entering university, while proficient in colloquial English, my academic literacy, such as my academic lexicon, reading and writing skills were relatively subpar, and this is where I urgently needed to improve. I have always been aware of the cultural capital I gained from my early years of education in an English-speaking country. This opportunity put me in a position of advantage relative to many of my colleagues who had to deal with language issues in addition to other challenges faced by scholars working in the outer-circle setting.

Developing Academic Skills in the Outer-Circle My first encounter with academic writing was during my first semester as a master’s student at IUST. I was taking a course on research methodology with an eminent and widely respected scholar in Iran’s Applied Linguistics sphere, who had mentored two generations of TEFL students and applied linguists, and to this day, is regarded by many as the father of applied linguistics in Iran. As one of the first assignments that semester, we were asked to write a brief literature review on a topic of our choosing.

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I had always prided myself on my grammatical accuracy and flexible use of language, so I was particularly surprised to receive a below-average grade on this assignment. This was a huge wake-up call and an alarm signaling something was wrong. Looking back, this was my first realization that there is more to writing than mere mechanics, grammar, lexical flexibility and logical organization of ideas. In other words, though serving me well up to that point in time, the cultural capital I had gained during my early years was insufficient for the tasks that lay ahead. In fact, this particular episode opened my eyes to the importance of improving my academic soft skills in addition to social/professional—and disciplinary competence, among others. My next big challenge was to write my master’s thesis. Although by the end of the two-year period, we had been introduced to some of the standards of academic writing, having to compose a complete master’s thesis was somewhat akin to being prematurely pushed into the deep end of a pool while cheered on by advisors whose only advice was to try swallowing less water. In retrospect, my master’s thesis, while maintaining a veneer of academic style, left much to be desired. As I will describe in later sections, from this point onwards, I had to rely on other sources of capital in order to hone my academic soft skills both as a graduate student and an early-career scholar.

First Experiences in Publishing I was eventually admitted to the PhD program in TEFL at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, partly thanks to an article I had submitted to a regional journal that was pending publication. During the interview, candidates are asked to present a list of their publications and/or conference presentations. Such records of publication often play a determining role in whether or not a candidate is eventually accepted into the program. The reason behind this insistence on prior experience with publication is to a great extent utilitarian. The policies handed down by the Expediency Discernment Council, an administrative assembly that shapes national policy, stipulate that the rate of scientific growth in Iran shall outpace that of all other countries in the region by 2025 (Iranidoost, 2018). As a result of such policies, Iranian universities have

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set their sights on publication as the sole merit for their faculty, largely ignoring teaching excellence and innovations in teaching as one of the major building blocks of a successful educational institution. While occasionally paying lip service to remarkable educational achievements and outstanding leadership qualities, Iranian universities continue to use publication, regardless of its application and/or societal impact, as the primary criterion for academic promotion and standing. Therefore, there is a huge drive among the faculty to increase their academic output in the form of articles published in international journals, and what better way to do so than to employ graduate students who have already demonstrated their familiarity with and experience in publication. This all resulted in a broken system where the faculty relied on scientific output from students who had never received proper training in the first place. My first semester as a doctoral student was arguably the most bitter experience in my entire academic career. Instead of being given an opportunity to develop expertise and grow into one’s role as a higher-level professional, my classmates and I were constantly pushed to churn out more papers. This placed a tremendous amount of anxiety on students, forcing us to think of ways around this problem. In fact, many of these solutions were desperate attempts at compensating for the lack of a solid support system that included social, cultural and even economic capital. Looking back, I am amazed that we were able to fulfill the program requirements in spite of very little support from the faculty (other than what was offered in classes) and limited opportunities to attend conferences and academic events that are designed to help scholars expand their network, exchange ideas and collaborate on joint projects.

An Inner-Circle Learner in the Outer-Circle Following much hardship and three semesters of shedding blood, sweat and tears, I reached a point where I had to submit my proposal to the department. My interests and reading had guided me towards the crossroads between English for Academic Purposes and corpus linguistics. My proposal had been accepted by the department and I was assigned a supervisor. It was at this point in time that I received the biggest break

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in my entire academic career. At the time, all PhD students studying at state-run universities were entitled to a grant that would allow them to spend a period of up to six months at a university abroad. In my experience, this was the single most positive policy formulated by the Ministry of Science Research and Technology. Sadly, this policy has since become defunct due to a lack of budget funding. For me, this was a true godsend, and I used this opportunity to work on my PhD project under the supervision of Douglas Biber at Northern Arizona University. During my time at Northern Arizona University (NAU), I learned a great deal about the standards and norms of academic practice, including how publication is a natural stage in the life cycle of research and not an end in and of itself. Comparing the approach taken towards PhD students at NAU and contrasting it with what was expected from me at FUM gave me insight into my role as a graduate student and helped me gain a more accurate understanding of what my priorities should be. In addition to working on my thesis project, I audited a number of graduate-level courses. To this day, I believe that my experiences at NAU have left an indelible mark on my attitude with regard to publication and my responsibility towards my own graduate students. Gaining first-hand experience of the spirit of academia in an inner-circle context helped make up for previous shortcomings such as limited access to social—(i.e., the ability to discuss my work with experts in the field) and cultural capital (i.e., an understanding of the true purpose behind academic publication and how it fits into the grand scheme of things). This brought about a qualitative change in the way I would conduct my research as well as my outlook on what I hoped to achieve through publishing my work in the years to come.

Breaking the Habitus Immediately following my graduation in 2012, I was hired as a faculty member at the department of English, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, FUM, where my former instructors now became my peers. This allowed me to view the events that transpired at the department as a microcosm of what also takes place at many other Iranian universities

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from two different perspectives: as a student and as an instructor. New faculty are usually given an extensive teaching load, which leaves limited time for research; however, they are still expected to maintain a strong publication record in order to have their contracts renewed by the university. Having been exposed to the standards of academic practice in an inner-circle context, I was determined to make a change. However, I would later find that resisting the deeply ingrained social habits and dispositions comes at a price. For instance, I had promised myself not to get caught up in the process of publishing for its own sake. At the time, I was involved in an international project aimed at compiling a written learner corpus. Unfortunately, the extremely burdensome task of compiling a corpus does not always result in publication, and when it does, it takes years for the results to appear in print. This went against the expectations of fast, immediate publication that was expected from earlycareer scholars such as myself. Luckily, this gamble paid off. In fact, two of my articles, which as of this writing appear as the top most-cited articles in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, were conceived at this time and were informed by my practice of teaching academic writing to master’s and PhD students in light of my own experience as a graduate student. Another departure from the established habitus was the mentorprotégée dynamic between me, as the main advisor, and my graduate students, who were working on their theses. By this point in time, certain “reforms” had been made in order to abolish some of the questionable practices of the past, such as holding students’ scores ransom conditional to the publication of papers. However, I still felt that the type of relationship I had observed between students and advisors at NAU was virtually non-existent. In fact, it was very common for advisors to dictate a topic to their graduate students and exploit them for data collection purposes, relegating them to the role of distributors of questionnaires. In other cases, students would have to write their entire thesis without much feedback and support, only to have it read once by their advisor prior to the defense date. I felt this needed to be changed, in a mutually beneficial manner, which is why I tried to once again draw on the cultural capital (e.g., connections and cultural practice) I had gained during my time at NAU. I arranged weekly meetings with my students to check on their

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progress and offer my help and guidance along the way. However, the dominant habitus made it increasingly difficult to maintain this mode of practice forcing me into an unfortunate position of compromise. In a sense, the dominant culture forcefully bends participants to the will of the majority, preventing them from following any practices and norms that are misaligned with those of the existing habitus.

Coping Strategies and Solutions Over the years, in the absence of an adequate support system and proper instruction, I learned to fall back on a series of coping strategies that I later found were used by other graduate students in the Iranian higher education context. These solutions, while nowhere near ideal, were my last resort to meet the expectations and requirements of the system. As the saying goes, “desperate times call for desperate measures.” As I will continue to explain, some of these strategies are not advisable, and at times even questionable; however, they were a direct consequence of a cog trying to fit into a broken system and a result of dealing with the overbearing anxiety experienced. The first strategy was an attempt to make up for the limited social capital available to graduate students in Iran. The idea came to me when I was preparing for the PhD entrance exam. As I mentioned before, candidates are expected to have some publication experience prior to being admitted into the program. For a master’s student studying in Iran, this can either happen when that student works on a joint project, normally as part of a team of researchers under the supervision of a faculty member (a condition that I personally did not have available to me); or the student has to learn the hard way through trial and error and repeated failures. I should note that there have also been cases where the immense pressure has resulted in academic misappropriation. In 2013, a PhD student was found to have taken data from other students’ theses and published them as his own. This was soon discovered by one of the hapless students, who reported what had taken place to the university authorities and ultimately resulted in a year-long suspension of the wrongdoer, which to me seems like a slight tap on the wrist, not

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much different from the turning of a blind eye to such a serious matter. However, this demonstrates just one of the consequences of pressuring students without providing them with the proper guidance and support needed. Seeing as I felt I did not have the support needed to write and publish an original study, I decided to replicate an already published design by localizing the findings. I knew that designing and implementing a novel research design would require a great deal of time and guidance, none of which I could afford at the time considering the circumstances, so instead, I decided to replicate a study that was manageable enough for me at the time. This strategy resulted in my first publication, which helped me get into the PhD program. In fact, I would later teach this same strategy in my academic writing and research methodology courses, where I would tell my students to learn the basics of research through replicating studies and understanding the justification behind each of the practices employed by the original researchers. This process is akin to using training wheels, which help early riders learn how to balance themselves and gain control over the bicycle even when they do not have a more experienced mentor to guide them in the right direction. In spite of the benefits this strategy has to offer, it commonly results in studies that are either too localized (and therefore not of great interest to the international community of researchers) or lacking in originality, which is a requirement for top-tier journals. Therefore, while it is a good way to start, it is not sustainable in the long run. In fact, one of the aims of studying for a PhD is to become able to conduct original research, and so it is not recommended for doctoral students. When facing the challenge of fast publication and more immediate results, many graduate students and even faculty in Iran turn to journals that have a lower standard for publication. These journals, while maintaining a semblance of academic standards, such as a double-blind peer-review system, are easier to publish in. Often too inclusive to be taken seriously, these journals, which mostly cater to the needs of outercircle scholars, publish articles from a variety of different disciplines and sometimes charge a hefty fee in exchange for easy and rapid publication. The irony of this situation was that for a time, the university would reimburse faculty for such fees, thus greenlighting them in spite of their

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questionable practice. These journals fed off the desperation of faculty who wanted to achieve academic promotion and graduate students who needed to please their instructors or gain admission to a program. It was even more ironic that some of the members of faculty who had themselves reached higher academic ranks later on blacklisted these very same journals that had paved their own paths to their administrative positions. The turning point for me was when I saw the surprise with which the idea of paid publication was met by some of the professors at NAU. Before that, having been immersed in the culture of academic publishing in Iran, I had always assumed that it is not out of the ordinary for journals to charge authors in exchange for expedited publication. However, my outlook changed thanks to my exposure to the norms and standards of academic practice in an entirely different context as well as my first-hand experience of the high editorial, peer-review and proofreading standards of accredited journals. The third strategy that I later adopted as a more experienced faculty member was using feedback from journal editors to revise and resubmit my work. In the absence of solid peer feedback, which I feel is a necessity for all good research, I had little choice but to undergo the painstakingly time-consuming process of submitting, revising, re-submitting, ad nauseam. An easier approach would have been to present my work at international conferences where I could receive feedback from experts in the field, but with the tightening of sanctions, Iranian universities could no longer afford to cover the expenses of international travel and conference registration for their staff. Therefore, with that option off the table, the only remaining possibility was to draft an article, submit it to a journal, hoping that it would get past the editor’s desk and handed down to reviewers who would critique the study and provide useful suggestions. I would then use this feedback to write a second draft of the paper and either resubmit the manuscript to the same journal or find another journal with the same scope of interest. As noted above, this process can be extremely time-consuming as it would, on average, take 3–6 months to hear back from the reviewers. Even when all of the suggestions were taken into account and the corrections were made, there was still no guarantee that the reviewers of the second journal would not either contradict some of the recommendations made by the reviewers

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from the previous round or find faults with some other section or aspect of the article. I understand that this concern is most likely shared by many other researchers from other parts of the world and is by no means unique to the Iranian context. However, having access to knowledgeable peers who are willing to read your work and provide you with quick feedback only for you to return the favor, coupled with the possibility of presenting your work at international conferences where it is subject to scrutiny along with dialogic exchanges can greatly facilitate the process of publication while saving you a great deal of time and effort. I realized the value of peer feedback when working on a number of projects with coauthors from international universities. The ease with which they could reach out to colleagues they had either known or worked with in the past or had met at international conferences was a luxury that I could not always afford. In fact, the ability to establish networks and exchange feedback with peers and senior scholars of the field constitutes a significant part of social capital in higher education, the importance of which has been widely recognized in the field of ERPP (Badenhorst & Guerin, 2016; Casanave, 2014; Lillis & Curry, 2010).

Interpreting the Past As described above, Iranian researchers are under enormous strain even compared to other researchers from the outer circle. The lack of a reliable support network, insufficient funding for attending international conferences together with other factors such as lack of proper training and relative isolation from other international scholarly circles all combine to create an unimaginably difficult scenario. The question which remains is what motivates scholars to continue to push for publication in spite of these issues? When explaining the nature of academic work, Bourdieu (1984, 1988) refers to various forms of capital such as economic, cultural and social. For me, there was little economic capital to be gained from publication, even though monetary incentives were provided to those who succeeded in publishing their studies in recognized journals. In fact, in most cases, these prizes were quite meager since they failed

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to keep up with the soaring rate of inflation. Personally, I was motivated by what could be labeled as the prestige economy (Blackmore & Kandiko, 2011), combining the social and cultural capital manifested in the form of recognition. While I must admit that the external pressure to publish was indeed a driving factor, I can confidently assert that my most successful publications arose from my desire to be recognized within the academic community and to receive approbation for my contributions. Other papers that I wrote purely for the sake of fast publication gained limited recognition and did not fulfill me on a personal level. Bourdieu’s framework can also help explain my disposition and how it has guided my perceptions and actions as a member of the academic community. For instance, my years of schooling and language learning experience in Australia helped raise my cultural capital, placing me at an advantage relative to most of my colleagues who have to deal with far greater linguistic obstacles when preparing their manuscripts. Furthermore, having spent a period of time at Northern Arizona University and having co-authored articles with colleagues from other parts of the world (mostly from inner-circle institutions) provided me with a glimpse into a zeitgeist that is drastically different from that which I had formerly become accustomed to. This also raised my social and cultural capital and greatly contributed to my ability to disseminate my research findings to a wider readership. It also placed me at a unique vantage point where I could assume the role of an insider in both the inner- and outer-circle spheres.

Conclusion This chapter aimed to provide readers with an insight into the challenges I faced as an Iranian graduate student and emerging researcher, as well as the strategies I employed to overcome many of these obstacles (i.e., the sources of support such as socialization and networks). My attempt was to share an intimate view of what has been taking place in one of the less-commonly represented countries in the world. Crafting this autoethnography was an opportunity for me to reflect

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upon my past experiences and better understand the events and conditions that have led to my current standing as a researcher and author. I believe that the self-reflexive nature of an autoethnography can help researchers, especially those who are either engaged in teaching academic writing or mentoring students to become successful authors, strengthen metacognitive knowledge of practice and focus on areas that need greater attention. Even though I had the advantage of acquiring English at an early age in an English-speaking country, I still needed support and guidance when it came to academic writing practice. This experience is in line with Hyland (2016) and Habibie (2019), who argue that the features of academic discourse need to be learned by all aspiring academics, regardless of their first language. Lack of access to research networks (Abdeljaoued, 2018; Englander & Corcoran, 2019; Lillis & Curry, 2010) is perhaps the biggest non-discursive factor affecting my learning curve. Had I been given the chance to share my work with knowledgeable peers prior to submission, I would have saved myself a great deal of time and energy. External forces, such as unrealistic expectations, especially in the earlier years of my career, pushed me to consider paths that would yield fast results sacrificing the quality of the research produced. In contrast, social and cultural capitals were what ultimately resulted in my striving for excellence and yielded research that is being recognized by my peers. In the Iranian higher education setting, it is time that we recognize the importance of providing proper guidance to students through appropriate training and mentorship (Burrough-Boenisch, 2003) rather than leaving students to their own devices and hoping that they one day find their way. It is equally important for Iranian researchers to identify effective and ineffective coping strategies to share with their students and less-experienced counterparts. Finally, the significance of having a support network, which has unfortunately become weak in recent years due to the economic sanctions and isolation of Iranian universities, cannot be stressed enough. Steps need to be taken to allow Iranian researchers to re-join the international community and benefit from the international network of scientists and researchers.

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References Abdeljaoued, M. (2018). Tunisian academics at the Turbulent times of the ‘Jasmine revolution’: Publication challenges and survival strategies. Publishing Research Quarterly, 34 (3), 347–361. Adams, T., Holman Jones, S., & Ellis, C. (2015). Autoethnography. Oxford University Press. Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (4), 373–395. Badenhorst, C.M. & Guerin, C. (2016). Introduction: Post/graduate writing pedagogies and research literacies. In C.M. Badenhorst & C. Guerin (Eds.), (2016). Post/graduate writing pedagogies and research literacies (pp. 3–28). Brill/Emerald Publishing. Blackmore, P., & Kandiko, C. (2011). Motivation in academic life: A prestige economy. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 16 (4), 399–411. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. (Richard Nice, Trans.). Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo academicus. Polity Press. Burrough-Boenisch, J. (2003). Shapers of published non-native speaker research articles. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 223–243. Casanave, C. P. (2014). Before the dissertation: A textual mentor for doctoral students at early stages of a research project. University of Michigan Press. Conquergood, D. (2002). Performance studies: Interventions and radical research. Tdr/the Drama Review, 46 (2), 145–156. Denshire, S. (2014). On auto-ethnography. Current Sociology. https://doi.org/ 0011392114533339 Ellis, C. (1999). Heartful autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research, 9 (5), 669–683. Englander, K., & Corcoran, J. (2019). English for research publication purposes: Critical plurilingual pedagogies. Routledge. Habibie, P. (2019). To be native or not to be native: That is not the question. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 35–52). Palgrave Macmillan. Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. Iranidoost, K. (2018, July 2018). Iran science production shows fastest growth (p. 1). https://en.mehrnews.com/news/136116/Iran-science-produc tion-shows-world-s-fastest-growth

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Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11–30). Cambridge University Press. Kachru, B. (1992). World Englishes: Approaches, issues and resourcefbas. Language Teaching, 25 (1), 1–14. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge. Roth, W. M. (2009). Auto/ethnography and the question of ethics. Forum. Qualitative Social Research, 10 (1), Article 38. Trahar, S. (2009). Beyond the story itself: Narrative inquiry and autoethnography in intercultural research in higher education. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10 (1), Article 30. Young, M. (2008). Petit narratives. Qualitative Inquiry, 14 (6), 1010–1018.

7 Learning to Be a Non-native Speaker: A Retrospective Autoethnographic Account of an Early-Career researcher’s Publishing Trajectory Sally Burgess

Introduction There are several places where I could begin this retrospective account of my early career. One of them is Tasmania, where I attended my first academic conference in 1977; the other is Melbourne, where I grew up and where, while working at one of the universities there, I first saw how important publishing can be for a researcher and how much it determined status and a sense of fulfilment. But this story starts not in Tasmania or Melbourne but on the island of Tenerife, where I arrived in 1984 to work as an English teacher in a private language school. I had a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Indian Studies from the University of Melbourne, four years English language teaching (ELT) experience in London, and I had just gained a Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I thought my career choice of ELT would allow me S. Burgess (B) Filología Inglesa y Alemana, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_7

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to earn a living, travel and learn the languages of the countries I would temporarily call home. Tenerife was to be a first port of call on this long voyage of discovery. I had my sights set on Egypt and Venezuela, on Japan and perhaps China. In fact, I have lived in Tenerife for 36 years and have only spent any length of time abroad while doing my Masters in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (MATEFL) and my PhD, both at the University of Reading in the UK.

‘Speak, Memory’: Theoretical Lenses and Methods My account covers an eighteen-year period from October 1985 to September 2003. During this time, I transitioned from being an earlycareer researcher (ECR) to being ‘established’. Going back more than 30 years has made it necessary to examine some ‘primary sources’: my early publications, a version of my CV dated 2003, some conference programmes, letters and a few emails. But these texts do not tell the whole story. What has allowed my memory to ‘speak’, as Nabokov (1989) commanded his should do, was conversation with people who knew me as an ECR. These were not interviews, but instances of talk around text, the texts being this chapter and autoethnographies in general. In this way, I heed Anderson’s (2006) warning that analytic autoethnographers should steel themselves against self-absorption by ensuring that there is dialogue with other informants. My story shows gradual shifts in what I called myself and what others called me; I have been a ‘history student’, a ‘language teacher’, an ‘applied linguist’ and a ‘translator’. One reification that has proved resistant to change in my case, as it has been for many others, is ‘native English speaker’ (NES). Another that has been a less salient constant is ‘nonnative speaker of Spanish’. Shifts in these reifications correspond to Ellis, Adams and Bochner’s (2011, p. 275) ‘epiphanies’. I will cite some of these key moments and show how they contributed to my sense of identification with a succession of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Wenger, in an interview edited by Farnsworth et al. (2016),

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explains that the technical term ‘knowledgeability’ refers to the development of relationships with practices for which one can make no claim to competence and calls it ‘an experience of living in a landscape of practice and negotiating one’s position in it’ (p. 5). I will show how abandoning a claim to competence allowed me to learn with others and thus begin to fully identify with the community in question. The three modes of identification Wenger identifies in Farnsworth et al. (2016, p. 12), namely imagination, engagement and alignment, will provide a framework for my story. I will show how imagining myself in a new identity acted as the impetus for the work involved in gradually aligning with the practices of the communities with which I engaged. My account is also reflexive in Anderson’s (2006) terms, in that my individual story maps on to larger social, political and economic stories that were also unfolding at the time. I situate myself in a web of interactions with others who supported me or shared the challenges of planning to publish, writing, revising and then publishing with me. I am thus also making use of both Reed-Danahey’s (2017) position on autoethnography and Connell and Wood’s (2002) articulation of ‘life histories’. I will implicitly embed my story in the many stories of white, middle class ‘native speakers’ of English (NSE), given status and power in institutions throughout the world with little questioning of their skills or qualifications. Much of my most cited published output can be read as a kind of atonement for the injustice underlying this privileging and an attempt to mitigate my discomfort in being so privileged. This atonement has often involved defending the right of multilingual users of English as an additional language (EAL) to publish in languages other than English and acting as an unpaid author’s editor (see Matarese, 2016) of those papers they chose to publish in English. I now ask myself if these activities too were instances of participation in the maintenance of hegemonic relations where so-called NES somehow always have the last word. I did not start my work on this chapter with these questions in mind. What I thought I would be writing was an account in which I bravely struggled to balance a non-academic publishing career with my earliest attempts to conduct and publish research. I planned to say that all this was achieved in the absence of mentors and in isolation both geographically and symbolically from the communities of practice I was seeking

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to join. My choices of theoretical lenses have shown that this story is at best partial and at worst disingenuous. By examining more carefully the involvement of mentors in the early part of my academic career, I was able to see that I was offered support and scaffolding as I gradually began to participate in various communities of practice. I was, however, not always aware of or willing to take full advantage of this mentoring. Much of this chapter, then, concerns my mentors, some of whom were established scholars working at the University of La Laguna (ULL). Others were fellow students and people I met at academic events. I have chosen three of these people as principal characters in my narrative while recognizing that my choices oblige me to neglect the contribution of others.

A Scholarly Mentor The first of my chosen mentors, Marie McMahon, I met the day after I arrived here. Marie was a lecturer in the English Department at the ULL. We became friends and, a year later, she persuaded me to apply for a temporary position in the department, covering for someone on sick leave for depression. It was Marie who helped me through the paperwork necessary to get official recognition in Spain for my undergraduate degree, the MATEFL and my UK PhD. She was in many ways my champion, singing my praises to anyone who would listen and thus winning me a number of private teaching jobs to supplement my salary and help keep my British artist partner and me solvent. Most importantly, Marie talked to me about her work, the book she was publishing from her PhD, her interest in the linguistic turn in humanities research, in gender studies, in the writings of Foucault and Derrida. She talked to me as if I was a historian, as if I too was an intellectual. Our conversations brought back memories of another history lecturer who had treated me and a group of equally flighty undergraduates, as if we were scholarly and somehow by doing this, made us so. There was some part of me that had always been happy in a library preparing a literature review. I had, in Wenger’s terms (Farnsworth et al., 2016), ‘imagined’ the life I was now beginning to lead and Marie was opening

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up spaces in which I might align to a real community of practice. She also did a lot of hand-holding. In early 1997, she spent a Saturday with me in a windowless computer room while I printed out my doctoral thesis, proofreading with me and picking up the many typos as the pages rolled out of the laser printer. Later still, she read and offered excellent advice on a draft of Burgess (2002), advice that I did not accept with particularly good grace. Her field was late 17th- and early 18th-century British history, after all. She was not an ‘applied linguist’ as I had begun to hope I was.

Parallel Publishing Trajectories Because I taught at what were unsocial times for Spain, I had limited contact with the other department members that first year, so I was not to know that there were several applied linguists on the staff. My first ‘scholarly publications’ (and my first non-scholarly publications) came about as a result of the efforts of one of these people, the editor of the departmental journal, Pablo Domínguez. Pablo was trying to attract advertising from a UK publishing house. They had sent him some books for review: an EFL textbook (O’Neill & Mugglestone, 1986) and the first edition of the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (Richards et al., 1985). He asked me to review the books for the journal, implying that this was part of my apprenticeship as a new member of the department. The reviews were published early the following year (Burgess, 1987a, 1987b). These two early scholarly publications should have been instances of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991), but the process did not offer me the kind of careful reading and critique Marie and others were later to provide. Nor did I take full advantage of this learning opportunity. I did not consider the reviews or the journal particularly important. It is only this month that I have looked at the other papers and reviews published in the same issue. I thought Pablo, the editor, had only decided to publish my reviews because he assumed that, as I was a NES, not much editorial work would be needed. Even so, the fact that I was Australian rather than British or American detracted

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somewhat from any linguistic authority I had, as it would do again with the ELT publisher. In the department, I was occasionally asked to clear up doubts about English usage, but my answers were sometimes questioned or compared with those given by other local—usually British—first language (L1) users of English. This shook my confidence and destabilized my belief in my command of my first language and, more specifically, of English for academic purposes. I was still entertaining thoughts of moving on at that point and had few ambitions in terms of gaining full membership of any Spanish academic community. The substitution position became a long-term contract, not because I had proved myself to be a highly skilled teacher but because the view in the department was that it would be a good idea to have another NES on the permanent staff in addition to two Americans and a bilingual UK-educated lecturer. It was not easy in those first years. My teaching abilities were put to the test as I faced groups of eighty-plus in drafty lecture theatres. I spoke little Spanish and knew nothing about the Spanish university system. I went to departmental meetings where I understood one word in twenty and the social relations between my colleagues, not at all. Dressed in my hippy-ish clothing while everyone else was in tweed jackets and twinsets, I was regularly mistaken for a student by members of staff from other departments. More than once, my classes were interrupted by someone demanding to know what I was doing in the lecture theatre that had been assigned to me. If I did not believe myself to be participating legitimately, I certainly considered that where I was condemned me to participating peripherally. The Canary Islands seemed a long way from London. The book review is a genre that lends itself to peripheral participation (Burgess & Fagan, 2004) though it is one to which I have remained ‘loyal’, as a colleague put it recently. I have written at least six more. Re-reading the second of the two I wrote in 1986, I am surprised to find how competent it is, though I was certainly not qualified to review a dictionary of applied linguistics; I had not even begun the MATEFL. Tellingly, I called my review ‘Through the jargon jungle’ and begin by saying that the dictionary would prove useful to students ‘such as those taking the RSA Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign language to adults’ (Burgess, 1987b, p. 307), the qualification I had just completed.

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I must have hand-written the reviews at least initially and then typed them up before giving them to the editor. As I was then a poor typist, this undoubtedly meant typing the reviews out several times and making changes as I did so. I must have been involved in checking the page proofs and perhaps made some more changes then, but these were unsolicited and made off my own bat, if at all. To show them that we had kept good our promise to review their products, Pablo sent the reviews to the ELT publisher. It came as a pleasant surprise when an editor contacted me to ask if I would write a reader’s report on the first draft of The Third Dimension (O’Neill & Mugglestone, 1987). I took this task much more seriously than I had the book reviews as I knew that it was a potential entry point for a career in ELT materials writing. This was an identity I did aspire to. I spent a month working on the report, sent it off to the publisher and waited anxiously for their response. It came in the form of a letter thanking me for the ‘extremely useful report’ and a cheque for thirty pounds. I still have the letter. The book reviews and the report launched an ELT publishing career that began soon after. This second career has continued until recently and has run parallel with my scholarly publishing trajectory, often causing me to put the latter on hold while I completed a textbook project. But it provided a second source of income which has allowed me to avoid many of the non-discursive obstacles that plague some ECRs, e.g. lack of funding to attend international conferences.

Conference Participation as An Entry Point By the time I wrote the reader’s report, I was beginning to understand a little better what practices I would need to engage in to align with the expectations of the Spanish university system. I began a MATEFL at Reading University. I chose Reading because I had heard one of the lecturers, Eddie Williams, speak at a local teachers’ conference. He and many of his colleagues were prominent members of the language teaching and applied linguistics communities at that time. They encouraged students to take part in the annual conferences of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). I

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gave my first presentation at one of these conferences in Edinburgh in 1988. Conferences are, of course, important in the publishing trajectories of ECRs. In a small-scale study we conducted on the social dimensions of citing (Burgess & Martín-Martín, 2019), we showed that key events such as conferences and symposia map onto our publishing trajectories as sites where relationships are established and sustained, where we become aware of many of the ‘conversations of the discipline’ (Bazerman, 1980, 1985) and get to know the people who are holding them. In the study, we looked no further back than the beginning of this century, but as I sorted through my earliest publications for this chapter, I remembered that much of what I published in the early days had its origins in a conference I had attended. I do not mean in the conventional sense of presenting at a conference and then writing the paper up for publication. In fact, I have often failed to develop my conference papers, allowing them to languish in virtual or real desk drawers until they have gone cold on me. Instead, the way in which conferences played a part in my publishing history is through the social and academic connections they allowed me to make and build upon. I suspect that many of these connections were then more available to L1 users of English than they were to multilingual ECRs. I arrived in Spain at just the right time, on the eve of its entry to the European Union, in January 1986. The process of modernization undertaken as a result of EU membership meant that money was being spent, particularly on education and research. Grants and scholarships were relatively easy to come by. The local education authority paid for the second module of my MA and for return trips to Reading for the summers of 1989, 1990 and 1991. I was also given many travel grants to attend conferences, most of them abroad and many of them in Australia. The events I attended in the 1980s were all concerned with language teaching. I took part in the IATEFL conference again in 1989 and gave a paper with a British Spain-based classmate from Reading. Much to our astonishment, we were invited to write our presentation up for a journal. We worked together on the paper over a period of months, exchanging drafts of sections by fax and then discussing them on the phone. We also managed to meet up at a couple of other national conferences. A kind of mutual mentoring took the pressure off both of us. My track

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record with individual presentations shows me how crucial this kind of collaboration between peers was then and still is for me and for many others. Without a co-author to buoy me up and keep me on task, it would have been all too easy to let an opportunity to publish slip through my fingers. I would also have felt uneasy about accepting an identity— that of classroom researcher—too soon and solely on the basis of my own limited skills and experience. Our paper (Burgess & Shepherd, 1991) was published without any peer review process that either of us can recall. At that time, the journal, Prospect, was attracting contributions from people who later became very prominent in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) but back then, we were all publishing on language teaching and learning. Outside Spain, I was comfortable with my participation in this community of practice, though, in my department, it was not regarded as scholarly. I was beginning to see this identity as condemning me to a status that was marginal and contributing to my feeling of being an interloper. At the same time, it was exactly what the ELT publisher valued. They were uninterested in my academic record aside from the fact that I had an MATEFL—they had already recruited several other ‘Reading products’ as authors. What counted far more than any academic achievement was my experience as an oral examiner for the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (now Cambridge ESOL), a position only ‘native speakers’ could hold and one I enjoyed thanks, once again, to Marie.

Legitimate Participation My MATEFL dissertation was on content and formal schemata in second language reading. I did not publish the dissertation or anything from it though I did present a paper at an Australian teachers’ conference and for once managed to write up the presentation for the conference proceedings. What stopped me from doing more than that was that I had begun work on another ELT textbook. I had also learned that I would need to take out a Spanish degree in English Philology if I wanted to remain at the ULL. I completed the courses deemed lacking from

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my Australian undergraduate degree and my UK masters at the University of Alicante. I was prepared to be resentful of this interruption to what I now saw as an academic trajectory. To the insult of being pigeonholed as ‘a language teacher’ was added the injury of being demoted to ‘undergraduate student’. My claims to competence (I had done an MA!) were being rejected by the Spanish university community of practice. I jumped through the necessary hoops quite easily and was awarded a Spanish degree in English Philology in 1990. Had this legitimation been denied or further suspended, I might well have begun to ‘dis-identify’ (Farnsworth et al., 2016, p. 16) further than I already had. The co-author of the Prospect paper was far more well-integrated in her department in the north of Spain. Our lengthy phone conversations about the paper frequently veered off into discussions of what I saw as the oddities of the Spanish system. We shared these with another friend from Reading who worked at a university in Rome. The conversations made what I perceived as injustices a little less galling and, over time, allowed me to see how lucky I had been and just how much of my good luck rested on my NES status. Both a text analysis course I had been obliged to take at Alicante and one of these conversations set me on track for what was to become my major research interest, the intercultural analysis of research process genres. My co-author friend, who had started a PhD at the University of Birmingham, recommended Swales (1990). I bought it, read it from cover to cover and prepared a PhD proposal for a crosscultural analysis of the introduction sections of research articles in the field of linguistics. The proposal was accepted. I successfully completed my PhD a little over six years later. While I was writing the thesis, I continued to take part in conferences, often so that I could catch up with my Reading friends, though I gradually began to drift away from those events devoted entirely to language teaching. That said, in the period covering the time it took me to complete my PhD (1991 to early 1997), seven ELT projects I had been involved with saw fruition as books or audio materials. One of them became a ‘best seller’. The publisher sent me a cheque for many times the amount I had received for the reader’s report back in 1987. But this was a tougher world than that for which my experience of scholarly publication had prepared me. We were expected to send syllabus outlines and sample

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units, often only weeks after beginning the project. These were sent out to readers who were sometimes merciless in their criticism, as were the editors. I was bumped off a book project as a result of a critical reader’s report and the contract was given to someone else. If I had not had to face rejection or even peer review when publishing the book reviews or the Prospect paper, I certainly did in the harsher world of commercial publishing. It hurt. In 1993, I presented a poster based on the research design for my thesis at the British Association for Applied Linguistics meeting. That same year I published a third book review, this time in the journal of the Spanish Association for English and North American Studies, Atlantis (Burgess, 1993). My first mentor, Marie, was one of the editors and had encouraged me to write the review, in this case of Dendrinos (1992). I was offered feedback and asked to make changes. The review is competent but betrays my disquiet at Dendrinos’ insightful problematization of the dominance of ‘Inner Circle’ (Kachru, 1985) ELT authors and indeed the whole UK/US-based publishing industry. Publishing a review in this high-status journal signalled a further alignment with the practices of the Spanish English studies community and marked the transition from an identity as a language teacher and materials writer to one as a researcherpractitioner/applied linguist. By the time I was to publish my next book review, this transition was all but complete. In early 1996, through The Linguist List, I heard that there was to be a conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This event was both a bridge and a turning point. I presented on my PhD study and got some useful feedback from audience members, one of whom suggested I might send him the thesis when it was finished. This I did and a little later was invited to submit a chapter to a book in the Longman Applied Linguistic series. The chapter (Burgess, 2002) is the only publication I took from the thesis. I did not follow the excellent advice I was given to get to work on preparing a series of publications as soon as I had come down from the euphoria of having got through the viva. What stopped me from doing this was that I had signed a contract for the ELT textbook that never saw the light of day, or at least not with my name on the cover.

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I began work on the aborted book project a week after defending my thesis.

A Willing Apprentice This brings me almost to the end of my retrospective account of the early part of my scholarly publication trajectory. It is here that I should introduce my third mentor, José Soliño. José had, in fact, once wounded my pride by suggesting that instead of remaining in the category ‘associate professor’ I should ask to be recategorized as a ‘lector’ and abandon the tenure track I was on in favour of a position that only required me to teach English. José had attended a Linguistics Institute Summer School in the US and had come back an enthusiastic convert to the functional theories of the Dutch linguist Simon Dik (Dik, 1989). I understood that if I was to avoid being regarded as only a lector, I should at least look as if I shared this enthusiasm. With some young colleagues, I went to Amsterdam in the summer of 1992 to take a course on Dik’s functional grammar. I was enthusiastic about visiting Amsterdam, rather less so about the grammar and the course. At least one of my fellow students felt as I did. He had gone to talk to the eminent discourse analyst, Teun Van Dijk, who was apparently happy to speak to any of us who were interested in critical discourse analysis. Three young women from my department and I went to van Dijk’s office the following day. He was generous with his time and also agreed to come and speak at the ULL. Once I got home, this was arranged and José suggested we ask him to publish a written version of the lecture he was to give (van Dijk, 1993). I wrote the preface, basically a summary of Van Dijk’s publishing trajectory. A two-page preface does not rate as a publishing achievement though the fact that I was the one who wrote it is, I think, important. José could have written the preface himself and indeed commandeered van Dijk’s visit instead of allowing me to be seen by my Spanish colleagues as the organizer and host. Introducing this eminent scholar to a packed lecture theatre was my first experience of public speaking in Spanish.

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José did more to legitimize my participation in the Spanish academic community once I had completed my PhD. My younger colleagues had all embarked upon PhDs themselves broadly related to functional theories, but one, who had not come with us to Amsterdam, was interested in doing something on discourse analysis. José suggested he work on the abstracts of research articles but, before talking to the student, asked me if I minded. ‘Why should I mind?’ I asked. ‘It’s your area’, he responded. I had ‘an area’; I had a territory! Or at least José thought so. He said we should co-supervise the thesis. In fact, as rector of the university, he had little time to devote to the supervision, most of which fell to me. It was easy work with such a focused student who saw that his ideas were original enough to publish before he had defended the thesis (Martín, 2003). ‘The student’, Pedro Martín, and I have continued to work and publish together ever since. José also suggested we form a research team and apply for one of the pre-competitive research grants the ULL then offered. This we did and later went on to a longer competitive project financed by the local government. This project allowed us to fund visits to the ULL by prominent scholars in ERPP such as John Flowerdew, Paul Thompson, Margaret Cargill and Françoise Salager-Meyer. The visits prepared the ground for our hosting the first PRISEAL conference in 2007, an event which put us in closer contact with other Spanish ERPP researchers. One outcome of this contact was the ENEIDA project (see, for example, Burgess et al., 2014). This volume, in fact, also has its origins in the fourth PRISEAL conference, held at the University of Reykjavik in 2018.

Learning to Take It on the Chin Anyone reading my story could easily get the impression that I was handed a series of opportunities to engage in scholarly and non-scholarly publication and that it was only in the case of the latter that I ever had the disheartening experience of having a gate closed to me. As I settled into the Spanish academic community that I had joined ‘opportunistically’, as Anderson (2006) would have it, I began to publish in

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a series of edited volumes, many of them festschrifts for colleagues who had retired. In terms of garnering citations, this was a poor strategy, but it allowed me to fulfill the commitments to publish findings from our research projects and to show my respect for the local community. It also meant that I could avoid engaging with the far more threatening world of peer-reviewed international journals. I had, in fact, actually submitted a paper to a prominent journal in our field and received two peer reviews which left me reeling and humiliated though they were neither unkind nor unfair. I had claimed the study I presented was ‘ethnographic’ and the reviewers had quite rightly wondered if I even knew what that meant. I was so embarrassed that I merely skimmed the editor’s covering letter and missed the important suggestion that I should revise and resubmit. I opted instead to publish the paper in a festschrift (Burgess, 2006), but I also decided to learn more about ethnography. I began my account by juxtaposing two reifications that have remained stable while others have changed. The first of these is NES. It has facilitated my publishing trajectory not because it was necessarily any easier for me to write in English than it was for my Spanish-speaking colleagues but because I was given the benefit of the doubt; I was assumed to be competent even when I had much to learn. The second identity, that of non-native speaker of Spanish, is one that has haunted me though I have been reluctant to acknowledge its power. The old insecurities came to the surface recently when another English speaker told me a Spanish colleague had never thought of her as a foreigner. My Reading friends were in similar situations in their departments, speaking such faultless Spanish and Italian that they were sometimes mistaken for native speakers. My NES identity is one I have found increasingly problematic and has sometimes been a source of guilt; my non-native Spanish speaker identity has been a source of shame and has exacerbated my sense of separateness. This is salutary, in my opinion. It allows me to better understand the situation of scholars who have made the difficult transition from the periphery to the Anglophone centre and to publishing in an additional language. It also allows me to treat with respect and gratitude the editorial changes made by my colleagues Marita Fumero and Ana Díaz Galán to the manuscript of my first solo Spanish publication (Burgess, 2021) in order, as they put it, ‘to adapt it to what we think the

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Spanish community expects’. By writing this chapter, I have come to see that ‘adapting to what the Spanish community expects’ is what I have really been learning to do all along. At last, I am a willing apprentice.

References Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (4), 373–395. Bazerman, C. (1980). A relationship between reading and writing: The conversational model. College English, 41, 656–661. Bazerman, C. (1985). Physicists reading physics: Schema-laden purposes and purpose-laden schema. Written Communication, 2, 3–23. Burgess, S. (1987a). From accuracy to expressivity. Revista Canaria De Estudios Ingleses, 13(14), 301–302. Burgess, S. (1987b). Through the jargon jungle. Revista Canaria De Estudios Ingleses, 13(14), 307–308. Burgess, S. (1993). The EFL textbook and ideology. Atlantis, XV , 313–318. Burgess, S. (2002). Packed houses and intimate gatherings: Audience and rhetorical structure. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 196– 215). Longman. Burgess, S. (2021) Citar y citar textualmente: Un desafío para el investigador novato. In A. Diaz Galán & J. Santana Herrera (Eds), Aportaciones al estudio de la lenguas: perspectivas teóricas y aplicadas. Peter Lang. Burgess, S., & Shepherd, J. (1991). Using learner awareness to develop methodologically aware teachers: The cases of the university of La Laguna and the University of the Basque Country. Prospect, 6 (3). Burgess, S., & Fagan, A., (2004). Genre analysis and the novice researcher: the book review and the poster presentation. In Brito, M. & Oliva, J. I. (Eds.) Traditions and innovations: Commemorating forty years of english studies at ULL (pp. 61–77). RCEI. Burgess, S., & Fagan, A. (2006). From the periphery: The Canarian researcher publishing in the international context. In J. I. Oliva, M. McMahon, & M. Brito (Eds.), On the matter of words: In honour of Lourdes Divasson Cilveti (pp. 45–57). Servicio de Publicaciones. Burgess, S., Gea-Valor, M., Moreno, A., & Rey-Rocha, J. (2014). Affordances and constraints on research publication: A comparative study of the

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language choices of Spanish historians and psychologists. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 14, 72–83. Burgess, S. & Martín-Martín, P.A. (2019). Why we cite and are cited: readers’ and writers’ perceptions. Paper presented at the 37th Conference of the Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada (Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics), March 27–29. Connell, R. W., & Wood, J. (2002). Globalization and scientific labour: Patterns in a life history study of intellectual workers in the periphery. Journal of Sociology, 38(2), 167–190. Dendrinos, B. (1992). The EFL coursebook and ideology. Grivas Publications. Dik, S. (1989). The theory of functional grammar: The structure of the clause. Foris. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research, 36 (4), 273–290. Farnsworth, V., Kleanthous, I., &Wenger-Trayner, E. (2016). Communities of practice as a social theory of learning: A conversation with Etienne Wenger. British Journal of Educational Studies, 64 (2). https://doi.org/10.1080/000 71005.2015.1133799; http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/92950/. Accessed 5 December, 2020. Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language in the zZcle. In R. Quirk & H. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11–30). Cambridge University Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Martín, P. (2003). A genre analysis of English and Spanish research paper abstracts in experimental social sciences. English for Specific Purposes, 22(1), 25–43. Matarese, V. (2016). Editing research: The author editing approach to providing effective support to writers of research papers. Information Today, Medford, New Jersey. Nabokov, V. (1989). Speak, memory: An autobiography revisited . Random House. (Original work published 1951). O’Neill, R., & Mugglestone, P. (1986). The fourth dimension. Longman. O’Neill, R., & Mugglestone, P. (1987). The third dimension. Longman. Reed-Danahey, D. (2017). Bourdieu and critical autoethnography: Implications for research, writing, and teaching. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 19 (1), 144–154.

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Richards, J., Platt, J., & Weber, H. (1985). Longman dictionary of applied linguistics. Longman. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press. van Dijk, T.A. (1993). Discourse, racisim and ideology. RCEI Ediciones.

Part II Identity, Visibility, Voice

8 “Will You Ever Write About This?”: Diagnosis, Self-care, and Writing for Publication Robert Kohls

Introduction The “conventional” career path of an academic includes completing a PhD by age 30, landing a tenure track job shortly afterward, playing the role of “junior scholar” until tenure, and then entering a period of robust and influential scholarship during midlife until retirement. Now in my early 50s, I do not fit this traditional faculty profile—that is, a full professor, widely published, and free to take up prestigious administrative roles within the university (e.g., academic Senate). For many professors, their 50s is the time when they often have to deal with parental health issues, their own health issues, and perhaps most importantly, the psychology of mid-life which often entails a struggle for redefinition of self and a movement away from one’s obsessive career focus. Because I R. Kohls (B) Department of English Language and Literature, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_8

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earned my PhD later in life (at 47), my current period of rushing for tenure and building up my scholarly program has coincided with other impactful life events. My identity as a language educator and researcher has been shaped by my 25 years as a language teacher. Most of those years, I taught or tutored academic writing to multilingual adolescent and adult writers, and as a junior professor, I am now teaching preservice teachers how to teach writing to multilingual writers. My strong interest in L2 writing and research was the reason I pursued a PhD, and it influenced my choice of doctoral program at the University of Toronto and a desire to work with Alister Cumming as a supervisor (see Kohls & Wilson, 2020). On the topic of publishing and establishing myself as an L2 writing scholar, Alister offers the following insight to junior scholars: Publish as much and as well as possible. People read, cite, and respect journal articles. To an extent that has often surprised me, they are the principal means of, and commodity for, gaining respect and professional recognition in scholarly circles […] publish, publish, and publish. To provide the substance for new publications, embark on new research projects, small and large, following from your thesis research. At the same time, create a culture around your research interests and expertise through ongoing seminars, study groups, and primary projects leading to larger ones. As a professor, link the courses you teach to your developing research program so that they build on and inform each other rather then pull in different directions. Collaborate, as well, with professional colleagues, near and afar, based on new as well as established contacts. Needless to say, become a mentor and model for masters’ and doctoral students yourself. (Cumming, 2016, p. 68)

By all accounts, writing for scholarly publication is critical for an academic’s survival and requires careful planning and strategizing. Since I graduated, I have been working towards fulfilling Alister’s advice—beginning new research projects connected to my area of interest, publishing from my thesis, connecting my scholarship with my research interests, collaborating with colleagues, and becoming a mentor and model teacher for my students. I have enjoyed my fair share of success, but like any junior scholar, I have faced my fair share of rejections, frustrations,

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and disappointments when trying to publish, network, and collaborate. For example, after I completed my PhD, I put forward an idea for a special issue to a highly respected journal that came out of my dissertation on good writing and voice in an after-school tutoring program (see Kohls, 2016). My dissertation received honorable mention for the best dissertation award in 2017 by the American Association for Applied Linguistics. That gave me hope that I had something interesting to say that others might want to hear. Although the reviewers were supportive and welcomed my ideas and originality, there was enough disagreement as to the usefulness of the contribution and a lack of confidence in my ability overall to manage a special issue. As one reviewer commented, “[he’s] quite junior and inexperienced in scholarly editing”. My proposal was rejected. Around the same time that I received this news, I was diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune disorder. I wondered how I would manage a publication trajectory shaped by productivity, performance, and achievement with a neurological condition that can negatively impact memory, mobility, and vision over time. The future becomes more difficult to plan with a body that can be unpredictable, deceptive, and resistant. It took a serious diagnosis to get me to realize something was missing from my supervisor’s list—establishing myself as a junior scholar also includes practicing self-care through introspection and reflection. As an academic with a newly diagnosed chronic illness, I was reminded that true selfcare comes not from ignoring illness but from doing the hard emotional work of facing the vulnerability, anxiety, and uncertainty that accompanies diagnosis by writing about it. Writing this chapter became a way to make sense of my new reality and connect my experience with others in a similar situation. In this chapter, I go beyond Kumar and Cavallaro’s (2018) description of researcher self-care as a commitment to establishing personal and professional boundaries, to knowing one’s strengths and limitations, and to maintaining a good diet and getting plenty of exercise. By researcher self-care, rather, I am specifically talking about the self-care that comes from the intellectual work of connecting life and research by writing with mindful intention about trauma, loss, and grief among other difficulties to inform and transform our disciplines, our colleagues

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and students, and ourselves. Self-care for an academic is about investigating our vulnerabilities, asking difficult questions of ourselves, and changing the world by connecting with others through scholarship. This chapter also contributes to the affective aspects largely understudied in the area of English for research publication purposes (ERPP). Much of this scholarship has investigated the discursive or linguistic characteristics of academic writing (e.g., Hanauer et al., 2019), and when it has addressed non-discursive issues (e.g., Canagarajah, 1996, 2002), it has tended to foreground material factors: networking, location, and access to resources, among other things. The affective dimension of scholarship, however, offers insight into the everyday lived experience of professors who may struggle with health and well-being while managing a full teaching load, fulfilling university service, and maintaining their research program. The opportunity to contribute to a book on scholarly publication trajectories using the power of autoethnography allows me to productively engage with identity, illness, and scholarship and to connect my story in meaningful ways with others (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). For those writing scholars such as myself whose beliefs are more in alignment with sociocultural approaches to writing development (see Prior, 2006), autoethnography conceptualizes knowledge production as a dialogue between the reader and writer (Holman Jones et al., 2013) to provide a space for languaging my experience (see Swain, 2006) to better know myself and understand my experience in a more direct way. This chapter highlights the holistic and humanistic aspect of research and writing and serves to challenge, motivate, and inspire others who, for one reason or another, find themselves struggling with health issues in midlife.

Researcher Self-care as a Theoretical and Methodological Framework Researcher self-care and well-being are essential parts of a researcher’s reflexivity, and the methods of qualitative scholarship—case studies, narrative inquiry, and (auto)ethnography—provide the means for documenting this work. Long before my diagnosis, researcher self-care, as

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a theoretical concept, was something I first encountered in graduate school during my fieldwork. Three of my classmates and I each had participants who either died, committed suicide, or contemplated selfharm during or shortly after we completed our data collection. In my case, one of my research participants, Stuart, a 73-year old volunteer writing tutor, committed suicide three months after my final interview with him. Like my colleagues, I felt unprepared to manage this kind of distress. Limited recognition of researcher self-care (Moncur, 2013) or insufficient training in research methods courses (Johnson & Clark, 2003; Warr, 2004) puts novice researchers and junior scholars into situations that they are not always prepared to handle. Kumar and Cavallaro (2018) argue that emotionally charged research includes studying sensitive issues and topics, conducting research related to personal trauma, experiencing personal traumatic life events while collecting data, and managing unexpected traumatic events from participants. Interest in the emotional work between the researcher and participant (Prior, 2015) continues to grow, as have calls for researcher self-care to be included in PhD candidate preparation (Schmidt & Hasson, 2018) and in Institutional Review Board (IRB) documentation protocols and procedures (Dickson-Swift et al., 2005). My colleagues and I responded to our unexpected crisis in ethnographic fieldwork by presenting papers on our experiences both together (e.g., Kohls et al., 2016, 2017) and separately (Kohls, 2019). Our shared reflexive accounts of our fieldwork experiences created opportunities to voice how graduate students and junior scholars need to be trained in self-care before heading out to observe, interview, and interact with participants. This active, collaborative form of response to crisis that my colleagues and I engaged in was a form of researcher self-care we explored and dialogued about together. This fieldwork experience taught me that as language teachers and scholars we cannot separate our scholarship from our experiences, histories, and identities (see Ngunjiri et al., 2010) as they inform and shape our epistemological standpoint on how we see and know the world. I recognize that part of establishing myself as a scholar also means to be able to accept and embrace those things that are well beyond my control—either the loss of a participant or being diagnosed with

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a chronic illness. Autoethnography offers scholars a way to understand periods of difficulty, hardship, and transition. Among various forms of narrative writing, autoethnography affords scholars the means to critically engage with their experiences—as students, teachers, researchers, mentors, administrators, and editors—from broad political and social perspectives. As both method and methodology, autoethnography serves as “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience” (Ellis et al., 2011, p. 1). Exploring writing as a form of self-care, I was drawn to the empathetic dialogue between the writer and reader in which autoethnographers reveal their “vulnerabilities, conflicts, choices, and values” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 748) and in which readers are expected to read, respond, and react to the author’s narrative with empathy, mindfulness, and intention. In her book, The Vulnerable Observer, Behar (1996) brings herself—experiences, thoughts, feelings—into her research and consequently becomes part of the landscape she is studying; she becomes vulnerable to the reader’s gaze. Reading Behar and other seminal autoethnographic studies (e.g., Ellis, 2009) in which the researcher’s vulnerability is central to the purpose, scope, and credibility of the work, I was reminded that qualitative fieldwork is messy (Naveed et al., 2017) and involves critical mental, physical, and emotional labor (see Atkinson, 2015), most of which goes unacknowledged or underreported in conventional qualitative work (Sharma & Rickly, 2018; Vincent, 2018). Hence, I was inspired to write about one of the most emotionally vulnerable times of my life, and how it has affected my scholarship and my identity as a scholar.

The Diagnosis In November of 2017, I drove two hours from San Francisco to Monterey to attend a writing retreat organized by my friend and colleague Christine Pearson Casanave. On the morning of the retreat, I woke up with blurred vision in my left eye. I brushed it off. I assumed it was a migraine aura and took some ibuprofen. It will be gone by noon I

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thought. But it didn’t go away. In fact, my vision got worse over the next 24 h. By the time I returned home on Sunday night, I had all but lost my eyesight in my left eye. I spent the next three days in the hospital close to my house. My colleagues covered my classes. After being seen by an ophthalmologist and countless neurologists and undergoing an MRI and lumbar puncture, I was diagnosed with optic neuritis (or inflammation of the optic nerve). The neurologist also informed me that optic neuritis is a symptom of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). He reassured me, however, that the results of my brain scan and spinal tap test both came back normal, but that further testing was necessary. The following week, I took an Uber to the hospital’s Multiple Sclerosis clinic for a follow up. The waiting room serves patients who struggle with either MS or dementia. If people are not in wheelchairs or walking with canes, they sit with blank faces and stare off into space. Shortly after I arrived, my neurologist walked into the waiting room. “Mr. Kohls?” he said, looking around. “Yes, that’s me”, I replied. He smiled and shook my hand. Together we walked back to his office. We chatted for a few minutes. “My eyesight is getting a bit better”, I said, trying to reassure myself. He smiled. “We have your MRI scans. We’ve been able to examine them more carefully”, he looked away now. He opened up the screen and began to zoom in and out across the layers of my brain. “We discovered some lesions—a few in your brain and one in your spine. Also, after more testing of your spinal fluid, we found inflammation”. “W-w-what?” I stammered. This wasn’t the news I was expecting. He carefully removed a pen from his white coat. He pointed out the tiny lesions and talked as he looked at his computer screen. I stared at these faint white scars on his computer screen, at the tip of his pen, on my brain. I slumped back in my chair. I could feel the heat from my stomach rise through my chest, throat, and head. The room got hot. I cried. The young neurologist nudged a box of Kleenex towards me with his fingertips. He pushed back in his chair, creating another foot or two between us. In the background, the steady hum of his laser printer began to spew out page after page after page of what was a manual on disease-modifying therapies for MS published by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. He removed the loose pages from the printer and shuffled, stapled, and placed them down in front of me. It was a booklet of 13 different

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disease-modifying therapies and their various side-effects—nausea, hair loss, upper and lower respiratory infections, headache, diarrhea, throat irritation, or breast cancer. To save time, he made recommendations from “safest” to “most effective, every six months, well-tolerated”. What is this man talking about? I wondered. What is going on? I haven’t been diagnosed with anything—yet. As he spoke, I looked down at the cover page of the manual now resting in my lap. There was a picture of a smiling African American couple sitting on the front steps of their house. The woman in the picture was named “Anqunette”. She was diagnosed in 2013. She had an interesting smile. Slightly forced, it read, “you’ve got this”. What is life like for her? I wondered. Which diseasemodifying therapy was she on? The doctor turned to me and told me that they would need to run more blood tests to be certain. MS is a disease that takes time and multiple tests to diagnose. Between appointments, he told me to look over the therapies and to choose one that was right for me. I was told there is no cure. My body will likely have more flair ups, but that I can take medication to reduce the frequency and severity of episodes. I blinked in disbelief. I left that afternoon with my stomach in my knees. A few weeks later, I returned to the MS clinic. I sat in the waiting room. It was busier than last time. The same sad faces. I watched a woman in her late 20’s move uneasily down the long hallway towards the lobby. She wore blue jeans and a red top. She was thin and had long blonde hair. She made her way over to her mother, who sat opposite me. As she approached, she said, “Mom, they let me look at my brain. It was so cool”. The mother smiled. She patted her daughter on her leg as she flopped down into the chair next to her, “did it light up like a Christmas tree?” They both laughed. I drew my backpack close to my stomach. The mother and daughter read through a slim brochure of what I assumed was a new disease-modifying therapy. What was her story? I wondered. “Hello, Mr. Kohls. Nice to see you”. I looked up. The doctor was smiling. “Nice to see you, too”, I said. We made our way down the hallway to his office. Once inside, his smile dropped, his tone sober. He cleared his throat and said, “so, your blood work was back. Based on the results of your MRI, lumbar puncture, and blood work, I am diagnosing you with Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS)”.

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MS is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system unexpectedly and violently attacks the delicate myelin, the fatty tissue that protects our nerves in our brains, eyes, and spinal cord from harm, much in the same way that the spongy rubber covering protects an electrical cord. Impaired nerves result in scars or lesions which interfere with the brain’s ability to communicate with the body. Over time, these lesions will likely increase and steadily lead to a decline in mobility, vision, and memory. Two-thirds of the positive diagnoses are in women (mostly in their 20s and 30s) and only one-third of men (usually in their 30s and 40s). RRMS is the mildest form of the disease—thankfully. Others like secondary and primary progressive MS are fast moving. Decline is steady and noticeable. In RRMS decline is slower. There are occasional flair-ups or “exacerbations”, followed by a return to “near” normal.

Writing as a Form of Self-care A friend later asked me, “Will you ever write about this?” At the time of the diagnosis, I simply could not write—not yet—and my publishing suffered a setback as a result. While writing provides me with control and normality (Richardson, 2001), I needed to be a mess for a while. I needed to grieve the loss of a part of myself and sit with the dysphoria that accompanies accepting a new situation I desperately wanted to resist. In the weeks following this diagnosis, I requested and received a course release for the spring term. I was also granted extensions on two manuscripts I was writing. Self-care came through multiple stages and began by opening up to friends. Much to my surprise, I learned about friends I have known for years who have MS. Being vulnerable among those whom I trusted, I found community (Hutchison et al., 2018). I went a step further and joined Facebook groups for men with MS and groups for people exploring different disease-modifying therapies. I wanted to hear directly from people with MS, not just the drug companies or my neurologist. I also sought out therapy to discuss the meaning of my diagnosis and what it meant to be a man with MS (see Riessman, 2003). Lastly, as an academic, I was curious about what research questions our colleagues

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in medicine ask about MS and about how we experience this illness. As an ethnographer, I didn’t just observe studies; I took part in them. I participated in a study conducted jointly by the University of Toronto and UC San Francisco to determine how gut inflammation contributes to MS and two studies by the UC San Francisco, one on how LGBTQ + people experience the disease and another on how MRIs can be used to predict disease progression. The latter project is a longitudinal study extending for the next 15 years of my life. I hope that the information and knowledge they collect from me will go to helping the lives of others. If finding community and engaging in trial studies was the first step of my self-care, then writing this book chapter was the second step. It offered me the opportunity to use writing as a tool to examine my personal and professional life since my diagnosis. The process of writing this chapter as a form of researcher self-care has opened up new ways to see how I have grown as a person, educator, and scholar. First, as a junior faculty member, writing about diagnosis has taught me that establishing myself as a scholar includes not only recognizing the value of my supervisor’s advice and trying to follow it, but also realizing that I can add to it. By contributing to Alister’s suggestions, I am writing my way into a world that recognizes the affective side of scholarship and that the healing power of investigation and reflection can provide new opportunities for research, collaboration, and mentorship. I struggled to write this chapter for many months. It was my first attempt to write down what I had composed in my head after years of struggling with my diagnosis. There is a vulnerability in writing about illness. The more I read about other scholars facing similar challenges and the more I started to write about my experiences, the less vulnerable I felt and the more I started to heal. As a form of self-care, writing has given me a way to talk about and accept something that has become a major part of my life— my identity, community—and that has influenced what stories I believe are important to share. In her own account, Richardson (2001) writes that writing gave her faith to recover; for me, writing gives me the space and tools to be present. In Writing as a way of being, Yagelski (2011) insists that writers must be present when they write or meaning will never happen. Writing is not about producing the product; writing is about life living

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through us in the moments that we are writing. Autoethnography is about being present, vulnerable, and committed to dialoguing with the reader. Holman Jones et al. (2013) observe, “telling our stories is a way for us to be present to each other, [and] provides a space for us to create a relationship embodied in the performance of writing and reading that is reflective, critical, loving” (p. 19). Multiple Sclerosis is a disease lived in the present tense; it’s always in the moment. Writing this chapter has also helped me to realize that I cannot separate my everyday lived experience in my body from my scholarship and that self-care as a form of inquiry offers the possibility of understanding crisis, trauma, and risk in ways that create new knowledge. The crisis I experienced in my fieldwork as a graduate student was external to me; it came from the outside and was something I had no control over. Nevertheless, it taught me that research participants will always impact some aspect of my life and hopefully teach me to ask better questions about the world and to see the contexts I study in more dynamic and complex ways. My challenge today is different. MS is a crisis that comes from the inside. I bring my body with me to all my endeavors—teaching, mentoring, networking, collaborating, and researching—and that awareness reminds me that I am always present in my research and that my vulnerabilities and those of my participants are always present. Second, writing this chapter taught me that autoethnography as an intellectual framework offers academics opportunities to productively engage with the ways in which personal illness, disease, and disability impact our personal lives, scholarship, and professional identities (e.g., Allbon, 2012; Alshammari, 2016; Ettorere, 2012; Mozo-Dutton et al., 2012; Van der Meide et al., 2018). When doctors diagnose, they perform a speech act that disempowers patients the moment the phrase is uttered. It immediately defines patients and, like a spider spins a web of connections, traps them within a life centered around illness. In his book, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Eli Clare (2017) writes warily about diagnosis, noting that it “disorients us or devalues what we know about ourselves. It leaves us with doubts, questions, and shame” (p. 42). MS is a disease about identity. What does it mean to be a man with a disease that mostly affects women? I wondered. What would it mean to lose mobility? Would I experience a steady decline? Was it only a matter

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of time before I needed a cane to walk or a wheelchair to move around like all the despairing faces I observed in the clinic waiting room? What if my memory fades? How will I teach? How will I write? How will I make a living? Too many questions and not enough answers. Peter Smagorinsky (2011), whose work in writing studies has influenced my own beliefs about writing pedagogy, discloses his and his daughter’s battle with Asperger’s and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and how these complex conditions, while causing much distress and suffering within the family, pushed him to an unparalleled level of academic productivity. His deep appreciation of Vygotsky’s work on the social impact on cognitive development not only shaped his views on the dialectical nature of writing development, but also changed how he saw mental illness, deficit, and disability. Reading Smagorinsky’s account of his lifelong mental health crisis, it is easy to see that self-care is aided by the ability to write about crisis that allows the writer and reader to connect and reflect together. Writing this chapter has also introduced me to a community of scholars who have written about their MS diagnoses using autoethnography. As a disability scholar, Alshammari (2016) wrote about how engaging in active “dialogue between [herself ] and society” (p. 364) around her MS (e.g., blog and publications) created new possibilities for selfhood. Allbon (2012) used autoethnography as a form of storytelling to process and redefine her relationship with her diagnosis and challenge readers to see the body in new ways. My chapter speaks to the growing scholarship that uses autoethnography to understand disability and illness and contributes to the larger call for autoethnographic work in Applied Linguistics and TESOL (see Mirhosseini, 2018). Third, writing this chapter allowed me to reflect on positive ways in which I re-engaged with writing for publication. Before my diagnosis, my proposal for a special journal issue on beliefs about good writing among second language writing scholars was rejected. Rather than giving up, I returned to Alister’s advice, “collaborate (…) with professional colleagues, near and afar, based on new as well as established contacts” (2016, p. 68). I reached out to a new contact I had made since returning to California, Christine Pearson Casanave, to co-edit a book on good

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writing in applied linguistics and TESOL (Kohls & Casanave, forthcoming). If my original proposal had not been rejected, there would not have been an edited book with three times the contributors than one special issue could possibly muster. Rejection can be a promising force that brings about positive change. If Chris was a recent contact, then my contact with Jennifer Wilson, my former classmate, co-researcher, and friend, and with Lynn Goldstein, my former professor, colleague, co-researcher, and friend, were established ones. Following my diagnosis, Jennifer and I co-authored a chapter for a festschrift in honor of Alister (Kohls & Wilson, 2020), and Lynn and I began to revise a manuscript for publication and started a new research project on discourse level writing and teacher written feedback (Goldstein & Kohls, 2019). Like any form of collaboration, researching and writing together with Chris, Jennifer, and Lynn was part of my healing process. Working alongside these L2 writing scholars has deepened my appreciation for collaboration and for the value of mentorship. It has been a privilege to discuss writing, writers, and teaching writing with scholars who have made a positive and lasting impact on our field.

Closing Remarks In this chapter, I have introduced the idea of academic writing as a form of researcher self-care. By writing about illness, I have come to see my diagnosis as an opportunity to engage with others. It has given me the courage to examine self-care in productive, meaningful, and instrumental ways. Although my writing and research trajectory experienced a setback, my scholarship has taken on a new meaning and given me new opportunities to ask questions of myself I never would have considered before. Richardson (2001) writes that writing plays a major role in our lives as academics and that our lives are shaped by what and how we write. Our scholarship is shot through with our everyday lived experiences, beliefs, values, and assumptions that inform every moment we teach, mentor, and write. Establishing ourselves is going to the hard places and being

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with them, understanding them, and writing about them. People need to be seen, and I hope people can see themselves in me and through my words.

References Allbon, C. (2012). “Down the rabbit hole”— “Curiouser and curiouser”: Using autoethnography as a mode of writing to re-call, re-tell and reveal bodily embodiment as self-reflexivity inquiry. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 1(1), 62–71. Alshammari, S. (2016). Disability, coping, and identity. Journal of Literacy and Cultural Disability Studies, 10 (3), 361–365. Atkinson, P. (2015). For ethnography. Sage. Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer. Beacon Press. Canagarajah, S. (1996). “Nondiscursive” requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written Communication, 13(4), 435–472. Canagarajah, A. S. (2002). A geopolitics of academic writing. University of Pittsburgh Press. Clare, E. (2017). Brilliant imperfection: Grappling with cure. Duke University Press. Cumming, A. (2016). Doctoring yourself: Seven steps. In K. McIntosh, C. Pelaez-Morales, & T. Silva (Eds.), Graduate studies in second language writing (pp. 57–70). Parlor Press. Dickson-Swift, V., James, E. L., & Kippen, S. (2005). Do university ethics committees adequately protect public health researchers? Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 29 (6), 576–579. Ellis, C. (2009). Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. Left Coast Press. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum Social Research, 12(1), 1–13. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 733–768). Sage Publications.

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Ettorre, E. (2012). Autoethnography: king sense of persona illness journeys. In I. Bourgeault, R. Dingwall & R. De Vries (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative methods in health research. Sage Publications. Goldstein, L., & Kohls, R. (2019). More than treating errors: Teacher written feedback and the neglect of discourse level writing. Paper presented at the Symposium on Second Language Writing. Hanauer, D. I., Sheridan, C. L., & Englander, K. (2019). Linguistic injustice in the writing of research articles in English as a second language: Data from Taiwanese and Mexican researchers. Written Communication, 26 (1), 136–154. Holman Jones, S., Adams, T.E., & Ellis, C. (2013). Introduction: Coming to know autoethnography as more than a method. In S. Holman Jones, T.E. Adams, & C. Ellis (Eds.), Handbook of autoethnography (pp. 17–47). Routledge. Hutchison, K., Roberts, C., & Daly, M. (2018). Identity, impairment and disablement: Exploring the social processes impacting identity change in adults living with acquired neurological impairments. Disability & Society, 33(2), 175–196. Johnson, B., & Clark, J. M. (2003). Collecting sensitive data: The impact on researchers. Qualitative Health Research, 13(3), 421–434. Kohls, R., & Casanave, C.P. (Eds.) (Forthcoming). “Good” writing in applied linguistics and TESOL: Neglected but necessary scholarly conversation. University of Michigan Press. Kohls, R. (2019). The researcher-participant relationship: What graduate students can teach us about managing trauma in applied linguistics fieldwork. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Kohls, R. (2016). Tutoring writing, transmitting culture: Tutors’ and students’ beliefs about good writing and a writer’s voice in an afterschool literacy program. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation) University of Toronto. Kohls, R., López-Gopar, M., Herath, S., & Valencia, M. (2016). When the unexpected happens: Coping with participant crisis and death during ethnographic fieldwork. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). Kohls, R., López-Gopar, M., Herath, S., Valencia, M., & Casanave, C. P. (2017). When tragedy strikes: Preparing researchers for unexpected trauma during fieldwork. Paper presented at the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) International Convention and English Language Expo.

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Kohls, R., & Wilson, J. (2020). Lessons for life: What Alister taught us about being effective teachers, researchers, and mentors. In M. Riazi, L. Shi, & K. Barkaoui (Eds.), Studies and essays on learning, teaching and assessing L2 writing in honour of Alister Cumming. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kumar, S., & Cavallaro, L. (2018). Researcher self-care in emotionally demanding research: A proposed conceptual framework. Qualitative Health Research, 28(4), 648–658. Mirhosseini, S.-A. (2018). An invitation to the less-treaded path of autoethnography in TESOL Research. TESOL Journal, 9 (1), 76–92. Moncur, W. (2013). The emotional wellbeing of researchers: Considerations for practice. Paper presented at Changing Perspectives. Mozo-Dutton, L., Simpson, J., & Boot, J. (2012). MS and me: Exploring the impact of multiple sclerosis on perceptions of self. Disability & Rehabilitation, 34 (14), 1208–1207. Naveed, A., Sakata, N. Kefallinou, A., Young, S., & Anand, K. (2017). Understanding, embracing and reflecting upon the messiness of doctoral fieldwork. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 47 (5), 779–792. Ngunjiri, F. W., Hernandez, K. C., & Chang, H. (2010). Living autoethnography: Connecting life and research [Editorial]. Journal of Research Practice, 6 (1), 1–17. Prior, P. (2006). A sociocultural theory of writing. In C. A. MacArthur, A. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of Writing Research (pp. 54–66). The Guilford Press. Prior, M. (2015). Emotions and discourse in L2 narrative research. Multilingual Matters. Richardson, L. (2001). Getting personal: Writing-stories. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14 (1), 33–38. Riessman, C. K. (2003). Performing identities in illness narrative: Masculinity and multiple sclerosis. Qualitative Research, 3(1), 5–33. Schmidt, M., & Hansson, E. (2018). Doctoral students’ well-being: A literature review. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being, 13, 1–14. Sharma, N., & Rickly, K. (2018). Self-care for the researchers: Dark tourism in Varanasi, India. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 19 (1), 41–57. Smagorinsky, P. (2011). Confessions of a mad professor: An autoethnographic consideration of neuroatypicality, extranormativity, and education. Teachers College Record, 113(8), 1701–1732.

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Swain, M. (2006). Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 95–108). Continuum. Van der Meide, H., Teunissen, T., Collard, P., Visse, M., & Visser, L. H. (2018). The mindful body: A phenomenology of the body with multiple sclerosis. Qualitative Health Research, 28(14), 2239–2249. Vincent, J. (2018). Researcher self-care in organizational ethnography: Lesson from overcoming compassion fatigue. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 7 (1), 44-58. Warr, D. (2004). Stories in the flesh and voice in the head: Reflection on the context and impact of research with disadvantaged populations. Qualitative Health Research, 14 (4), 578–587. Yagelski, R. P. (2011). Writing as a way of being: Writing instruction, nonduality, and the crisis of sustainability. Hampton Press Inc.

9 Walking the Early-Career Researcher Path in an Adoptive Culture Pamela Olmos-Lopez

When I was invited to write this chapter on my scholarly publication trajectory as an early-career researcher (ECR), I was uncertain of how to approach it, but the idea was revealed in a fifteen mile-walk on a very rainy December day in Argyll, in the West of Scotland. Macfarlane’s (2012, p. 27) words “walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing”, once again, met my writing path. I had used this quote from the Scottish writer as the final sentence of my PhD thesis. Back then, I acknowledged it was the end of the PhD endeavour, and the beginning of a new path to walk, a new walk to start. I found it then appropriate to start this chapter which precisely seeks to explore an ECR’s scholarly publication trajectory from an emic perspective.

P. Olmos-Lopez (B) Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_9

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Myself(ves) in This Chapter As this is an autoethnography, I want to introduce myself first and say who I am when writing this chapter. I am an academic who is currently based in Mexico, more precisely in the State of Puebla, central Mexico. My academic background started with studying for my Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages in the institution where I currently work (class of 2003). I then did a Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics (AL) at the Universidad de las Americas, an American University based in Puebla (class of 2008), this being the only available MA programme in AL. As I was already fascinated by AL, specifically by writer identity, I decided to pursue a degree in the United Kingdom. I now hold a master’s in research (MRes) and my PhD in AL from Lancaster University (LU). I graduated in 2016. The gaps between completing my BA, MA and PhD are because I decided to gain more professional experience before deciding on the next degree to take. However, the gap between my master’s degree and my PhD was not wanted (see below) because I was more than certain that I wanted to move to the UK to study. Why Lancaster University? Because when I was writing my MA dissertation, much of the relevant literature I included was from academics who worked at Lancaster University. I was originally attracted by the work of Roz Ivaniˇc (e.g. Ivaniˇc, 1998), but later, interested in the academic work of several others in the Department of Applied Linguistics. The gap between completing my MA and beginning my PhD was due to necessary administrative procedures, i.e. obtaining funding, taking a test to prove my language proficiency and applying for study leave and a visa. I was accepted by Lancaster University just a week after I sent my application to the Thesis and Coursework PhD programme, but it took me three years to get there. Changing academic institutions in this way required adaptation to new academic practices and, in the case of the PhD, acculturation to a new country as well as a new academic community, e.g. the way PhD students relate to the staff, diversity in research groups within the same department, interaction with other fellow PhDs. My assimilation process to the North–west of England was fast, and I found it fascinating as other non-academic identities, which I now treasure started to develop. I am

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especially referring to the joys of hillwalking. This became part of my lifestyle which kept me writing during my PhD and still does now with my papers. In Olmos-Lopez (2019), I describe how a solo writing retreat in the Scottish Isles impacted my writing identity, i.e. in isolation in a remote place; I found my space, a room of my own, and I found myself. My writing and my own self started to flow. I was in perfect harmony with myself, my writing, and the world. I felt at home with my adoptive culture. However, at the end of the PhD and my return to Mexico, the odyssey started, i.e. as a writer who felt away from home, and yet in my home country, a bilingual person who now needs to write in Spanish as well as in English. The feelings about and reflections on the struggles of having to write and speak in two languages, participate in two different academic communities, the ‘reverse culture shock’ (I did not experience a cultural shock when moving to the UK, but the opposite when back in Mexico) and the impact of “the place for writing” are explored in my first autoethnography.

My Theoretical Lens and Methodological Framework Since I started my PhD, I began to reflect more deeply on Ivaniˇc’s (1998) view that all writing is influenced by our personal histories. As she puts it: “Each word we write represents an encounter, possibly a struggle, between our multiple past experiences and the demands of a new context” (p. 181). This holds true for me as a writer and my identities, but in particular my writer’s identities. I use the plural intentionally. A writer draws on many identities in a piece of writing. Ivaniˇc (1998) sees the individual as bringing multiple roles to influence the identity they instantiate in their writing. She goes on to say that English as an additional language (EAL) writers can develop different intellectual identities when successfully producing writing in both languages and having been trained in more than one culture or institution. I have had to negotiate my academic identity in both my new and former academic contexts.

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I came to understand this in the writing of an earlier autoethnography (Olmos-Lopez, 2019). The process of writing that paper is described in the paper itself, but in this chapter, I centre my attention on my writer’s identity. I integrate Ivaniˇc’s (1998) framework for the discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. She distinguishes four dimensions in the study the writer’s identity in terms of ‘self-representation’: autobiographical self , i.e. the writer’s sense of his/her roots; discoursal self, the impression conveyed of the author in a particular text; self as author, the writer’s voice in the sense of authoritativeness; and (possibilities for) self–hood , prototypical possibilities for self-hood which depend on any institutional context. Ivaniˇc (1998, p. 182) puts it, “a writer’s ‘autobiographical self ’ at any moment in time is the product of their past experiences and encounters in all their richness and complexity, shaped as they are by their social opportunities and constraints”. I believe so far in the chapter, I have shown how my ‘autobiographical self ’ is present in my experience in writing for publication as an ECR. I address my ‘discoursal self ’ by reflecting on my academic self-image of how I engage with and position myself in my academic community. My ‘self as author’ refers to my expression of ‘voice’, i.e. the written expression, linguistic choices I made (consciously or not) for expressing my academic self in the context of where my articles and chapter were published or sent for publication. In this chapter, I am looking at my discursive choices in a broader sense, i.e. I will not be developing a detailed linguistic analysis but showing some instances as examples of how I construct my academic self in the text. I am particularly discussing my academic discoursal self as I am focusing on my writing for publication. I explore how these three aspects of my writer’s identity are shaped and how they evolve and shape my ‘possibilities for selfhood’ which depend on the socio-cultural context in which I develop myself (Ivaniˇc, 1998). In this chapter, I adopt an autoethnographic approach. Ellis, Adams and Bochner (2011) argue that autoethnographies are usually about epiphanies, moments of significant impact in one’s life, life-changing events, or existential crises experienced as part of a culture or a particular cultural identity. In my view, being published and getting papers rejected at the ECR stage are experiences that certainly have a significant

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impact on the development of one’s academic, disciplinary and personal identities. In this chapter, I am following Ellis et al.s’ (2011) approach of retrospectively and selectively writing about experiences which exemplify certain aspects of my writing for publication during my early research career. Autoethnography positions academic writers both as objects of research and as subjects researching their situated contexts; in this chapter, I am taking both positions to explore my experience of writing articles for publication. My purpose is to present these experiences grounded in the texts themselves by engaging in retrospection on the writing process leading up to the acceptance/ rejection of the papers during three years as an ECR (2017–2020). The data are two published single-authored articles, two co-authored articles and two submitted manuscripts which were ultimately rejected. These are discussed in the light of past and present feelings of satisfaction and frustration, and my current perception. I also include some sections of acceptance/ rejection emails, and I express the feelings I had in each case. In addition, I use the texts themselves to reflect on how I express my ‘voice’. Most ECRs start developing their writer’s identity in their first solo publications, usually produced in the immediate aftermath of or just before completion of their doctorate. As I am currently (and still) experiencing this process, I believe my reflections in this autoethnography could contribute to an understanding of the social phenomena other ECRs experience.

Am I an ECR? What exactly does it mean to be an early-career researcher? I believe part of my uncertainty about how to start this chapter derives from that. I must confess, it was not very clear to me what an ECR was. I came across the concept the year after I finished my PhD (2016) when I heard about grant applications. A couple of colleagues at Lancaster University told me I fell into the category of ECR, so I knew I was eligible to apply, and that was enough for me at the time. However, in writing this chapter, I have come to realize that although I am an ECR in my adoptive academic

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culture and country, I am not in my home country and institution, as I explain below. As can be seen from my academic trajectory, I have been teaching at university level for sixteen years; I have supervised a number of BA dissertations, given conference talks at several international conferences in three continents, organized national conferences, and, most importantly, had already had articles published in Spanish and English before starting my PhD. When I came back to Mexico, I could sense some of my colleagues treating me as a senior scholar and experienced researcher. So, in their (and my) eyes, I was not an ECR at all, at least not in Mexico. However, that is Mexico. Considering that for a more international academic community “life” starts after obtaining a doctorate, I consider myself still to be an ECR in my adoptive academic culture and in terms of publications. I choose to follow the practices of my adoptive Englishspeaking academic culture, and I embrace my new emerging professional identities. And this is the “me” to which I am devoting the research in this chapter. My process of re-adaptation to my L1 culture (apart from writing in Spanish) was long and challenging. Readapting to the institutional academic community with many teaching hours and a range of administrative duties made me feel less independent and more constrained than when I was a PhD student, much as Lillis and Curry (2010) predict when referring to ECRs’ experiences. I have been resisting the abandonment of my academic self in English: I perform a self in that language by teaching in English, communicating in English with those of my colleagues who speak it and by writing in English. However, my writing practices in ‘away retreats’ have certainly been affected, and with it, my writing production, which feels practically at a standstill.

Introspection: My Papers and Identities In this section, I present my reflections on the publications and manuscripts written after I completed my doctorate in 2016. As is wellknown, publishing a paper is usually a long process, i.e. from being invited or submitting the paper, revisions, editing and getting it finally

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published. In this process, there is a mix of feelings and emotions ranging from success and satisfaction up to stress and despair, and the feelings in between. In the coming sections, while talking about my writer identities following Ivani´c’s (1998) framework, I share some of the moments where I was feeling excited or upset as a scholar serving two different academic communities. Since I am narrating my development as an ECR, I believe following a chronological approach will reveal the complexity of the evolution process of becoming increasingly engaged in publication practices. Thus, I turn to the account of each different year. Along the way, I discuss my ‘discoursal self ’, ‘self-as an author’ and how the ‘possibilities of selfhood’ have shaped my publication practices. All this was embedded in the context of me being in my home country and adapting to the values of my home academic culture while writing in English.

2016: “The World is Your Oyster” After the examination of the thesis and once the piece of paper which nicely reads Pamela Olmos-Lopezhas been admitted to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy is in your hands, you hear friends and colleagues telling you that the world is your oyster. I did not feel like that, but I told myself, “Good, now you can do what you want, write what you want and publish where you want”. Full of enthusiasm, I decided to welcome the new stage in my life. I must confess I did not like being called an “ECR”—as explained in my academic trajectory. I thought I was already someone in academia. This ECR title, the reverse culture shock of coming back to my home country, and the institutional demands (e.g. serving on committees, twenty hours teaching a week, and attending meetings) meant that my enthusiasm immediately vanished. I wished I was still doing my PhD or that I could do another. I even began to wonder why I had done a PhD in the first place. However, I also knew that I would not have changed it for anything. Despite facing these conflicting perceptions and the reality of academia, I wanted to embrace my adoptive culture as my permanent home because it is home for me. Academic opportunities, access to the

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bibliography resources we needed, stimulating academic conversations, joy in my research itself and personal feelings of belonging to the place and who I am there are my motivations. I know publishing in top journals could potentially increase the chances to make my move to the UK. So, there was nothing else to do but keep calm and carry on with my research. My academic, personal and professional identities at this stage were in conflict, i.e. my desire to belong to my L2 culture impeded me from realizing that I was a scholar who belongs to two different academic communities. My possibilities for ‘self-hood’ (Ivaniˇc, 1998) opened up opportunities to write and publish in two languages, but even when I was told about it, I could not grasp it. I remember some academic and non-academic friends asking me about the possibilities of me writing in Spanish; my non-academic friends assumed I was going to do it and that it would be easier, while my academic friends suggested, “you could challenge yourself and publish in Spanish”. In both cases, I rejected the simple idea of publishing in Spanish and concentrated on my publications in English. I was certainly aware of the importance of publishing internationally and in indexed journals with impact factors; I saw myself as primarily a participant in the international conversations of the discipline, conversations taking place in English. However, I was not aware that the challenge of writing in my first language would also open up a new writer identity. I moved on with my writing endeavours. I based my first solo article on one of the papers I had written during the PhD coursework component. I believe it was a good paper, i.e. I had received a good mark; the module instructor encouraged me to write it up for publication, and he and my former supervisor gave me feedback before I submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal where I considered my paper would be a good fit in terms of scope. My impression of my academic self in that paper was as knowledgeable, and I believed I had a contribution to make to an unexplored area of knowledge. To my surprise, I got an answer just one week after having submitted it. I was happy, still naive, thinking immediate or nearly immediate answers were good news. No, the answer was a rejection. I was disappointed and quite angry at the same time. There was no feedback, only

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the email body in all its formality, its main line reading, “Unfortunately the reviewer advises against publication”. It was rude; I felt strongly that this was neither ethical nor thoughtful. I doubted the reviewer had even read my manuscript as there were no comments about the content of the paper itself. I shared my story with colleagues and academic friends who told me that this is very common and happens to everyone, even experienced writers. I was sceptical about the latter. I believe I was given the tools for how to write for journals but had not been given the tools to cope with the very tough world of publishing. I felt as if I were in an alien ‘academic’ community. It seems we spoke using different schemata, yet I could sense the power position in which the editor replied as not welcoming or inviting me to submit again to this journal. I put this manuscript in a drawer with a list of ‘re-submit somewhere else’ papers as advised by more experienced colleagues who picked up my pieces and put me back together. I started listening to similar ‘tales of woe’ from friends who had also experienced rejections of their first papers. Some told me they quit academia because they did not want to feel like that all the time. I thought, ‘I do not want to quit, I like what I do, I like my research, but certainly publishing is not easy’. I decided to give it another try and keep writing. Later, in this very same year, the publication of my first co-authored paper changed my writing mood. This article was written in the last year of my doctorate and published a year later. The experience of writing was very different to solo writing, i.e. two writers sharing research interests, belonging to the same community, and with the time and space to coauthor an article. Publishing with an already established academic gave me a sense of officially belonging to the community. My reflection of my discoursal-self (in Ivaniˇc’s, 1998, terms) then is that I started to feel more empowered, and my engagement with the community and writing for publication was then strengthened. As this gave me some more motivation, I started another article on one of the many ‘research in progress’ projects I had while also working on the papers that I wanted to develop from my PhD thesis. This first year after completing my PhD was a tough year in many ways due to the reverse culture shock, and my publication projects were not exempt

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from these difficulties. The fact of belonging to two different academic communities makes the process even more challenging. I realized “the world is your oyster” was a nice cheering way to congratulate you for the PhD, but reality brings you down to earth with a thud.

2017: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want … But You Can Try Some Time …” At the beginning of 2017, I had an exciting and busy writing agenda. By December of the previous year, my abstract for a special issue had been accepted, so I needed to write the complete paper. It was seven months of hard work devoted only to this paper. The process and communication with editors ran smoothly, i.e. it was friendly and accommodating. Unlike my first experience, this time, I received excellent critical feedback; the tone and presentation were handled with care. Both my reviewers and the editor were positive and constructive—but it was not accepted. This is a line from the rejection email: While comments from both reviewers are encouraging of your endeavours, we do not feel that your paper is at a stage where it can be considered for publication in the special issue.

I saw no evidence in their feedback to justify anything other than acceptance, obviously with revisions. I did not understand why. My brain was reading “we like it, but we do not want it”. It did not sound coherent to me. For the writing of this manuscript, my sense of self as an author was of positioning myself as someone with a good knowledge of the issues in the field. I had claimed authority, and my authorial presence was established in the manuscript. Now, looking back at this, and considering what Ivaniˇc (1998) says, “[t]he self as author is likely to be to a considerable extent a product of a writer’s autobiographical self ” (p. 6) in the sense of having generated “a sense of self-worth to write with authority, to establish an authorial presence” (p. 6), I know I felt that sense of selfworth and authority. I was and am a researcher in academic literacies who has devoted more than a few years to studying academic writing. In

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my PhD thesis, I had specialized in the specific topic of the paper, i.e. the thesis genre. After the email, “we like it, but we do not want it”, I felt I was not “good enough for academia”, and those were the very words I emailed to my former supervisors with whom I still share my failures and successes. They also commented on the positive feedback and gave me more positive comments and advice for continuing with my publication plans. Their words restored my confidence and cleared things up in my mind, i.e. the criticism is of the paper, and not of the person; the feedback given is helpful for reworking and resubmission. “When it comes to publication, perseverance pays off ” was the final line in one of their messages. They also pointed out that I had not paid much attention to an important phrase in the rejection email: “it cannot be considered for publication in the special issue”. I emailed the editor and asked if I could submit it to the journal as a regular submission, and the answer was, “please do”. Then, I understood; it was the special issue which gave the final ‘No’. My former supervisors, friends and colleagues have become part of my life, my new identities (those possibilities for self-hood opened to different relationships as I graduated), and I wanted them to be part of it in the UK and also to bring them with me in a way while in Mexico. Academically, I realize I was still behaving as if my institutional culture was the Linguistics Department at Lancaster University while I was physically in Mexico, working for a different institution. Certainly, the relationship of being a postgraduate student changed to that of a colleague. Non-academically, I was missing my hiking groups and the multiculturality of the gatherings with friends. I think both not accepting being back in the home country, and the rejection of the two submitted solo papers upset and depressed me. My mind was somewhere else, and the excitement around writing had gone. I was a long way from being aware that my possibilities for self-hood were two-fold, i.e. one belonging to my adoptive culture and the other belonging to my home country. However, I continued to travel back and forth to the UK and frequently to conferences worldwide. These have kept me in touch with my adoptive academic culture and friends while working in my

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home country. This back and forth travelling and conference presenting have also allowed me to expand my academic communities. ‘Centreperiphery’ relations of this kind are important for those who have travelled and developed a career in another country such as the UK (see Connell & Wood, 2002). My academic identity was restored, which gave me great satisfaction as I have been able to share research interests and discuss them at a level which allows me to be more critical. I have made new acquaintances and academic friends, and on some occasions, I can visualize how to do more interdisciplinary work.

2019: Get It While You Can While still in the midst of my assimilation process, in early 2018, I received an email from a friend who did her PhD studies at Lancaster University at the same time as I did. She sent me a new call for papers for a special issue on multilingualism, and one of the main questions to address was: How did you negotiate your identity (in both your L1 and L2 networks) as a researcher writing in a language other than your L1? I could not stop myself from wanting to tell my story as I was struggling with that very question. This was my introduction to writing autoethnographies. My colleague and friend Dr Karin Tusting provided me with the basics for reading on autoethnography. The process, as described in my first published solo article, was enjoyable as it involved learning new methodologies, and I was able to talk about the experience I was struggling with. However, recalling and reflecting on the experience itself was a painful one since the introspection and inquiry autoethnography requires means confronting yourself (Ellis, 2004). My abstract was accepted, and seven months later, the complete paper was also accepted. I was happy. I had to make revisions, but having my first solo publication after completion of my PhD accepted felt glorious. I had published papers before completing my PhD, but this one was simply different. I felt finally the four components of identity that Ivaniˇc (1998) suggests were integrating themselves nicely. The article was an autoethnography from the perspective of a bilingual writer, reflecting on my own identity when writing in English and Spanish. There was an

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initial account of my autobiographical self , the elements of which I also integrated throughout the paper. I narrated the experience of the struggles when writing an abstract in both languages; I originally wrote my abstract in English, and the paper was accepted, but the conference (held in Mexico) also required contributors to have an abstract in Spanish. My discoursal self and the linguistic features I used in the paper followed the type of research approach, i.e. qualitative, so I used the pronoun “I” and personal constructions; it was easy to express my voice and stance as I was writing about lived experiences. In this paper, I can see myself as an author claiming authority as a researcher and as a writer who is knowledgeable about the discipline, but I also position myself as an ECR facing the challenge of writing in two languages and exposing those feelings of fragility when experiencing my odyssey of moving back and forth and living in two worlds. Thus, this paper illustrates several of my identities and shows my authorial presence for each of them. However, in the comparative analysis of English and Spanish, I did in this article, I realize my authorial identity might be strong and show presence in the English version, while my Spanish version needs work. A very important point in the writing of this autoethnography was its organization, i.e. the editors of the special issue gave us the freedom to write our paper the way we felt it should be organized. Thus, ideas flowed, and the story reads smoothly. Their encouragement and feedback were helpful in many ways and reassured my self as an author of this autoethnography. The interaction and the way editors and I worked also opened my possibilities for self-hood since we have become academic friends as a result. I got an invitation to write a book chapter, and it was my second paper written in the same year. The chapter follows, however, a quantitative approach. Thus, the linguistic choices were different, i.e. they respond to the discoursal self being constructed according to the corpus linguistics methodology I used. It has few cases of first-person pronouns and uses more hedging. It took a year of revisions, and it was in 2019 when I received the news that it had been accepted for publication. At this stage, I felt everything was changing for the best. Was I then still in the game of being an ECR writing for publication? Should I continue to call myself an ECR?

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I was, and I am still an ECR in my international academic context. However, in this process, while writing now, I can see that my possibilities for self-hood expanded enormously while being a PhD student. It was a colleague back then and my former lecturer, both my friends now, who guided me in a way to write this article. And it has been my participation as a presenter in international conferences that has functioned as a door-opener to the international community beyond the UK. These, other possibilities, as Ivaniˇc (1998) asserts, shape my identity as a writer. I started to feel more reassured and with a stronger sense of belonging to the international community.

2020: Keeping the Faith That year my publication trajectory was enhanced by a newly published article. A second co-authored paper was accepted and published a couple of months later. I wrote this article with Dr Tusting in a one-month research visit to Lancaster University in October 2019. The speed of writing the two co-authored papers was different. The first paper, co-authored with Jane Sunderland (published 2016), was written in our “free time” while with Karin Tusting (published 2020), it was our priority as the deadline for the special issue was just in front of us, and we had to strategically organize it and make time to have it done. Despite my trajectory of rejection and struggling with coming back to my home country, in both cases, I felt confident with this coworking arrangement. These two occasions have not only enhanced my perception of my self as an author but have also improved my discoursal self ‘s choices when writing on my own and allowed me to forge more intimate friendships with my co-authors. I experienced the process as an instance of mentorship. All discussions were cordial and enjoyable, and we could reach agreements as we worked. I had no feelings either paper would be rejected even though both coauthors acknowledged that they too had had rejections. The individuality in the team-autoethnography paper is observable as we presented our individual accounts, but there are also dialogic accounts. Reading the paper, I can sense both my identity and that of my co-author. My

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linguistic choices, e.g. especially evaluative adjectives and reporting verbs, were assertive and showed my position as a bilingual writer now “accepting” my possibilities for both communities and positioning myself in both of them differently. In the case of my 2016 paper, the process was different, and the methodology used does not reveal individual accounts, but I also see how each of us is present, and the readers may well be able to see both of us there. Mentorship and co-authoring are practices ECRs could well engage with as they can reassure and build confidence. As Lave and Wenger (1991) affirm, in such “legitimate peripheral participation”, novices can learn and develop their skills in a community of practice where experience is gained via a social situation. ECRs can, in this way, acquire and develop professional skills by co-authoring—especially with more experienced researchers. There is also an immense amount of learning about yourself as a writer enhanced by working with others, the nature of peer-work, and the others’ ways of working (from which one can learn). To keep promoting learning, carrying out team-autoethnography of co-authored papers could also shed light on the usefulness of the approach and the potential benefits for both parties. The recommendation also extends to considering that the ECR should get familiar with the socio-political contexts in which the publishing activity develops. 2020 was a challenging year for humanity and for my writing too. I have mentioned the importance of space, my feelings towards my adoptive culture and its motivating effects to keep me writing. The idea for this chapter was the product of a walk in Scotland, but the entire paper has been written in Mexico as I have not been able to fly back to the UK. The ‘exile’ state I feel I am in and other pandemic effects such as not being able to go out or limits on our outdoor activity have been slowing down my writing and academic production.

A Personal Reflection In this chapter, I have reviewed my trajectory as an ECR with an emic perspective. My study developed chronologically, involving successful

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stories of publication and co-author publications as well as failures and rejections. Through doing this work, I have revised understandings of these methodologies, authorial identity and ECR constraints. I am now more accepting of myself as an ECR in terms of early-career writing and research for publication in peer-reviewed journals and as a participant in an international academic community. However, I am firm in the conviction that I am not an ‘early-career’ lecturer, conference presenter or researcher in the semi-periphery (Mexico) or the centre (UK). By documenting my experiences, I have become conscious that the feelings associated with reverse culture shock influenced to a large extent how I perceived the rejection of my submitted papers. Also, I have become more aware of the major role that supervisors, colleagues, friends, mentors and even editors play in the process of publication. Perseverance will get you published, but you also need to have the right people near you or the process may well be even harder. Co-authoring and mentoring/being mentored are important ways to succeed, i.e. when publishing, there is less pressure writing with a co-author than writing as a single author; ideas can be dialogued in the process of writing when co-authoring. I hope that I have shown the value of adopting an autoethnographic approach in providing valuable perspectives for understanding academic literacy practices, especially a researcher’s publication trajectory.

References Connell, R. W. & Wood, J. (2002). Globalization and scientific labour: Patterns in a life-history study of intellectual workers in the periphery. Journal of Sociology. The Australian Sociological Association, 38(2), 167– 190. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Altamira Press. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 36 (4), 273– 290.

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Ivaniˇc, R. (1998). Writing and identity. The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. John Benjamins. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lillis, T., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge. Macfarlane, R. (2012). The old ways: A journey on foot. Viking. Olmos-Lopez, P. (2019). Back and forth between languages: An early-career bilingual academic’s writing odyssey. Critical Multilingualism Studies, 7 (1), 32–43.

10 The Digitally-Mediated Scholar: Online Identities and Investment in the Discursive Practices of an Academic Community Ron Darvin

Setting off a fourth revolution in the means of production of knowledge (Harnad, 1991), digital technologies have transformed the way scholars work, communicate and interact with one another. By enabling new forms of social participation and knowledge dissemination, social media have become more integrated into academic life. Through platforms like Academia.edu and ResearchGate, scholars are able to create professional profiles, connect with others, and interact with the work of members of their chosen academic communities. The networks in these spaces are constructed through technology and the imagined collectives that emerge from interacting in these spaces. Within these “networked publics” (boyd, 2011), scholars engage with each other and negotiate shared values and norms of collective behaviour, and their participation in these online communities play a role in the unfolding of their scholarly trajectories. R. Darvin (B) The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_10

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Concerned with how technologies are transforming academic practices, digital scholarship is a burgeoning research area that examines a range of social and technological factors (Jordan & Weller, 2018; Weller, 2011). One aspect of digital scholarship that has gained momentum in recent years is the academic use of social networking sites (SNS) which enable users to create profiles and make connections with others (boyd & Ellison, 2007; Hogan & Wellman, 2014). By using these tools, new patterns of academic networking emerge. Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012) use the term Networked Participatory Scholarship to examine the affordances of social networking online for academics to “share, reflect upon, critique, improve, validate, and otherwise develop their scholarship” (p. 766). Cultures-of-use (Thorne, 2016) that surround these platforms can vary across locations and disciplines, and scholars participate in these new spaces of socialization by drawing on their linguistic and semiotic repertoires and discovering new ways of representing themselves. When they are in dialogue with others, scholars not only exchange information but also reorganize a sense of who they are and how they relate to the world (Norton, 2013). Navigating online and offline spaces of academic socialization, they perform different identities and continually negotiate a legitimate space where they can claim the right to speak. As an early-career scholar of Applied Linguistics interested in issues of identity, investment, and technology, I move across different research domains that include TESOL, language learning, SLA, sociolinguistics, literacy, and educational sociology. I participate in conferences organized by the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Literacy Research Association (LRA), and American Educational Research Association (AERA). I recognize that the communities we choose to participate in shape our publication trajectories and that through the networks that we develop in these spaces, we are able to cultivate our research interests in different ways. As technology continues to play an increasingly significant role in the way we perform our scholarly identity, I am also particularly interested in how the tools we choose to mediate our research and knowledge dissemination practices can impact our own publication trajectories.

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When I began my PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC) conducting research on the digital practices of recently immigrated Filipino youth in Vancouver, I swiftly immersed myself in familiarizing myself not only with the platforms and apps popular with the students and teachers in my study, but also the tools that fellow scholars used. From searching for articles on Google Scholar to using reference management software like Mendeley or qualitative data analysis software like NVivo, I felt compelled to familiarize myself with a wide range of technologies to position myself as a digital literacy expert. After completing my PhD, I accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the English Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and I began designing and teaching courses on digital literacies and language learning technologies. Technology became both subject of and tool for my research, and thus it is inextricably interwoven with my identity as a scholar. I recognize also that it is never neutral and that as I position myself and am positioned in these digital platforms, how I perform my scholarly identity is shaped not only by relations of power, but also by the sociotechnical structures and algorithmic processes that govern these technologies. To navigate these continually evolving spaces with greater agency, I need to negotiate my cultural and social resources more strategically so that I can claim a legitimate place in my field. In this chapter, I reflect on how digital technologies shape my academic identity, my publication trajectory and participation in specific scholarly communities. I pay particular attention to the design of these platforms to understand how they structure the online social world, and in effect, the way we interact in these spaces. In the same way that we examine communicative events as they are shaped by the material environment: the arrangement of seats in a classroom, the location of a door or a window or the presence of a podium, we also need to understand how the arrangement of space in an online platform shapes the way we behave and interact with one another. We need to acknowledge as well that embedded in this digital architecture are algorithms that operate invisibly and have the power to direct the flow of information and the forms of interaction. Recognizing the genres of participation and online

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cultures of these diverse platforms, this chapter poses the following questions: In what ways do I negotiate my identity as an early-career scholar online? To what extent does technology shape my investment in the discursive practices of my scholarly community?

Choosing a Lens To respond to these questions, I look to the model of investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), which recognizes how power circumscribes the discursive practices of different communities. How scholars are able to invest in the goals, practices, and identities that constitute an academic community is socially and historically constructed and negotiated in different fields. As a theoretical tool, investment thus enables an examination of the conditions under which social interaction takes place, and the extent to which social relations of power enable or constrain opportunities to speak. This investment lies in the intersection of identity, capital and ideology. As scholars participate in the discursive practices of their chosen academic community, how they are recognized as legitimate members, engage meaningfully with others and imagine this affiliation becomes critical for them to be able to claim the right to speak (Norton, 2013). By recognizing identity as “particular forms of semiotic potential, organized in a repertoire” (Blommaert, 2005, p. 207), we could examine how scholars in negotiating their identities online, assemble their linguistic and semiotic resources, communicate across multiple symbolic systems and imagine new identities and ways of being in the world. Because identity is driven by multiple and sometimes contradictory desires and is negotiated with others, it is a site of struggle, and thus investment is complex and perpetually in a state of flux. Capital is power in forms that extend from the material/ economic to the cultural and social (Bourdieu, 1986), and how these forms of capital are distributed represents the structure of the social world. The form the different types of capital take “once they are perceived and recognized as legitimate” (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 4) in different fields is symbolic capital. By asserting that capital has different forms and values as it

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travels across space and time, the model of investment acknowledges that power is polylithic and porous, something that can be redistributed and reconfigured. This conception of power extends to an understanding of ideologies as “dominant ways of thinking that organize and stabilize societies while simultaneously determining modes of inclusion and exclusion” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 72). This pluralized formulation highlights how ideologies are constructed by different structures of power and reproduced by both institutional conditions and recursive hegemonic practices. By shaping dominant practices, ideologies determine who occupies the centre and the periphery of a social space, whether online or offline, and who participates outside the parameters of what is considered acceptable. In the online world, ideologies are embedded in the sociotechnical structures and algorithms of different platforms (Darvin, 2017). How these spaces are designed index different conceptions of who their users are and should be and the modes of participation that are regarded as normative. As scholars navigate these transideological spaces, they both position themselves and are positioned by others based on the volume, composition, and trajectory of their capital. For Davies and Harré (1990), “discursive practices constitute the speakers and hearers in certain ways and yet at the same time are a resource through which speakers and hearers can negotiate new positions” (p. 7). As digital technologies increasingly mediate relations between members of the academic community, these tools are also vested with the power to structure its discursive practices. To exercise their agency, scholars need to be able to regard themselves as “choosing subjects” (Davies & Harré, 1990) and recognize that their identities within these academic communities are contingent and shifting. While positions can be ascribed by existing social structures, they also hold the potential to reframe their identities, and claim more powerful positions. To gain insights into how I navigate online academic spaces as a scholar, I drew on an autoethnographic approach (Starfield, 2020) which describes and analyzes personal experiences to understand cultural experience. Reed-Danahay (2017, p. 145) sees autoethnography as a “genre of writing that places the self of the researcher and/or narrator within a social context”. Marsh (2013) uses the term “cyber-autoethnography” to

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refer to a form of ethnography that focuses on describing the experiences of a researcher in specific online contexts, enabling them to investigate their own literacy histories in online environments. By providing researchers with an emic perspective, this approach enables placing this online autobiographical account in a wider social, cultural, and historical context. Similar to this perspective, Dunn and Myers (2020, p. 43) refer to “digital autoethnography” as a method which “relies on personal experience(s) to foreground how meaning is made among people occupying and connected to digital spaces”. By observing my own participation in three social media platforms (Google Scholar, Academia, and ResearchGate) for six weeks (June to mid-July 2020), I was able to take down notes about my own discursive practices, find themes, and collect digital artifacts, which includes screenshots of these spaces. To examine more closely how these spaces were structured, I also undertook a multimodal discourse analysis which Jones (2013) defines as “an approach to discourse which focuses on how meaning is made through the use of multiple modes of communication as opposed to just language” (p. 1). He points out that speakers enact their identities through discourse, and that meaning is made not just through language but through multiple modes of communication. The development of new media has enabled the blending of modes, which themselves have acquired new meanings. By dissecting how linguistic and semiotic forms are assembled in online spaces, multimodal discourse analysis allows the understanding not just of the texts but also the practices, structures, and ideologies that circumscribe them.

Negotiating My Scholarly Identity To answer the first question regarding the negotiation of my online scholarly identity, I would like to focus on my public profile pages across these platforms as they are seen by other users. While it can be argued that one’s body of work is what largely defines one’s scholarly identity, constructing a profile in these social network platforms has become a significant discursive practice in academic communities. When one enters my name in Google Web Search, my profile page in Academia,

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Twitter, Google Scholar, LinkedIn, and ResearchGate are all in the top ten results. The details from the “Knowledge Panel” that appears on the right-hand side are from Google Scholar and include links to my most cited work. If a researcher does not create a profile in Google Scholar and their work appears after a search query, their name will not be hyperlinked to any page where the user can find other work by this researcher. Across these social media platforms, there are standard markers of an academic identity that figure prominently in a profile: institutional affiliation, research interests or skills and expertise. By discussing how these platforms are designed to highlight different aspects of one’s scholarly trajectory, I would like to discuss how this shapes the way I position myself as an early-career scholar and my different publications (Fig. 10.1). Google Scholar Serving primarily as a web search engine that indexes the metadata of scholarly work, Google Scholar also qualifies as a social media platform in that it provides researchers with the option to create a public author profile and add their institutional affiliation, their areas of interest and homepage, details which are in turn hyperlinked to other pages. A “Follow” button enables users to subscribe to updates of a

Fig. 10.1

Google Scholar profile (June 2020)

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scholar’s work. Apart from the brief profile details at the top of the page which the account holder inputs, everything else is automatically populated by the metadata collected by Google from published work. By default, publications are listed from the highest number of citations to the lowest. One can also click on “Title” to arrange the list alphabetically or “Year” to view the titles in reverse chronological order (from most recent publication to oldest). A sidebar on the right indicates total citations, citations in the past five years, and the h-index which measures productivity (i.e. number of papers produced) and impact (number of citations). The metrics in the sidebar also includes the i10-index, designed by the platform to highlight the number of publications with at least ten citations. In Google Scholar, I have very little control over the way I represent myself. How my publications are listed in my profile is determined by the categories that Google has deemed relevant (number of citations, date of publication, alphabetical). From the moment I publish something that is recognized as scholarly literature, my name exists in the database and I would have to claim this identity to establish a profile where I am allowed to upload my photo and choose five key terms that best represent the work I do. These terms are not fixed categories in Google Scholar and I have the freedom to compose whatever terms I find relevant. However, these keywords serve not just as lexical choices but as data that will be processed by algorithms to determine how my work will be distributed in the system. After inputting these terms, each of them is automatically hyperlinked to a page where other scholars who have similarly identified this area of expertise are listed according to their citation numbers. Because of this functionality, I know I have to choose keywords that will link me to the network that I align myself with. However, this becomes problematic when “investment” puts me alongside scholars of economics and finance, and while I subscribe to the plural term, “digital literacies”, I recognize that a number of the established scholars whose work I follow are classified under “digital literacy”. While users would be able to discern such distinctions, we would not know to what extent the algorithms would and how this ambiguity shapes interactions on this platform.

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Because of the “Cited by” button of Google Scholar, it has also become very easy for me to identify who refers to each of my publications and this affordance shapes my own imagination of the scholarly community I belong to. When I look at my most cited work, for instance, “Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics” (co-authored with Bonny Norton), the list of publications that cited this journal article is also arranged by citation number. Thus, I am more likely to see the names of more established scholars first and to access their work, and the chances of me referring to their work in future publications would be higher. In this case, the circulation of the symbolic capital citations becomes largely limited to those who already possess it. Academia.edu In an Academia.edu profile, my name is followed immediately by an “AuthorRank” indicated by a graph icon (see Fig. 10.2) which is “a function of the PaperRanks of the papers on my profile. This PaperRank is based on the number of recommendations each publication of mine has received and is also weighted by the AuthorRanks of those who made these recommendations. Apart from the fields of institutional affiliation, biography and links to social media accounts, the introductory section also indicates in bold letters, the numbers of four

Fig. 10.2

Academia.edu profile (June 2020)

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categories: “Followers”, “Following”, “Co-authors”, and “Total Views”. To share my work, I have the option to create and arrange sections in the way I deem appropriate. In my profile, I classified my work into journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, pedagogical resources, conference presentations, and talks, arranged according to what I perceive as valuable in an academic community. Unlike Google Scholar where publications are listed regardless of academic genre, in Academia.edu, not only am I able to decide how to classify my publications, but I am also able to determine which genre appears first in my profile. In my case, I have listed my work as: journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, pedagogical resources, and conference presentations. By adding “Pedagogical resources”, I am able to include my publication, “Teaching critical digital literacy to combat fake news: A resource for teachers and teacher educators” (Darvin, 2018), which has an ISBN but does not show up on Google Scholar. I have also been able to upload “Waiting” (Darvin, 2016), a creative work of mine that was published in a literature textbook, and which has been the subject of two of my journal articles, “Representing the margins: Multimodal performance as a tool for critical reflection and pedagogy” (Darvin, 2015) and “Creativity and criticality: Reimagining narratives through translanguaging and transmediation” (Darvin, 2019). Because of these affordances, I have been able to share a more diverse publication portfolio and position myself in new ways. I am able to signal my affiliation with the field of Education, and when I conduct workshops for teachers, I direct them to my Academia.edu page to access these pedagogical resources. By uploading a copy of “Waiting”, not only am I able to include a link in my journal articles for scholars to access this work, but I am also able to demonstrate a wider repertoire as an early-career scholar. In Academia.edu, scholars are able to access various analytics regarding activity associated with their profile: A listing of the date and time a user visited their profile or content, and the country, city and state from which they accessed this content. The “Impact” tab of the Analytics page shows a report of the past 30 days that includes: the number of unique visitors, downloads, views and pages read. This report also provides the number of countries, cities, universities, research, fields and job titles of these unique visitors. From the “Papers” tab, an account holder can also

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see a 30-day report of the number of views, unique visitors and downloads and the total number of all-time views and downloads for each publication. For a report on activity in my profile from June 3 to July 2, 2020 I could see that I had 516 unique visitors, 101 downloads, and 744 views. These visitors were from 41 countries, 111 cities, 75 universities, and 547 research fields and held 16 job titles. Under each category is a list of items, arranged from the highest number of visitors to the lowest. In the same report, for instance, I could see that my top visitors came from the United States (376 visitors), Des Moines (25 visitors), and the University of Kansas (29 visitors), and that these visitors were mostly Faculty Members (122 visitors) and were Digital Literacy researchers (18 visitors). This degree of surveillance shapes the way I perceive who the audience of my work is and the level of interest in my different publications. By providing me with values other than citation numbers, I am able to gain confidence as an early-career scholar that even though some publications are less cited that they are still read and downloaded by others (Fig. 10.3). ResearchGate Similar to Academia.edu, ResearchGate provides a score that appears beside one’s name, and they describe this “RG Score” as a measurement of “scientific reputation based on how your work is received by your peers” (ResearchGate, 2020). An algorithm measures how peers “evaluate” your contributions, and this evaluation is determined by citations, recommendations and “reads” (when someone reads an abstract, looks at a figure or downloads the full-text.) Following an Elo rating system from chess, one’s RG score is dependent on the RG scores of those who interact with one’s research, i.e. someone whose work is recommended by a high-RG user (presumably a more established scholar) would get more points than one who is recommended by a less-known scholar. While Academia.edu’s AuthorRank also follows an Elo system, the design of ResearchGate foregrounds RG scores and other metrics of “research interest”. In the “Network” box that appears on the right, the RG scores of those I follow and those who follow me are attached to their names. As users scroll down my profile, they will find a “Stats overview” before accessing my featured research, and these “stats” include the number of recommendations, citations, and reads summed

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Fig. 10.3

ResearchGate profile (June 2020)

up in a “Total Research Interest”. In the Scores tab, my place in the percentile ranking is also highlighted, indicating how my RG score is higher than x% of all members’ scores. In ResearchGate, I do not have the freedom to categorize my own research publications like in Academia.edu, and the publication genres

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are given and arranged in a specific order: article, chapter, conference paper, data, research presentation, poster, preprint, and full-texts. In the Overview tab of my profile, however, I do get to select five publications to appear in my “Featured Research” box. This affordance has enabled me to promote work that has not gained as much traction as my other work, and in many cases, I have seen how “reads” of a specific publication do increase when I feature this work more prominently. The platform also highlights in green those publications that were “Most recommended” and “Most read” in the last month. One other striking feature of ResearchGate that distinguishes it from Academia.edu is that it encourages forms of interaction other than share, follow, read, and download. In the Research section, “Projects” appear before “Research items” and members are invited to comment and give feedback on ongoing work and also to pose and answer questions. This affordance has provided me with the opportunity to engage with a more diverse set of scholars in ways that I would not necessarily have been able to do in conferences and other academic contexts.

Investing in the Discursive Practices of My Scholarly Community When it comes to participating in these online scholarly communities, I recognize that the extent to which I invest in various discursive practices is shaped by the negotiation of identity, capital, and ideology. Power exists in both online and offline contexts, and my autoethnography has made me better aware of how it can operate in different ways as my interactions are mediated by different technologies. Identity As an early-career scholar, I find the question of who comprises my scholarly community particularly critical as I negotiate my different identities and carve out my place in a field of crisscrossing epistemological beliefs. In the offline world, this community could include my co-authors, university colleagues, scholars I cite and those who cite me, fellow members of academic organizations I am part of and

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whose conferences I participate in, those who attend my talks and those whose talks I attend. The extent to which I am able to access these discursive spaces and assert my legitimate place in them is negotiated with different gatekeepers and barriers to entry. These power dynamics also circumscribe online academic social networks, positioning participants in different ways. From the moment one tries to gain membership in these spaces, they need to satisfy specific conditions and occupy the identity categories made available to them. When someone wants to join ResearchGate and create an account, the user is asked “What type of researcher are you?” and the choices are: “Academic or student” (university students and faculty, institute members, and independent researchers”, “Corporate, government, or NGO” (technology or product developers, R&D specialists, and government or NGO employees in scientific roles), or “Medical” (health care professionals, clinical researchers). Those who click on “Not a researcher”, which in this case is described as “Journalists, citizen scientists, or anyone interested in reading and discovering research” are only allowed to browse rather than open an account. In my profile, highlighted beside my RG score is the degree I hold. In contrast, to sign up in Academia.edu, no qualifying questions are asked and users are only asked to type in their name, email, and password. After signing up, one is asked though to identify as “Faculty Member”, “Graduate Student”, “Undergraduate”, “Post-Doc”, “Adjunct, “Emerita or Emeritus” or “Independent Researcher”, and this title is highlighted under one’s name. In Google Scholar, publications are a requirement to be listed as a scholar, but one’s profile does not indicate title or degree, and whether you are a professor or a graduate student is not considered relevant. In this sense, it approximates the interactions in a conference where our name tags list only our name and institutional affiliation, and when we present or participate in a discussion, we do not have to introduce ourselves with our titles, and this erasure temporarily collapses academic hierarchies of power. When Bonny Norton and I published our 2015 article in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics and presented together in different conferences, she would refer to me as her co-author or colleague, and there were people I met who had read

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our work but were not aware that I was still a graduate student. Positioning me as a published co-author enabled me to reframe my identity as an emerging scholar and to claim a legitimate place that was not necessarily peripheral. In contrast, when people accessed my Academia.edu and ResearchGate profiles at that time, not only could they immediately identify that I was still a graduate student, they would also find a score (AuthorRank/RGscore) attached to my name that attempted to locate my exact position in the academic hierarchy or percentile. Whether people understood exactly what this score represented and how it was computed becomes irrelevant. What is made visible is a numerical value that signifies the volume of the symbolic capital I possess. Capital As scholars curate their identities on these platforms, the design, sociotechnical structures and available categories index what is considered symbolic capital in a scholarly community. Apart from the standard categories of institutional affiliation and areas of expertise that are displayed most prominently, the order in which other sections, tabs or action buttons are placed signal ideological conceptions of what a “good scholar” says and does. The valuation of different forms of capital has of course existed prior to these platforms: the cultural capital associated with the volume and influence of one’s work and the social capital tied to one’s network of co-authors, collaborators, and referenced scholars. The h-index and the Impact Factor of journals have contributed to the quantification of this capital, and these numbers have greatly influenced hiring and tenure practices within academe. What these platforms have done, however, has greatly expanded the scope of this quantification and in effect the way scholarly identities are positioned and performed. Google Scholar displays articles with the greatest number of citations at the top of the search results, which strengthens the Matthew Effect, i.e. those that are highly cited get more readers and are thus more likely to receive more citations, consolidating their lead over other articles. It sediments the position of established work rather than promoting the latest trends or articles that advance a view that is different from the mainstream (Beel & Gipp, 2009). When users access a Google Scholar profile, they have an option to follow or subscribe to the work of this scholar, but the profile itself

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does not highlight how many followers they have. In contrast, Academia profiles highlight the number of followers a scholar has, the number of people this scholar follows, and the number of co-authors they have. Below these figures are a green button to “Follow” and a white button to “Message” the scholar. For ResearchGate, there is a prominent blue “Follow” button beside the scholar’s name, and one is only able to message scholars that one follows. Inscribed in these affordances and constraints are ideologies that shape the conditions of participation in these spaces. The number of followers a scholar has becomes a quantification of social capital, and this number is accorded even greater symbolic value when the number of people the scholar follows is significantly smaller. In my case, that I have more followers than people I follow in both Academia.edu and ResearchGate is not because I intentionally limit the latter, and this asymmetry is more a reflection of the limited time I invest in these platforms. How this differential is interpreted by others needs to be investigated further, but the issue that arises from this “Followers-Following” dichotomy is that it serves as another way to sediment the hierarchies in this online scholarly community. While there is no running tally of those that established scholars cite, what the Follow button does is to highlight how there are those who follow and those who are followed. Unlike in Facebook where “friending” someone involves reciprocity (i.e. if you accept my friend request, we both become friends), in Academia.edu, ResearchGate and Twitter, the conditions of “following” someone are based on conceptions of unequal social relations in a scholarly community. Ideology Academic communities have always been circumscribed by dominant ideologies that shape discursive practices and power dynamics among graduate students, professors, established and emerging scholars. Examining the design and sociotechnical structures of Google Scholar, Academia and ResearchGate, it appears that these ideologies are not only reproduced but amplified within these social media platforms. By constructing and arranging identity markers for an online profile and quantifying further the symbolic capital of a scholar’s work, these platforms contribute to “mechanisms that introduce and privilege quantification, proceduralization, and automation” (Gillespie, 2016, p. 27),

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and the emergence of what Hacking (1990) calls a “statistical society” (p. 10). This notion draws attention to the process of “making up people”, where classifications and numerical values we have assigned to understand them influence their behaviour and the possibilities they imagine for themselves. How these identity categories and classifications are constituted is not arbitrary nor neutral. Their implications are not incidental (Bucher, 2018), and it becomes necessary to interrogate how these processes can limit the conditions of possibility for scholars. As an early-career scholar who examines issues of power and ideology, I often struggle with the conflict between the need to subscribe to the “rules of the game” and the desire to resist these structures. On the one hand, there is the scholar who has to negotiate conditions of tenure, who has to publish in top ranking journals to be considered a legitimate scholar. On the other hand, there is one that recognizes that genuine scholarship does not have to be about numbers or alignment with a particular social network.

Conclusion As scholars are socialized into the discursive practices of an academic community, they learn how to acquire specialized ways of knowing and communicating within a discipline. This academic socialization is a dynamic, socially situated process that is characterized by different levels of investment and agency (Duff, 2010). With the emergence of social media, the dynamics of this socialization process has extended to online spaces which themselves are ideologically constructed. The design, sociotechnical structures, and algorithms embedded in these spaces index competing and colluding ideas of scholarly identity and participation. Mediated by these technologies, scholars need to understand that these structures can position them in new and often invisible ways and have the power to shape their behaviour and interpellate them into being. By holding up a critical lens to these spaces, the digitally-mediated scholar can understand how these tools operate and accord symbolic value to specific actions and forms of knowledge. Recognizing how ideologies

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are inscribed in the architecture of these platforms, scholars can navigate these spaces more strategically and discover more agentive means to curate their identities and participate more meaningfully within their scholarly communities.

References Beel, J. & Gipp, B. (2009). Google Scholar’s ranking algorithm: An introductory overview. In B. Larsen & J. Leta (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of Scientometrics and Informetrics 2009, 1, 230–241. Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. Education: Culture, economy, and society (pp. 46–58). Greenwood. Bourdieu, P. (1987). What makes a social class? On the practical and theoretical existence of groups. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 32(May), 1–17. boyd, d. (2011). Social network sites as networked publics. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.) A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites. Abingdon: Routledge. boyd, d., & Ellison, N. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210–230. Bucher, T. (2018). If… then: Algorithmic power and politics. Oxford University Press. Darvin, R. (2015). Representing the margins: Multimodal performance as a tool for critical reflection and pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 49 (3), 590–600. Darvin, R. (2016). Waiting (play). In M. Uychoco (Ed.), 21st century literature from the Philippines and beyond (pp. 41–47). Rex. Darvin, R. (2017). Language, ideology, and critical digital literacy. In S. Thorne & S. May (Eds.), Language, education and technology, encyclopedia of language and education (Vol. 9, pp. 17–30). Springer. Darvin, R. (2018). Teaching critical digital literacy to combat fake news: A resource for teachers and teacher educators. KONECT. Darvin, R. (2019). Creativity and criticality: Reimagining narratives through translanguaging and transmediation. Applied Linguistics Review (ahead-ofprint), 1–26.

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Thorne, S. L. (2016). Cultures-of-use and morphologies of communicative action. Language Learning & Technology, 20 (2), 185–191. Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2012). Networked participatory scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks. Computers & Education, 58(2), 766–774. Weller, M. (2011). The digital scholar: How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury.

11 Socialization into Scholarly Publication as a Multilingual, Early-Career Scholar Ismaeil Fazel

Who Am I? In this chapter, employing an autoethnographic methodology, I will critically reflect upon my first-hand experiences, challenges and struggles, as well as strategies and successes in writing for publication as an earlycareer multilingual academic. Mapping out my experiential trajectory, I will explicate how I have gradually and organically transitioned from being a novice multilingual writer avidly interested in getting published to a published author and a junior scholar researching writing for publication. The intent of the piece is not to reach generalizable conclusions. Rather, it is to reflectively describe and interpret my own constructed perspectives on my diachronic experiences in publication in the hope of

I. Fazel (B) Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_11

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shedding more light on the intricate complexities of writing for publication for junior multilingual academics and more broadly for novices to scholarly publication. Before proceeding to describe my experiences in academic publication, it is important to provide some background about my early life and how English came to be one of my languages. Admittedly, my interpretations and analyses are informed by my own background, lived and situated experiences, and investments in this topic. Thus, it is important to explicate my multiple identities and my potential biases at the outset. I am a male, middle-aged, early-career academic, originally from Iran (born and raised), but I am also a naturalized Canadian citizen residing in Canada. Ethnically, I am identified as being Middle Eastern and a visible minority member in Canada. I speak Persian (Farsi) as my first language and English as an additional language. Besides being passionate about publishing academically, I am interested in research on writing for scholarly publication, which uniquely positions me as both an outsider and an insider in this area; the focus here will be on the latter position. I was born and raised in Shiraz, an Iranian city with a rich historical past, and home to many eminent historical monuments that are part of ancient Persian history. My family, particularly my father, has a longstanding admiration for reading and the written word. In my earliest childhood memories, I remember my father reading and cherishing books—mostly in Persian but also in English—which instilled in me a penchant for reading that has stayed with me to this very day. At the approximate age of 6, I was introduced to English by my father, though he simply taught me the alphabet and basic words used in daily conversations. My formal instruction in English began at the age of 14 when I started taking extracurricular English classes at the Iran Language Institute (formerly known as the American Language Institute). It is worth noting that while English is a compulsory subject in the public-school curriculum in Iran—Grades 7 through 12—the pedagogy is mostly focused on grammar, translation, and reading rather than communicative skills. Students wishing to develop communicative proficiency in English typically choose to study at after-school English language schools, like

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the one I attended. In the interim, and as my English proficiency gradually improved, I immersed myself in reading novels and magazines and watching movies in English. Influenced by my teachers, many of whom were educated in the US, I started conceiving of the possibility of becoming an English teacher (my then-imagined identity) and decided to study English Language and Literature at university—notwithstanding the opposition from my family, who expected me to become an engineer, like many Iranian parents and families back then. After a few unsuccessful attempts and applications, I eventually started out as an English teacher at a private language school, in my sophomore year. Teaching at language schools, I crossed paths with some colleagues who had studied or lived in North America. This contact with people who had studied abroad planted in me the idea of studying or living in North America someday myself, a dream common to many young Iranians then and now. I knew full well, however, that my family did not have the financial wherewithal to pay for my education abroad; doing so was affordable and only possible for the wealthy Iranian families. My newly found identity (as an English teacher) was somewhat fulfilling, personally and professionally, though not financially. Before long, I started to aspire to being able to teach at university one day, which would be a step up from teaching at language schools, in terms of both pay and prestige; it could also perhaps provide a way for my dream (of studying abroad) to come true. Seeing it as a means to an end, I enrolled in a Master’s program in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at Shiraz University in 2003. My attempts and efforts to publish started then and have continued from this point onwards. It is important to note that the events and experiences discussed here did not necessarily occur sequentially but rather in a parallel fashion, at least in some instances. In what follows, drawing on the conceptual lenses of academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2010; Kobayashi et al., 2017) as well as Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment and identity, I reflexively analyze my experiences in academic publishing, using an auto-ethnographic approach.

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Theoretical Framework and Methodology Theoretically, I will draw on academic discourse socialization (Duff, 2010; Kobayashi et al., 2017) as well as Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment and identity to analyze my writing-for-publication experiences. Academic discourse socialization is essentially concerned with how novices learn to participate in the discursive practices of their academic communities (Duff, 2010; Kobayashi et al., 2017). A socialization framework posits that novices, mainly through engagement and interaction with their peers and mentors, gradually learn the discourses, practices, as well as norms and conventions, including hierarchies of power and knowledge in their academic communities. Academic discourse socialization is a useful theoretical lens to analyze the social, cultural, and linguistic factors affecting socialization of novices (myself included) into scholarly publication. Also relevant to my analysis is the model of investment and identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015). The model posits that investment and identity interplay with and are influenced by ideologies, defined as “dominant ways of thinking that organize and stabilize societies while simultaneously determining modes of inclusion and exclusion” (Darvin & Norton, 2015, p. 72). Ideologies also serve to determine learners’ capital value and positioning within their academic communities. The model, nonetheless, recognizes that learners have the agency to shift the power dynamics in their favour by resisting dominant ideologies and claiming identity positions which accord them legitimacy as rightful members of the community. The model, as a conceptual lens, helps me examine why academics (myself included) invest in academic publication, and how this investment relates to their (incumbent or desired) identities and prevailing ideologies in the world of scholarly publication, and more broadly in academia. Methodologically, I use autoethnography to examine my relevant experiences. Autoethnography, a genre of writing and research that “connect[s] the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (Ellis, 2004, p. xix), allows researchers to place their situated, lived experiences and subjectivities “onto examination tables to sort, label, interconnect, and contextualize them in the sociocultural environment” (Chang, 2008, p. 51). Autoethnography allows me to dig deeper

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into my situated, writing-for-publication experiences and to tease out the forces and factors that have shaped my academic trajectory. This methodology places me in the roles of both the researcher and participant; these roles are intricately intertwined and clearly complex. As the participant, I attempt to recount and reflect on my experiences, while in my role as the researcher, I try to construe and analyze those experiences.

Stage 1: Scholarly Publication in Iran My first bid to publish academically occurred only after I embarked upon my first ever academic position, which marked the beginning of a formative phase in my academic career and identity development. Upon graduating from the master’s program, I was offered a faculty position as a lecturer at a medical university in Bandar Abbas, a port city on the southern coast of Iran. Owing to its inhospitable and inclement (hot and humid) climate, the city holds little appeal to academic job seekers. This may well have been why I was given the position. No sooner had I started to settle into my job than I was confronted by a surprising reality about the value system and expectations in the new milieu I had entered. While at language schools, pedagogical prowess and student satisfaction counted as the chief markers of excellence, the highest merit at the medical university appeared to be accorded to academic publications. In fact, much to my surprise, a recurring theme in conversations among colleagues was asking or talking about their recent publications. My newly found realization of the premium placed on publications was somewhat of an unsettling awakening for me. With no academic publications, I perceived myself as a laggard among my counterparts and feared possible ramifications for my continued employment and promotion. For the first time ever, I sensed the acute pressure to publish, though I was not yet aware of the neoliberal ideology underlying this pressure. Not knowing what to do, I started, desperately and perhaps rather prematurely, to seek out possibilities for publication at any cost, without much care about what and for whom I would publish. I ended up co-publishing with a peer of mine from my master’s program, who was then doing his doctoral program and apparently knew the

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publishing ropes, at least better than I did. My collaborative endeavour produced two publications—one in a domestic ELT journal (a brief commentary) and the other in an Asian journal (out of my master’s thesis). With those two publications, my identity had shifted from that of an academic without publication to that of a published researcher, which enhanced my perceived legitimacy and status in the scholarly community. However, I was soon disappointed to realize that those publications were not much valued at the medical school. Only publications indexed in International Scientific Indexing (ISI) journals with a high impact factor would count as “real” publications. This realization, though disconcerting at that time, had a silver lining to it too, in that it raised my awareness of the hierarchical values placed on scholarly publications, a key part of socialization into the dominant discourses and practices in publication. I had to find a way to undertake joint research with my colleagues at the medical school as they could be relied on to know what counted as research worthy of publication. It was a challenge, however, to find potential common areas of research where I could collaborate with my colleagues, who specialized in health-related and medical topics. Thankfully, after some deliberation with the dean, I was placed on the Educational Development Committee, mandated to undertake educational research and development, which was as close a match as possible, I was told. Given that I had some background in statistics and quantitative methodology, I got involved in two educational research projects involving student perceptions—of the educational environment and of the perceived need for instruction in communication skills. Although I helped with data collection, my main role in the projects was writing up the research. Those collaborations culminated in two co-authored articles, one of which was published in an ISI-indexed medical education journal— which is my most highly cited publication thus far. The road to publication in both instances was relatively short and straightforward. The journals had short peer review processes, and each required only one round of minor revisions, mainly regarding details of data collection, which my co-author and I were quick to address. Having had success

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with those publications, which were deemed of some value in my thenpeer community, served to validate my nascent academic identity. The “valuing” of one’s capital, as argued by (Darvin & Norton, 2015), is a validation of their identity and “a legitimation of their rightful place” in their context and in their current or aspirational community (p. 47). More tellingly, it rekindled my ambition to study abroad, an idea that I had never ceased to nurture. Reinvigorated by this revived possibility, I actively and avidly set out to find potential paths to studying in an English-speaking country (Canada or Australia). I had heard, at that point in time, that before seeking admission to PhD programs at Canadian universities, one would be better off studying for a master’s degree, which is what I decided to do, as it would also be a more affordable and viable option for me then. However, despite having received admission offers from two Canadian universities, to my dismay, my student visa application was declined on the apparent grounds that I did not have sufficient funds to support my graduate studies in Canada. Following a period of despair and despondency, and upon seeking professional advice, I decided to apply for immigration to Canada, which would then take years to complete, and with no guarantees of approval, especially given my previous visa rejection history. I proceeded nonetheless to lodge the application, as it offered a ray of hope and could potentially pave the path for realization of my long-awaited dream to study and permanently live in Canada. Finally, and after a long and nailbiting wait, my immigration application was approved, and I arrived as a delighted permanent resident in Canada in 2010. My dream of studying at a Canadian university finally seemed within reach. Thankfully, I was admitted to and began a PhD program in TESL at the University of British Columbia in 2011. This marked the beginning of a new chapter in my academic journey, as will be explained in the following.

Stage 2: Scholarly Publication in Canada I embarked on my PhD program in TESL with immense investment and high hopes of becoming a faculty member in a North American university one day. I presumed that I was off to a good start, given that I had

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already published a few articles, and had earned some academic capital. Early on in my doctoral program, however, I was dismayed to realize that, moving from the context of the Middle East to North America, the value of the publications I had already earned (in Iran) had shifted. As noted by Darvin and Norton (2015), the value of one’s capital is subject to change as it travels across different geo-linguistic locations. I felt that I was back to square one, so to speak. Moreover, and crucially, I noticed the prevailing pressure to publish during the doctorate. The importance of getting published came up over and over again like a mantra across campus, in graduate-level courses, workshops, and events. Even in informal settings and spheres, my peers would proudly boast about their past or planned publications. I even remember a fellow student once saying, “in academia, you are what you publish”. Thankfully, I had already (in my previous context) became critically aware of the pressure to publish. I knew full well that what drove my investment was not uncritical compliance with the publish or pressure ideology, but rather a conscious and purposeful investment tied to my long-time aspiration of being a scholar at a North American university—my imagined identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Furthermore, and importantly, I increasingly became self-conscious of my multilingual identity and its implications. I automatically presumed that getting published would be considerably easier for my Anglophone peers, which somewhat sub-consciously constrained me at the beginning of my academic journey. Further into my doctoral program, and as I read more of the literature, I became aware of the debate surrounding the issue of linguistic injustice in academic publication, which has divided the literature into two camps. While one side (e.g., Flowerdew, 2008; Politzer-Ahles et al., 2016) highlights the putative linguistic disadvantage against multilingual academics, the other side (e.g., Casanave, 2008; Habibie, 2016, 2019; Hyland, 2016) argues otherwise, giving precedence to non-linguistic factors in academic publishing. Despite my initial perception, a critical analysis of the relevant research and my firsthand observations failed to support the linguistic disadvantage ideology. Transcending this ideology enabled me to take on a more empowered identity, which in turn affected my investment intensity. Though I did grapple with some discursive issues and challenges (which I will touch

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upon later) in writing for publication, I put them down mostly to my novice (rather than my multilingual) status. With this awareness, I was actively on the lookout for opportunities to publish. My newly found understanding that, with effort, dedication, and investment, I would be no less able than my Anglophone peers to achieve academic publications was extremely liberating and empowering, and augmented my investment in scholarly publication. In the first term of the doctoral program, an opportunity to publish presented itself. One of the assignments in the doctoral seminar was writing a book review for publication, which I had never done prior to that point in time. After making some initial inquiries through some peers at the department, I was guided to a well-known journal in the field with a list of books to be reviewed. Being new to the genre of the book review, I searched for and analyzed several sample book reviews. After having read the book multiple times and taking copious notes, I ended up writing the book review. I then carefully checked it for any syntactic or lexical inaccuracies and ensured the ideas therein flowed smoothly and seamlessly before submitting it to the editor. Contrary to my expectations, however, I received critical feedback from the editor remarking, “you need to show a deeper critical engagement” with the ideas in the book before it can be considered for publication. I was perplexed and not sure what to do. I felt that, as a novice PhD student with only a marginal status and identity in the academic community, I had little authority or expertise to openly critique the published work of established scholars in the field. I thought, “who am I to call into question the ideas by these heavy hitters?” In retrospect, part of the reason for not being critical enough was the influence of my previous sociocultural and educational experiences in Iran, where novices are conventionally not expected to challenge authority figures and those with superior knowledge and status, an ideology that I later on learned to question and challenge, as part of my academic socialization (Kobayashi et al., 2017). Thankfully, around that time, I found out about and joined a studentinitiated writing group comprised of doctoral students in the department. The group met every few weeks at a study room in the library. Group membership offered a socialization space, where we could easily

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raise and discuss our concerns and questions, academic or otherwise, in a non-judgemental and stress-free atmosphere. We also, on occasion, exchanged feedback on our manuscripts and let one another know of any upcoming conferences or publication opportunities. Feeling at ease with my peers, I brought up the editor’s critical feedback on my book review and was given a few clues on how to revise my review. Particularly helpful was the advice I received from a peer of mine in the group who had managed to publish a few book reviews. Perhaps more importantly, my peers reassured me that, as a doctoral student, I could, and in fact should, legitimately critique the book (or any other scholarly work, for that matter), regardless of the academic calibre and stature of the scholars behind it. Based on the advice given, I managed to revise and eventually publish the book review. Emboldened by my first successful experience, I went on to publish two more book reviews in the course of my doctoral studies, which added to my capital repertoire and further validated my academic identity. I felt that my contributions, however small, were valued in the scholarly community, which resonates with Darvin and Norton’s (2015) argument that valuing of learners’ capital is a validation of their identity and “a legitimation of their rightful place” in their community (p. 47). Around the same time, I learnt from some peers in the writing group that a fairly easy way to publish was to write conceptual articles or commentaries. I subsequently proposed and started collaborating with a peer (from that group) on composing a conceptual manuscript. To write the manuscript, we drew from our past and present learning and pedagogical experiences as both learners and teachers across the Canadian and Iranian contexts. Upon preparing the manuscript, we had it reviewed by the members of the writing group, and after making modifications based on peer feedback, submitted the manuscript to a Canadian journal with a national circulation. We received a revise-andresubmit verdict with substantial critical feedback from three reviewers. The feedback had basically challenged many of our arguments in the paper, which left us feeling demoralized and rejected. Particularly irritating was a barbed remark by one of the reviewers who had referred to a central notion we had drawn on as “conceptual muddling”. We both thought this was unfair. Given the overwhelming extent of the required

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revisions, I made up my mind not to proceed with revision and resubmission. Revising seemed a tall order and would demand an overhaul of the manuscript. My peer and co-author, however, thought differently and insisted on responding to the reviews and revising the paper. Despite my initial resistance and hesitance, I was finally convinced to do so, though we essentially ended up writing what was to my mind a different paper. There was subsequently another round of revise-and-resubmit; however, the revisions were not as substantial as the previous round; there were also some positive comments, including a remark by one of the reviewers who had explicitly praised us for having carefully revised the manuscript in light of the feedback provided. The manuscript was eventually published, after some copyediting revisions, which served to affirm our scholarly identity. Later on, in my senior years in the doctoral program, I went on to collaborate with another peer of mine in the writing group, ultimately producing a small-scale empirical study and afterwards a co-authored book chapter. In retrospect, being part of the peer support group played a key role in my socialization into scholarly publication and, more broadly, into academia, which indicates the crucial importance of peer socialization (Duff & Anderson, 2015). At that juncture, having achieved the aforementioned Canadian publications was somewhat fulfilling, yet I knew I would need to publish more and in more reputable (international) venues in order to achieve my dream of having an academic position, my imagined identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Determined to publish more, I intensified my investment in scholarly publication and embarked on my first attempt to publish internationally.

Stage 3: Publishing Internationally Before unpacking my experience, some context and background information is warranted. In one of the courses that I was taking in the doctoral program, I managed to discern a gap in the research literature. The course (Theory and Research in Teaching Second Language Writing) was taught by my supervisor, who liked my idea of doing research in response to the gap I had seen. I enthusiastically collaborated with my

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supervisor in collecting and analyzing data, which served to socialize me into scholarly research and academic publication (Kobayashi et al., 2017, p. 245). Furthermore, knowing that my supervisor (as an established member of the academic community) valued my ideas and intellectual capital was significantly validating. As argued by Darvin and Norton (2015), the valuing of learners capital is “an affirmation of their identity” (p. 47). I felt that, by offering to co-author with me, my supervisor had made a conscious effort to disrupt the novice-expert dichotomy and reconfigure the power differential between us, which empowered me to envision myself as a competent and legitimate member of the academic community. The opportunity to collaborate and co-author with my supervisor enabled me to construct my identity, beyond that of a student, as an emerging scholar, much like Darvin and Norton (2019). Upon completion of the study, we presented the research at two reputable scholarly conferences, which I thought was testament to its merit and international appeal. When it came to composing the manuscript, my supervisor asked me to write the first draft as the first author. Although I had previously written quantitative articles, I found writing this qualitative article much more challenging. I also struggled with writing the introduction and discussion sections of the manuscript, but I did my best, nonetheless, and sent the first draft to my supervisor. Surprisingly, however, she was not happy with the draft, calling it simply “a report” not “an analysis”, so she re-wrote the manuscript herself. It transpired that I was not familiar enough with the conventions of the journal article genre. The manuscript she wrote looked very different compared to the one I had composed. Most saliently, it had strategic citations and referential connections to previous research and relevant theories. It also included strategically placed rhetorical moves and steps, which I was not then familiar with—socialization into the discursive aspect of writing for publication (Kobayashi et al., 2017). After some minor modification, we submitted the manuscript to a reputable international journal in the field. I remember visualizing the published article as a feather in my cap, which would earn me more respect and recognition in the field. The prospect of publishing in a well-known international journal filled me with joy and pride. But alas! Little did I know then how bumpy the road to publication would be.

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After a long turnaround (approximately three months), we received a revise-and-resubmit verdict with major revisions. Working alongside and guided by my supervisor, we meticulously addressed the revisions one by one. I was surprised to note that my supervisor did not agree with all the recommended revisions. In a few instances, she even went on to provide rebuttals to some of the revisions, where I would have obviously acquiesced without voicing any disagreement, mainly because of my novice status and identity. Having resubmitted the carefully revised manuscript, I felt reassured and eagerly awaited the good news of its acceptance. Contrary to my expectations, however, the manuscript was rejected, which left me in tears. I remember even secretly blaming my supervisor for having disagreed with some of the review remarks but did not broach it with her. Interestingly, though, the editor appeared to have seen some potential in the article, pointing out that the article could be considered for publication by other journals in the field. In another subsequent email, he kindly and generously sent us some more detailed feedback which, he thought, could help us revise the paper. Unlike me, my supervisor was not as shocked and thought we could still publish the paper in a decent journal. On her advice, we revised the paper in light of the feedback by the editor and submitted the revamped manuscript to another highranking journal in the field. Eventually, after undergoing two rounds of minor revisions, the manuscript was published. In retrospect, if it had not been for the sagacious mentorship, guidance, and persistence of my supervisor and co-author, I would have easily given up. I went on to collaborate with my supervisor on two more publications (a book chapter and an article). The process of co-authorship with my supervisor provided an enriching mentorship and socialization opportunity which afforded me a deeper understanding of the discursive and non-discursive aspects of writing for publication (Kobayashi et al., 2017). The overall experience played an important role in constructing my academic identity and facilitating my socialization into academic publication (Darvin & Norton, 2019).

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Discussion Reflecting on my experiences, my socialization into scholarly publication has been mainly facilitated by the interactions I have had with my peers and mentors and, on a different level, with the journal editors and reviewers that I have come into contact with—"socialization agents” (Kobayashi et al., 2017, p. 245). Moreover, and crucially, I have been consciously investing in my own academic socialization— self-socialization (Duff & Doherty, 2015)—in an attempt to shape my aspired professional identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Throughout my trajectory, I have experienced both discursive and non-discursive challenges, many of which have been highlighted in the literature on writing for publication. As noted earlier, I found it difficult to write qualitative articles in general—much like the participants in Flowerdew (1999). It was also challenging for me to compose the introduction and discussion sections of articles, which resonates with the findings by Habibie (2015, 2016) and Flowerdew (1999). Other discursive aspects which I have had to deal with and learn about include, among others, strategic deployment of citations and rhetorical moves and steps. In addition, as with the participants in Habibie (2015) and Li (2006a, 2006b, 2007), I still struggle with constructing compelling arguments and rebuttals particularly in response to peer reviewers. As indicated by research (e.g., Fazel, 2019; Habibie, 2015, 2016), however, these challenges are not particular to the multilingual academics but rather more generally typical of those new to writing for publication. I am critically cognizant of my multilingual identity, and view it as an asset rather than a liability (Jenkins, 2015). I consciously resist and reject the linguistic “disadvantage orthodoxy” (Hyland, 2019, p. 27), and in fact consider it to be a disservice to multilingual scholars as it perpetuates in them a sense of enduring vulnerability and inadequacy. Moreover, I believe that overemphasis on the linguistic aspect of writing for publication might potentially eclipse other important non-discursive factors (e.g., access to resources, scholarly networks) in writing for publication. Concurring with Soler (2020), I think we need a balanced approach which attends to both the discursive and non-discursive dimensions of writing for publication.

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In terms of non-discursive challenges, like many other novice scholars, I still find it difficult to cope with critical feedback and rejection, but I am increasingly learning that investment in publication, while often rewarding, inevitably comes with occasional pitfalls, frustrations, harsh criticism, and even rejections. In fact, just recently, I received a rejection on a co-authored submission, in which I had been investing for over a year, but it seems to be par for the course. Learning to cope with these challenges and persisting despite adversity constitutes an important part of socialization into academic publication. I have also had to wrestle with the pressure to publish. Importantly, though, I am critically cognizant of, yet not submissive to, the publish or perish ideology. My contention is that, rather than feeling forced to publish, one can make an informed choice to publish to flourish, both professionally and personally.

Conclusion I continue investing in academic publishing with the understanding that it can reasonably offer a number of benefits, both short term and long term. Among the trio of academic responsibilities—namely, teaching, service, and research and publication—what gives me the most intellectual challenge as well as a sense of growth (both personally and professionally) is engagement in research and publication. Getting published can enhance my recognition and visibility in the scholarly community, which can, in turn, expand my scholarly network (Curry & Lillis, 2010), potentially leading to more opportunities for research and publication. It can also strengthen my scholarly profile, which can be potentially conducive to better employment opportunities, and hopefully a permanent academic position in the future—my aspired identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015). As I continue my engagement with scholarly publishing, my role has expanded beyond simply that of an author to include gatekeeping responsibilities, (as a reviewer and, more recently, coeditor). Serving in gatekeeping capacities has given me both an “insider” perspective (into the inner workings of academic publishing) and an “insider” status, which gives me an enhanced legitimacy in the academic

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community, thereby solidifying my scholarly identity (Darvin & Norton, 2015).

References Casanave, C. P. (2008). The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7 (4), 264–267. Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method . Left Coast Press. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. M. (2010). Academic research networks: Accessing resources for English-medium publishing. English for Specific Purposes, 29 (4), 281–295. Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 36–56. Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2019). Collaborative writing, academic socialization, and the negotiation of identity. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 177–194). Palgrave Macmillan. Duff, P. A. (2010). Language socialization into academic discourse communities. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 169–192. Duff, P. A., & Anderson, T. (2015). Academic language and literacy socialization for second language students. In N. Markee (Ed.), The handbook of classroom discourse and interaction (pp. 337–352). Wiley-Blackwell. Duff, P. A., & Doherty, L. (2015). Examining agency in (second) language socialization research. In P. Deters, X. Gao, E. Miller, & G. Vitanova (Eds.), Theorizing and analyzing agency in second language learning: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 54–72). Multilingual Matters. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. AltaMira Press. Fazel, I. (2019). Writing for publication as a native speaker: The experiences of two Anglophone novice scholars. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 79–95). Palgrave Macmillan. Flowerdew, J. (1999). Problems in writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8(3), 243–264.

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Flowerdew, J. (2008). Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘“Stigma”’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7 (2), 77–86. Habibie, P. (2015). An investigation into writing for scholarly publication by novice scholars: Practices of Canadian anglophone doctoral students. PhD thesis, The University of Western Ontario, Canada. Habibie, P. (2016). Writing for scholarly publication in a Canadian higher education context: A case study. In C. M. Badenhorst & C. Geurin (Eds.), Research literacies and writing pedagogies for masters and doctoral writers (pp. 51–67). Brill Publishing. Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. Hyland. (2019). Participation in publishing: The demoralizing discourse of disadvantage. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 13–33). Palgrave Macmillan. Jenkins, J. (2015). Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a Lingua Franca. Englishes in Practice, 2(3), 49–85. Kobayashi, M., Zappa-Hollman, S., & Duff, P. A. (2017). Academic discourse socialization. In P. Duff & S. May (Eds.), Language socialization, Encyclopedia of language and education (3rd ed.) (pp. 239–254). Springer. Li, Y. (2006a). Negotiating knowledge contribution to multiple discourse communities: A doctoral student of computer science writing for publication. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15 (3), 159–178. Li, Y. (2006b). A doctoral student of physics writing for publication: A sociopolitically oriented case study. English for Specific Purposes, 25 (4), 456–478. Li, Y. (2007). Apprentice scholarly writing in a community of practice: An intraview of an NNES graduate student writing a research article. TESOL Quarterly, 41(1), 55–79. Politzer-Ahles, S., Holliday, J. J., Girolamo, T., Spychalska, M., & Berkson, K. H. (2016). Is linguistic injustice a myth? A response to Hyland (2016). Journal of Second Language Writing, 34, 3. Soler, J. (2020). Linguistic injustice and global English: Some notes from its role in academic publishing. Nordic Journal of English Studies, 19 (3), 35–46.

12 Becoming a Scholarly Writer for Publication: An Autoethnography of Boundary Crossing, Linguistic Identity, and Revising Naoko Mochizuki

Introduction I did not begin to write my second article until ten years had elapsed since I wrote my first published article. This was because my trajectory toward becoming a scholarly writer was not straightforward, entailing various turns, most of which I took intentionally. Before pursuing a master’s degree in the United States, I was a high school English teacher in Japan. After attaining the degree, I went back to Japan and continued teaching in high school for seven years. Then I decided to pursue a PhD degree in Australia. Gaining a PhD, I returned to Japan to take a full-time faculty position at a university and to be called an early-career researcher (ECR). Throughout these years, my academic interests, also my professional interests, always included classroom language teaching N. Mochizuki (B) Kanda University of International Studies, Chiba, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_12

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and learning despite the change in research approaches from quantitative research for my master’s project to qualitative research for my PhD. I wrote a few articles and got them published during my PhD candidature. All these turns and changes, including the changes in academic contexts, professions, and disciplines, shaped my experience of becoming a scholarly writer and an ECR. When I think of the genesis of my scholarly writing life, I remember a particular moment in my master’s student life. I was standing at the doorsteps of a building on campus, waiting for my then supervisor to finish her teaching. I was nervous but excited about the decision I had made the night before, to write a journal article from my master’s scholarly paper. I wanted to share this excitement with my supervisor, who was always encouraging her students to write for publication. At that time, if someone had asked me who I was, I would have answered, “a graduate student” or “a high school teacher.” I would never have thought of answering, “a researcher,” “a university teacher,” “an academic,” or “a scholarly writer,” which I would probably mention now. Indeed, since that day I was at the doorsteps with nervous excitement, I have gone through various identity negotiation in different social relations to become who I am now. In this chapter, I explore my lived experience of scholarly publication from the first time of writing an article to the present to better understand my identity negotiation and the process of becoming a scholarly writer. In the sections that follow, first, I outline the theoretical and methodological framework of this study and then explain three kinds of challenges and various identity negotiations that led to my becoming a scholarly writer.

Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks My becoming a scholarly writer is a continuing process of identity negotiation in the experience of new social relations in new contexts. To look inside “the aggregate of internalized social relations” (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 164) in me, I adopt a sociocultural view of learning and development, specifically, Vygotsky’s notion of perezhivanie (1994) as my conceptual lens. Perezhivanie is a person’s lived experience of his or her own

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sensemaking of the self and the perceived environment, including social relations when being faced with a difficult situation, a predicament, to get over. These challenging experiences provoke new self-awareness and reorganization of one’s psychological functions, and thus inform new ways of thinking and doing. In this view, identity is also social, derived from social relationships (Lantolf, 2013). Adopting this view, I examine the relationships between my identity negotiation and development as a scholarly writer. I especially focus on my cross-boundary experiences between different contexts and distinct social relations since boundary crossing is a cognitive process involving sensemaking of new social relations and challenges (Engeström et al., 1995), which often provokes identity negotiation. Drawing on the notion of perezhivanie, I analyze my lived experience focusing on the challenges (predicaments) I faced, identity negotiation to get over them, and new perspectives of and attitudes toward scholarly publication I gained through these experiences. I proceed with this inquiry by adopting autoethnography as my methodology because it centers on self-reflection on personal experience to understand the self within a social context (Chang, 2016; Ellis et al., 2011). By using autoethnography, therefore, I can have access to “hidden data” (Stanley, 2015, p. 148) about myself that cannot be easily obtained through other qualitative methods. I adopt an analytic view of autoethnography (Anderson, 2006), which emphasizes the power of autoethnography for analysis and theorization, because the aim of my autoethnography is to analyze my experience and hidden data to identify the detailed process of my becoming a scholarly writer. The criticism of autoethnography includes its overemphasis on narrative at the expense of interpretation and analysis. However, by framing it with theories and concepts, narratives can be used for the analysis of experience, as illustrated in the previous autoethnographic studies on professional development (Canagarajah, 2012) and language and identity (Simon-Maeda, 2011). I drew on the data collection methods in Chang (2016). The personal data I collected include my autobiographical timeline regarding scholarly writing with my reflective notes and various texts written in the process of my writing a manuscript such as

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my written drafts, responses to reviewers’ comments, and email communications about my manuscript with journal editors, my supervisors, and colleagues.

The Challenges in Becoming a Scholarly Writer In the exploration of my perezhivanie, three kinds of challenges (predicaments) were identified: boundary crossing, the “non-nativeness” of my English, and revising the text in the peer-review process, each of which was associated with my sense of being lost in perceived environments, in the professional world, a community, and the sea of other scholars’ feedback on my manuscript. By getting over these challenges, different facets of my identity were negotiated, and I gained new perspectives on and attitudes to being a scholarly writer.

Boundary Crossing: Lost in Academia My perezhivanie of boundary crossings led to professional identity negotiation, which navigated me through writing in and for academia. I experienced a number of boundary crossings (Engeström et al., 1995), moving across different activity in my academic and professional life, such as moving across a high school teacher activity to a graduate student activity, or a researcher activity, or authoring a journal article activity. Whenever I participated in a new activity, I first felt lost not knowing where I was and what to do in order to become what I wished. As I crossed various boundaries, I came to write a journal article for a wider range of reasons and purposes, which illustrates my professional identity negotiation in the face of the challenges of boundary crossing. As I mentioned above, my first publication was based on my master’s scholarly project. My email below addressed to my then supervisor, Scholar X, shows my purpose of publishing an article then.

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Dear X I know I am asking you too much adding extra work to do upon you, but I really want to do something to give a new insight/perspective to English education in Japan. … By publishing this work, I may have a chance to say something or move forward toward what I think things should be like. Regards, Naoko (Email communication with Scholar X, March 11, 2006)

My reason for publishing then was simple. I wanted to disseminate the findings of my master’s project to contribute to the body of research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and teaching practice in Japan. I was not paying attention to the significance of scholarly publication in academic job applications because I thought of my relation to academia as temporal. I had no intention of becoming an academic then and was planning to return to my previous English teaching job at high school in Japan after completing my MA. Seven years later, I entered a PhD program at a university in Australia, when I had no intention of returning to the high school teaching job after the attainment of a PhD. I had resigned from the job. Unlike the previous postgraduate student experience in my master’s degree, I needed to consider my future employment possibilities in addition to proceeding with my PhD project. When I began to see academia as my future workplace, its emphasis on publications in job applicants’ CVs became obvious. I became aware of a new purpose for my writing for publication, i.e., to attain an academic job. My identity was negotiated as a PhD candidate as well as an academic job seeker. In the early days of my PhD candidature, while still writing my PhD thesis, I crossed the boundary of writing activity and began to engage in the activity of journal article writing. In this activity, my professional identity was also negotiated. In the publication process, social and ideological structures are substantiated as rules and different roles that people play in the activity. The awareness of the power of editors and reviewers as gatekeepers made me locate myself as an author who was to respond to the feedback and comments from the gatekeepers in ways that could lead them to say, “OK, now you can come in here.”

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I was once requested to cut 3000 words at the nearly final stage of the reviewing process. In the requesting email, after the detailed explanation of why this much cut was necessary and the acknowledgment of my efforts to be made, the point was made; I was asked if I could try to do this cut within a week. The power of journal editors was obviously present there. At the end of the email, I was told that if I could not do this cut, my paper would not be published. Instantly, I was concerned about two things. First, I wondered if that email might be an indirect way of rejecting my paper, although the email from a publisher before that was the letter of acceptance with a minor revision. Second, I wondered if I could make decisions about the “unnecessary” part and take them out from my nearly completed manuscript within a week. I had no time to consider these two concerns longer. I prioritized one of my purposes of writing an article, to build my CV, over other purposes. The deadline and the reviewer and editor’s request were more important than my own questions or thoughts about the manuscript. I cut down nearly 3000 words, some of which I really wanted to keep. I needed timely publications for my CV before my deadline, my graduation, which would come relatively soon for a full-time international student in Australia. The paper was accepted and published “timely.” Different facets of my professional identity can be found in my email reply to the requesting email. After saying “yes” to the request of the cut, I continued: Please understand a painful process to cut down that much of content, considering so much time and effort spent so far, and from now on. Since I spent so much time and effort on this so far, I really don’t want to just walk away from this article. This is especially written for the theme of this issue, and I have a strong passion for the message in there. So it won’t fit any other journals as is. (Email communication with an editor, May 3, 2017)

In the excerpt of the email above, I was performing my author and researcher identity, mentioning “the time and effort” an author of a journal article spends on writing a manuscript, and a researcher’s “passion” for the research to contribute to the field. At that time, I was

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experiencing the power of the market for academics in my life. I was an author, a researcher, and an academic job seeker, trying to use a publication as a tool to get a job. As a new purpose was added to my scholarly writing activity, a multifaceted professional identity was shaped. Another reason to write a scholarly publication was derived from the repeated boundary crossing between teaching in classrooms and researching classroom teaching, trying to make sense of the relationships between myself, a high school teacher as well as a researcher, and academia. Through these boundary crossings, I would often become frustrated with the gap between what was discussed in academia and what was happening in high school classrooms in Japan. I wrote at the end of my PhD thesis in a concluding reflection that I would like “to ‘translate’ what teachers and students think and do in classrooms to researchers” (Mochizuki, 2018, p. 258). The best way to do this is publishing my classroom research. The boundary crossings made me aware of my professional identity as a mediator (Canagarajah, 2012) and gain a new perspective on the relationship between my research interest and scholarly publication. After gaining a PhD degree, I got an assistant professorship at a university in Japan. I crossed a boundary again only to feel lost in a new institution in my home country. Then I came to understand that there was another purpose in my writing for publication: to assure myself that I was a researcher. This boundary crossing made me think of the relationship between my new social identity, an ECR, and academia. This was because I perceived a discrepancy between my ideal form of an ECR and what I was doing in the institution, although I did not have concrete ideas about what constitutes my ideal ECR form. The ideal form in sociocultural theory is the fully developed form residing in one’s perception, which should appear at the end stage of development and acts as a model for an individual to aim for (Vygotsky, 1994). Now that I was spending much of my time preparing and teaching English classes to first-year undergraduate students, I felt as if I were only performing a high school English teacher identity. I am engaging in scholarly publication now partly because it can differentiate what I do now from what I was doing before and allow me to reassure myself that I am striving for my ideal identity. Below is an email I recently wrote to one of my former

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PhD supervisors, which shows that I have another reason for writing a journal article. Dear Y Could you give me some advice on regional journals for me to submit my article? I remember you were telling there are some regional journals in Asia which look for articles to publish, and the process goes pretty quickly. … I had a meeting with the head of the department the other day, and I need one more paper published (or at least the state of being in press) by the end of next year (2020) for my promotion assessment. Best wishes, Naoko (Email communication with Scholar Y, November 10, 2019)

In the email, I asked her where to send my article to get it published as quickly as possible for my promotion assessment. In 2006, when I was writing my first journal article, I would never have thought that the future self in 2019 would mention “my promotion assessment” as a reason to write an article. Boundary crossing was the challenge that led me to the negotiation of different facets of my professional identity, which helped me with finding what to aim for in scholarly publication and the ways not to get lost in this professional world, academia.

Linguistic Identity: Lost in a Community My perezhivanie of linguistic identity involved repeated identity negotiations within the same category, “a non-native speaker of English,” until recently. My linguistic identity has been a long-standing challenge in scholarly publication. I was always worried about the “non-nativeness” of my English in writing when I was an MA student, because it may affect the course grades and my attainment of a degree. We, international students with different linguistic backgrounds in the same department, often exchanged information or rumors as to which professor would give harsher comments on “our English,” which we meant then, “non-native speakers’ English.”

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In the early stages of my writing for publication, I asked an experienced scholar to give me feedback on my manuscript which I thought I was ready to send to a publisher. The scholar suggested that I change many things in the manuscript “to make the writing sound more authoritative and mature.” The scholar was afraid that if the manuscript went to a publisher as it was, the editors and reviewers would think that the writer was new to writing for publication, which could affect their decision. It was then that the concern about the “non-nativeness” of my English was registered in my mind as a major challenge in regard to scholarly publication. Interestingly, however, when I looked back on the entire email communication with the scholar, she never talked about my English. What she was referring to was my lack of familiarity with the research article genre. It was not a matter of language proficiency but a matter of expertise in genre knowledge (Tardy, 2009). At that time, I could not interpret the discourse of the email from the scholar that way. I identified myself as a “non-native” speaker of English, rather than a novice writer for publication, and I thought that my English, precisely what I perceived then as the “non-nativeness” of my English, as my extra-textual identity (Tardy, 2012) that would affect the journal editor’s decisions. This challenge often made me feel lost in my own community when I was writing a journal article during my PhD candidature. I often sought feedback from my supervisors and colleagues on my manuscript in order to make my own argument clearer to myself as well as readers. But to do this, I struggled with my ambivalent linguistic identity, feeling lost in my own community at my university, where I usually felt safe, closely tied with others. I perceived the “non-nativeness” of my English as a major problem in publishing, so I wanted someone to read and detect the “non-nativeness” of my manuscript, although I did not exactly know what it was. However, at the same time, I did not want to foreground my “non-native speaker” identity in the relationships with my friends and colleagues. When it came to asking for feedback on my manuscript from them, I suddenly felt distant from them, pondering how to relate myself with them; I hesitated to ask, and thought over and planned very carefully how to ask.

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When I asked for feedback on my manuscript from “native-Englishspeaking” colleagues, I took extra time and caution to compose a request email to them, trying not to make them perceive I was asking them just because they were “native-speakers” of English. I remember one Sunday was spent on going back and forth between composing and deleting text for a request email to a “native-speaker” friend. I was engaging in self-dialogue for the whole day. I did not want to represent myself as a “non-native” speaker and was concerned that my very act of asking “a native speaker” of English for comments could bring to the fore the deficit view of L2 writers or the ideology of nativespeakerism (Holliday, 2006) in my social relationships. My identity as a TESOL researcher would never like that to happen, but as a doctoral student who was seeking an academic job, I wanted to do whatever I could to ensure publication. That day ended without sending an email, nor did I do anything to my manuscript. Receiving feedback on manuscripts is a beneficial practice for publication in that it makes writers reflect on their own writing and thus raises awareness of the reader’s point of view (Aitchison, 2009). Because of the challenge I faced, however, I went through a rather complicated version of this beneficial practice. My perspective of this long-lasting challenge began to change when I started to write for publication in new social relationships in a new environment. When I was writing for publication as an ECR at a university in Japan for the first time, I wondered what I should do with my writing practice, getting feedback on my manuscript. In the new institution, I was not familiar enough with my colleagues to ask them to read my paper. I also wondered how I was expected to engage in the social practice of the institution regarding scholarly publication. I was afraid that my writing practice for publication, asking colleagues for feedback on my manuscript, might be considered “inappropriate” in this new institution. Then I came across the advertisement for an editing service on the Internet, which says, “a ‘native speaker’ in your field will check your paper for publication.” The words, “native speaker…check” caught my attention. After a thorough reflection on my linguistic identity and writing practice, however, I did not send the manuscript there. I concluded that I would not be able to get the comments I needed then

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from the editing service. The reflection then helped refine my perspective of feedback on my manuscript. The feedback I appreciated when I was a doctoral student was the confirmation or clarification questions on the content of a paper from those in a similar field who knew my research well. Those comments were beneficial in that they could broaden my perspective on my own study, and thus my writing. A refined understanding of the feedback I need on my manuscript led me to reconsider my challenge, the “non-nativeness” of my English, which had complicated this writing practice. I gained a new perspective of this challenge during the review process of the above-mentioned article. One of the reviewers suggested the change of the term to address the participants in my study from “nonnative speakers” to “multilingual writers.” This suggestion made me review those concepts and the ideology behind those terms and think the significance of this term change to me as a researcher and as a writer. I changed the term in the manuscript as suggested by the reviewer, and my own linguistic identity also began to change. As I began to perceive myself as a multilingual writer, I could see this challenge from a different perspective. My concerns about the “non-nativeness” of my English and the rejection of others categorizing me as a “non-native speaker of English” were all that I initiated and brought into my own social relationships and my writing activity. The concept of multilingualism (Ortega, 2019) could liberate me from emotional turmoil over my linguistic identity as a scholarly writer. The changes in my view of my own linguistic identity would lead to my new ways of relating myself with others in my academic community, saving me from feeling lost just because of my linguistic background.

Revising: Lost in Reviewers’ Comments My perezhivanie of revising in the peer-review process led to the negotiation of different facets of scholarly writer identity. Revising text and responding to the reviewers’ comments are a challenge during the publication process. When I open the files of reviewers’ comments, I often feel as if I were lost in the sea of reviewers’ comments, because their

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comments often make me shift my perspective and think differently. The version of the manuscript I sent to a publisher was based on the state of the art of my thinking then, so I am concerned about how I could change my perspective and think differently in order to respond to all the comments from the reviewers. My identity as a reviewee was negotiated as I responded to the reviewers’ perspectives manifested in their comments on my manuscripts. When I received reviewers’ reports, first, I tried to understand reviewers’ comments from their perspectives. The reviewers often made comments on what did not make sense to them in my study, the aspects that had made total sense to me when I submitted the paper. Among these aspects were the use of theory, conceptualizations of research constructs, and reasoning in discussing the findings. To understand the reviewers’ perspectives, I sought other perspectives by reading new literature or what I had read before, or by meeting with someone to discuss relevant issues. I also reflected on the process of researching and writing it in order to find better ways to explain my thinking process to the reviewers. I went back and forth between the reviewers’ comments, my text, and my way of thinking. I made the process of revising multivoiced (Bakhtin, 1981) so that I could better understand the reviewers’ perspectives as well as mine through the juxtaposition of different perspectives. When my revising activity functioned as a joint activity with a reviewer, it could bring about breakthroughs in understanding the significance of the reviewers’ comments in my study. This would happen when I could perceive the reviewers’ academic interests, expertise, and their intention of helping me with revising the manuscript by reading their comments. Specifically, in those reviewers’ comments, I perceived intersubjectivity (Rommetveit, 1985) being constructed through the detailed accounts of their understanding of my study and the explanation of their views of my data and analysis drawing on my analysis. An excerpt from a reviewer’s report I received illustrates one of those intersubjective comments. I found the contrasting cases of Group A and B very interesting. I can also see that the power issue in the division of labor and tensions/contradictions came into play in the members’ accounts in

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Group A, …. Your analysis of these members roles as experts and novices seems fine, but I would emphasize that the division of labor in Group A’s activity system was characterized by the power differences between L1 and L2 English speakers, at least in connection with rules of writing. This made a sharp contrast with the case of Group B, …. (An anonymous reviewer’s report, received September 9, 2016)

The reviewer, in this excerpt, referred to the specific concepts that I used in my study, such as “power relations,” “experts and novices,” and specific cases in my study. As I read this, I could understand the reviewer’s thinking process to understand my analysis, thereby recognizing this reviewer’s knowledge and expertise in the theory I adopted. The reviewer also related his/her view of my data to my analysis, saying “your analysis of…was fine but I would emphasize that…,” from which I could understand specific ways to improve my paper. I also perceived his/her interest in my study and supportive intention. This way of giving feedback, which was effective in oral feedback exchange in writing conferences (Mochizuki, 2016), also worked with me in the peer-review process, changing my perspective of my own study and writing. Another reviewer suggested rereading a chapter from the book I had cited in the article so that I could adopt another concept in the theory to discuss my findings. I had perceived by then that the reviewer was a specialist in the theory that I was using. I also perceived the reviewer’s intention to help me with revising the article by reading the detailed explanation of his/her own thoughts about my findings. I followed the reviewer’s suggestions and reread the book chapter with the reviewer’s perspective in mind. Then, I clearly identified a connection between what was written in the chapter and the findings in my study, which I had not recognized when I read it the first time. I gained a new understanding of this theory, which also helped me with writing other articles afterward. By trying to get over the challenges of revising in the peer-review process, my identity as an agentive reviewee was negotiated. I came to take this opportunity to negotiate, start a dialogue with a peer academic, and create something new of myself, rather than just interpret and follow given suggestions.

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When I gained new perspectives on my study and the text from the reviewers’ comments, that was always the beginning of the next struggle. I should be able to articulate my views from a newly gained perspective in my own text. Writing responses to the reviewers’ comments helped me with articulating them. I wrote and rewrote the response until my written response to the reviewers reached the level at which I was satisfied with my own voice. That level is related to one of my intentions in writing responses, that is, to demonstrate my ability as an author as well as a researcher to understand the connection between the reviewer’s comments and my own study and to make decisions on how to incorporate them in the text. I was trying to perform experienced author and full-fledged researcher identity, never to sound like a doctorate student or a novice writer, acknowledging that reviewers were gatekeepers in the world of scholarly publication. Below is an excerpt from my response to a reviewer’s comment. Following your advice, I used these two examples of agentive actions … to illustrate Engeström’s notion, contradictions/tensions as a source of development/change. By doing so, I underscore the connection between the activity system analysis and the needs identified for this study…. (Response to an anonymous reviewer, November 22, 2016)

I adopted the reviewer’s specific suggestions and reformulated a part of my analysis. In this response to the reviewer, however, I wrote more than just telling the fact that I followed his/her advice. I added the explanation of my metacognition of adopting and applying the reviewer’s ideas, mentioning “I used these …to illustrate…. By doing so, I underscore the connection…” By explaining the reasoning behind my revising, I had an intention to demonstrate my research and writing ability. By getting over the challenges in the review process, my identity was negotiated as an agentive reviewee, an author, and a researcher, seeking the ways to turn the interaction with reviewers into a joint activity that could stretch my thinking and improve writing. I have gained some strategies to swim across the sea of feedback without being lost.

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Conclusion My perezhivanie (lived experience) of the challenges illuminated the multifaceted nature of becoming a scholarly writer for publication. To overcome the challenges I faced, different facets of my identity such as professional, linguistic, and writer identity were negotiated through engaging in social interactions. Engagement in various social interactions in different contexts contributed to my scholarly writer development; not only interactions with other scholars’ perspectives during manuscript writing and revising but also social interactions with colleagues and other academics in an institution or different professional activities, such as teaching, researching, or authoring. Through these social interactions, my perspectives on and attitudes to scholarly publication changed. What is perceived as a challenge, how it is perceived, and how it is dealt with by an individual depend on how the person has experienced the situation and the environment (Vygotsky, 1994). My trajectory of getting over these challenges, therefore, cannot be generalized, while it would help diversify the approach to look into the black box of becoming a scholarly writer for publication by showing the nature of the process of becoming. I also hope that my sensemaking of the challenges would offer one of those perspectives for students and ECRs to juxtapose with one’s own in order to stretch thinking in the face of the challenges similar to mine. My lived experience of becoming a scholarly writer would also contribute to understanding academics’ experience of the growing significance of research publication in their lives and careers (Habibie & Starfield, 2020). Research publication has been recognized as a tool to assess academics’ productivity to contribute to their institutions in the global higher education market (Paltridge et al., 2016). I experienced this market power in my identity negation to become or continue being an academic, an ECR, which led to the changes in my view of scholarly publication, specifically, the view of the purposes and reasons of publication and revising in the peer-review process. Autoethnography is critical in its nature because of the constant checking on the theoretical understanding of social structures and processes (Starfield, 2019). This autoethnography casts light on the lack

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of educational and institutional support for the process of becoming an ECR. The gap is often overlooked between the activity of researching for degree attainment as a student and the activity of researching as a researcher working at an institution. Now working at an institution as an ECR, I feel as if I have lost a sense of direction in new social interactions at my institution. This is not only because of new social relations I engage in but also my new identity negotiation. I have not made sense of myself as an ECR yet and keep asking myself what it means to me to be an ECR. Students and ECRs need structural support to gain their own understanding of what constitutes a “research career” in their own contexts. This is an elusive question as the answer depends on individuals, institutions, sociocultural contexts, and society. Various experiences of ECRs in this volume will be the point of departure for a discussion of the complex and contingent nature of this trajectory.

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in complex work activities. Learning and Instruction, 5 (4), 319–336. https:// doi.org/10.1016/0959-4752(95)00021-6. Habibie, P., & Starfield, S. (2020). Journal of English for research publication purposes: Visions and directions. Journal of English for Research Publication, 1(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1075/jerpp.00001.edi. Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60 (4), 385–387. https:// doi.org/10.1093elt/ccl030. Lantolf, P. J. (2013). Sociocultural theory and the dialectics of L2 learner autonomy/agency. In P. Benson & L. Cooker (Eds.), The applied linguistic individual—Sociocultural approaches to identity, agency and autonomy (pp. 17–31). Equinox. Mochizuki, N. (2016). Oral interactions in a writing group as mediating artefacts: The case of a multilingual international PhD student’s motives, scaffolding, and response. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 39 (2), 181–200. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.39.2.05moc. Mochizuki, N. (2018). Genre learning through oral interactions: A case study of students’ thesis writing in group conferences from sociocultural perspectives (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of New South Wales, Australia. Ortega, L. (2019). SLA and the study of equitable multilingualism. The Modern Language Journal, 103(Suppl. 2019), 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl. 12525. Paltridge, B., Starfield, S., & Tardy, C. M. (2016). Ethnographic perspectives on academic writing. Oxford University Press. Rommetveit, R. (1985). Language acquisition as increasing linguistic structuring of experience and symbolic behavior control. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 183–204). Cambridge University Press. Simon-Maeda, A. (2011). Being and becoming a speaker of Japanese: An autoethnographic account. Multilingual Matters. Stanley, P. (2015). Writing the PhD journey(s): An autoethnography of zine-writing, angst, embodiment, and backpacker travels. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44 (2) 143–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124161 4528708. Starfield, S. (2019). Autoethnography and critical ethnography. In J. McKinley & H. Rose (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of research methods in applied linguistics (pp. 165–175). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/978036782 4471-15. Tardy, C. M. (2009). Building genre knowledge. Parlor Press.

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13 A Question of Balance: The Scholarly Publication Trajectory of a Dual Profile Language Professional Isabel Herrando-Rodrigo

About Me In this account, I intend to explain how my identity has developed in my publication trajectory over the last 15 years, from 2005 till 2020. My story begins in 2003 when I became a part-time lecturer at the Spanish University of Zaragoza while I was also a language teacher at a secondary school. It was then when I realized how important publishing can be for researchers. However, I saw myself as primarily a secondary school teacher, which made it difficult for me to identify with the Applied Linguistics community and embark upon a scholarly publication trajectory. Until working on this autoethnography, I have had the incessant thought that my professional and personal vocation for teaching and the urge to optimize the scarce quality research time I had due to my I. Herrando-Rodrigo (B) Faculty of Arts, Department of English and German Studies, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_13

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dual professional profile, full-time teacher in a secondary school and part-time lecturer at university over a ten-year period, have frequently prevented me from meeting the research publication standards in this early part of my career. I have also blamed my lack of knowledge of both my disciplinary community and scholarly publication strategies for hindering my success during the early part of my scholarly publication trajectory. After that experience, in 2012, I became a full-time lecturer at a university centre where I worked for four years and in 2016, I joined the English and German Philology Department at the University of Zaragoza. My teaching experiences and affiliations have allowed me to participate in different national and international communities of practice and to interact with editors and colleagues from other departments, schools and areas of expertise. I have recently gained my tenure track position (March, 2021) and have been able to revisit my teaching, administrative and research curriculum from an objective perspective. That has allowed me to realize that I have developed my identities in different communities of practice I have participated in. I also see now that thanks to the multifaceted construction of my identity, I have positively learnt to modulate my disciplinary voice as a writer in my scholarly trajectory. Working on my auto-ethnographic account has triggered a profound change in my self-perception as a scholar, writer and teacher. Revisiting and theoretically framing my research (hi)story and publishing trajectory, I have finally discerned that mine is quite a gendered account, highly constrained by the ill-interpreted conceptualization of my professional status, regardless of my achievements. This chapter highlights the importance of approaching our own publishing trajectories as authors from a self-reflective auto-ethnographic perspective at least once in our lives. Such a reflective exercise may allow us to analyse how our voice, visibility and identity flow and develop over participation in different communities of practice.

Conceptual Lenses and Methodology In this account, I look at my scholarly publication trajectory through the lenses of Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

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and Identity (Fairclough, 2003). According to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) approach to the situated nature of learning, learners participate in communities of practitioners which allow newcomers to move towards full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. Consequently, this socialization process into communities of practice or legitimate peripheral participation “provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artifacts, and communities of knowledge and practice” (1991, p. 29). The meaning of learning is then configured through the process of becoming a full participant in a sociocultural practice. This social process implies the learning of both knowledge and skills. This lens frames my understanding of my experiences since it allows me to interpret how I crafted my own individual identity, with a voice of my own, while interacting with different agents and situations in my publication trajectory. This autoethnography is driven by the notion of dynamic multiple identities (Fairclough, 2003). I will observe, as Takouda and Koutsogiannis (2020) also examine in their exploratory study, how my social identity as a writer developed over time and what helped it to develop. This account explores how participating in different communities of practice allows the negotiation and development of social identities which feed into each other and cannot, therefore, be separated. This notion frames my understanding of my dual identity flow as well as my understanding of the singularity of my identity in my trajectory. The debatable disadvantageous position of multilingual researchers using English for publishing purposes (Flowerdew, 2020) and the ensuing discursive, non-discursive and affective challenges (Canagarajah, 1996) will be addressed in this self-reflective account since they too have contributed to the construction of my identity. In this account, I will use autoethnography to approach my scholarly publication trajectory putting the self at the centre of a cultural analysis (Chang, 2008). I will make use of a personal narrative to support the self-analysis and reflection necessary to uncover some cultural assumptions and, in turn, the effects of these assumptions on the outcome of my research. To understand and interpret my scholarly publication trajectory, the chapter adopts a confessional, descriptive and, also, analytical approach to my account (Chang, 2008). Therefore, I have selected five

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sets of experiences to observe how I negotiated my identity in several communities of practice over my (il)legitimate peripheral participation. As Ellis et al. (2011) argue, the analytical process of these personal and interpersonal experiences has been, above all, therapeutic (Poulos, 2008). It has eventually encouraged personal responsibility and agency (Pelias, 2007), raising consciousness and promoting cultural change (Goodall, 2006). The data I will be using in this autoethnography are some of my research paper drafts, memory data, notebook entries, personal communications, emails, research notebooks, reviewers’ comments and informal conversations with colleagues. Even the data gathering has allowed me to analyse how my dual identity as a language teacher and novice member of my Applied Linguistics community of practice has evolved over time. Special attention has been paid to the role of my mentors and colleagues who have helped me to mature and to negotiate my identity during my scholarly publication trajectory.

Self-Silencing in Early Publications In July 2002, I finished my degree in English Philology wanting to be a teacher in the Spanish secondary system and contribute to the development of youngsters, as others had done for me, while teaching English language. I got the opportunity of “hopping in and out of ” a school on different short contracts. With half of my working days free, I dropped into the University of Zaragoza to find out about specialized courses or programmes. I was reading the notice board when I bumped into two of my most admired lecturers—and PhD supervisors-to-be Dr Rosa Lorés and Dr Ignacio Guillén. They not only invited me to enrol in the doctoral programme in Translation Studies but also encouraged me to apply for a part-time position as an associate lecturer at the Faculty of Arts. In the doctoral courses, we were encouraged to attempt to publish our pieces of research as scholarly publications. From a situated learning perspective (Lave & Wenger, 1991), I saw myself as a cross-bred language professional experiencing an unguided apprenticeship period. Luckily,

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my department organized a linguistics conference, and I presented a proposal. All my efforts bore fruit, although I had to spend two more years adapting that contribution into a book chapter. I was unaware, as a newcomer to scholarly publications, of the rhetorical conventions of the genre and the discourse practices needed to transform a conference paper into a publication. Therefore, I learnt how to get the chapter into shape thanks to many revisions by reviewers and Rosa Lorés, my MA supervisor. Despite that, in my head, the formula was neat: 

3 years researching on X + conference presentation + 2 years of adaptation = scholarly publication



That approach seemed to work at first, since I then got a full-time contract at the school, and my scholarly career had to remain a sideline rather than my main focus given my professional and economic circumstances at the time. However, that formula started to falter as, walking down the corridor, I found a call for papers for a national journal published by the Spanish Department. I sent one of my final doctoral essays written in English, and it was immediately accepted for publication. Another contribution to the idea of being in the right place at the right time was my participation in the scholarly journal edited by my department. One evening, I came across the editor at the photocopier. She was looking for someone to write a book review to complete that semester’s issue, and she asked whether I would be interested in writing it. Unaware of the amount of work that this type of scholarly publication implies, I accepted. From the point of view of my own development, these experiences allowed me to work with the demands of another discipline and get a more complete and balanced knowledge of academic publication. Surprisingly, I got these papers published, having consulted a writing manual (Swales & Freak, 1994) and replicating the rhetorical structure of the articles I read. Nevertheless, I had no sense that I was doing any more than mimicking other more able and more experienced writers. Although a writer’s voice is inevitable in written texts (Lillis & Curry, 2010), I needed my voice to be inaudible. As a Spanish teacher of English at a secondary school, I felt I did not deserve to be visible

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in an academic context but had no idea how I could (de)voice my presence in my publications. Deterred by my one-dimensional identity as a language teacher, I wanted to develop my apprenticeship silently by observing how the scholarly genres were rhetorically structured and how English was used in the different scholarly publications. I see now that this ‘self-silencing’ is an instance of gendered behaviour. Meanwhile, the Bologna Agreement forced the replacement of the former doctoral programme by a research-based master’s degree in advanced English studies in which I enrolled. This step implied a fresh start and allowed me to learn about corpus linguistics, genre studies and discourse analysis as research frameworks and methodologies. I completely abandoned my former line of research troubled by the aforementioned formula and began to take on the challenges of my new avenue of research based on a metadiscourse framework and the growing awareness of the notions of writer’s identity (Goffman, 1969; Ivaniˇc’s, 1998) in academic genres. That challenge troubled me because I felt like a complete newcomer who would never have the right to stand up and be counted in that community of old-timers and experts.

My Identity Foundation In 2009, I applied for another part-time position—this time in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. This teaching experience inspired many cooperative innovative projects with my Faculty of Medicine colleagues (12), numerous conference papers (27) and teaching publications (17 chapters) which were not, however, considered scholarly publication in Applied Linguistics. In that community of practice, I was legitimately participating with my colleagues implementing action research and publishing the resulting research outcomes. This participation allowed me to craft a solid identity in my scholarly publications written in Spanish. I saw then that publishing in my native language made me feel at ease and helped me to strengthen my identity since I had no linguistic challenges. In addition, I found my voice more credible due to the fact that we were publishing results from action research

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and new technologies applied to teaching English language. At that time, I felt I was only prepared to conduct that type of research. I see now that my participation in that community of practice was a milestone because it raised my awareness about my capacity to successfully contribute to different types of publications. Such participation allowed me to abandon my voice as a teacher at a secondary school, a stable voice with which I had grown comfortable, and start experiencing the dynamism of my multiple identities. These publications were also the inspiration for my MA dissertation and my first steps into the field of writers’ voice in both academic and digital discourses in medical genres. With the advice and guidance of my MA thesis supervisor, I redesigned my dissertation into a book chapter, having previously presented it at an international conference. It was then, telling my supervisor, over a coffee that I wanted to be a doctoral candidate when I realized I had participated in my Applied Linguistics community with a humble but sound voice. She wisely gave me a valuable piece of advice that I wrote in my diary: “Herrando, this is a game for adults” (R. Lorés, personal communication, December, 2008), meaning that I had to work harder abandoning my mask of invisibility and writing research articles for international research journals. She kindly explained how I should refine my scholarly literacies—going on research stays, interacting with other scholars, reading a lot, asking for feedback, etc.—if I wanted to develop a scholarly publication trajectory and thus have a professional academic career. Before this set of experiences, I thought my static, one-dimensional identity prevented me from developing dynamic multiple identities. I thought my multifaceted identities were exclusive rather than inclusive. Now I think that my perception of my identity at that time was a shield; I did not find my scholarly voice credible or good enough to participate in my community of practice. Luckily, Rosa still reminds me of that when I doubt my voice and credibility as a scholar.

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Participation in (Inter)National Applied Linguistics Communities Aware of the possibility of developing multiple identities—I could be a language teacher and a doctoral candidate publishing internationally, I decided to take action and make the personal and financial investment in spending three summer holidays pursuing my research in the UK. I worked a lot over those weeks, but everything stopped when teaching began every September. Thus, at the end of 2012, I resigned from the secondary school where I had been teaching for almost ten years and signed up for a one-year full-time contract at a new university centre. I knew the risk was worth taking as it was the only possible option to complete my PhD dissertation. That same year, supported by my PhD supervisors, I started to participate in an Applied Linguistics national research project invited by its principal investigator. With two colleagues from the research group, we published a manual of academic English for Health Science based on our research and my field observations in the Faculty of Medicine. The excellent feedback received triggered in one of the other English teachers who was not involved in producing the manual a negative reaction towards the publication. This person’s reaction affected me and my credibility enormously. Personal antipathies of this kind are obstacles few novice scholars anticipate, and the dangers of having to confront such situations and their emotional consequences should not be overlooked. I realize now that my sense of not fully belonging was reflected in the way in which my own scholarly voice remained muted. Firstly, I was anxious due to the fact that I was not capable of framing written and published PhD-related research. I did not feel like a scholar at all. It was during my pre-doctoral and post-doctoral research stays at the Centre of Advanced Research in English (CARE)—University of Birmingham—that I had the opportunity to meet and discuss my research with researchers specialized in a wide range of areas in Applied Linguistics. In these research stays, I was able to develop my academic literacy in English through illuminating discussions with CARE staff and international visitors, through my personal reading in their resource-rich library and also from the highly interesting research events organized there. That

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international experience was an inflection point in my rationale for and understanding of research in Applied Linguistics and scholarly publication. According to Lillis and Curry (2006, 2010) and Curry and Lillis (2014), this self-reflective approach has also shown me that establishing networks in English for academic purposes contexts is of paramount importance to improve writers’ competences and practices. Going over my research notebooks from those years (2009, 2010, 2011 and 2015)— I keep a research notebook for every year to work on my publications and research projects; I can read my CARE supervisor’s handwriting and drawings which always ended with a direct question: Isabel, whose voice is that? (S. John, personal communication, July 16, 2010)

I started to build up my self-confidence as a legitimate member of my community participating internationally in different experiences during the time I was in England. Back then, I thought that the visible part of my duality was only praised abroad since, in my Spanish disciplinerelated community of practice, I still felt as if I only had the right to participate peripherally and preferably with teaching-related publications written in Spanish.

Participation in Knowledge-Related Communities When I changed my professional affiliation to become a full-time lecturer, I became a member of another national scholarly publications network and, therefore, of another community. At the new university centre—military engineering, I participated in several research projects, all of which were different from my field, and which demanded a lot of time, effort and attention but from which I also obtained knowledge, experience and scholarly publications. Participating in communities of practice from different disciplines and fields of expertise was not a threat but an opportunity. I was able to learn, grow and acquire different

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scholarly publication skills, establishing networks through new professional and academic challenges. As a full-time lecturer, I could participate in Erasmus teaching and learning stays, examine PhDs and technical End-of-Degree projects, participate in conferences in other academic disciplines, come into contact with my colleagues’ publication policies, etc. Disseminating, communicating and transferring my research findings among different disciplinary communities of practice made me gain confidence and allowed me to believe that I was no longer an intruder in the scholarly publication system but rather a false beginner playing an active role. I was able to move beyond the understanding of a single, static and compartmentalized identity in scholarly publication. Joining other national research groups allowed me to participate in research meetings, share research feedback, edit colleagues’ papers and build up knowledge. This participation contributed to establishing a solid foundation in my identity construction since it strengthened my self-esteem as a publishable scholar. In addition, taking part in different networks allowed me to develop my multifaceted identity and my voice as a scholar. I understand now that such participation encouraged me to believe that I should not frame myself in one single role, a never-evolving identity. Therefore, these sets of experiences showed me how I could implement the visibility and credibility of my publications drawing upon knowledge from my multiple identities.

Editors, Reviewers and Colleagues In my understanding, the more one publishes, the more one secures her identity. That is why I had to experience a range of situations to learn how to integrate the perception of others and my own perception of my identity in scholarly publications. Once I had submitted my PhD, I became aware of the need to obtain the national accreditations so as to meet the academic promotion requirements in Spain (see Burgess, 2017 for an account of these). Hence, soon after completing my PhD, I was determined to fully participate in my Applied Linguistics community of

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practice. Therefore, I prepared and submitted a paper to a highly prestigious international journal. After waiting for an answer for almost three years, I received a report challenging the foundation of the study. That made me question my whole career as a scholar-to-be and reinforced the conceptualization of my identity as a feeble one when it came to international scholarly publications. One must consider that we also develop our identity when negotiating with gatekeepers, editors and reviewers, and sometimes it is emotionally challenging to manage that negotiation. This is a quotation from a reviewer’s comments on the paper sent by email: During the initial selection phase it became obvious that your contribution contains a fair number of constructions that do not sound completely idiomatic. Some of them have been marked in yellow in the attached document, just to give you an idea about their attested frequency. In view of this, we are inclined to believe that from a formal perspective, the article does not meet the requirements that XXXX imposes upon us for an article to eligible for publication. In terms of content, a number of fundamental issues have been raised regarding the methodology and academic rigour with which the research has been conducted. Again, to be eligible for publication, more and more in-depth analysis is needed to fully support the claims that are made or to increase the innovative character of the research. A lot more can be said about the data at hand and the analysis would improve substantially if more time were devoted to further analysis so more rigid and nuanced conclusions could be drawn. (Journal Editor, personal communication, November 11, 2016)

I felt so ashamed that I sent the editor my deepest apology for having wasted their time. In my next attempt to submit other papers to a similar research journal, one of the sources of criticism of the proposal was the ethnographically-informed research carried out, which the editor inspiringly termed not as an ethnographic approach but as an “innovative mixed-method study”. Their suggestions made me firstly realize that I should adopt that nomenclature -mixed-method study- if I wanted to get that research published. Secondly, I could discern that two different parts of that “innovative” proposal could be redesigned so as to get two

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publishable papers out of the research conducted rather than only one. Thirdly, I also learnt how to read reviewers’ comments picking up on their use of terminology. Before, I was just reacting; now, I was able to make good use of the comments to improve my papers. Lastly, I learnt that submitting that type of study to journals in certain countries whose research traditions were at odds with the one proposed in the paper should probably be avoided. My notes and reflections stayed in a drawer for six months. Afterwards, I received an invitation to contribute to a Latin American journal. I rewrote a part of the original study, and it was published that same year, after I provided more results supported by graphs and tables. Tired of that proposal, I left the second part of that study to sit in an electronic drawer of my computer, this time for almost two years. I updated this ethnographically-informed research with recent studies which supported the primary research and submitted it to an international conference. The paper was published two years later. What I think now is that experiencing that process encouraged me to accept responsibility and take action. I see now that I strategically learnt how to explore publication opportunities and how to take different paths to get my scholarly papers published. The design of my own publication strategy reinforced the idea that my identities dynamically evolved and matured as well over interaction and negotiation with editors and reviewers. For instance, the metadiscourse used in reviewers’ reports might be interpreted as an invitation to modulate an audible voice: The verb seems strange here. What does it mean? (Reviewer’s comment, personal communication, October 2017) Is it possible to state why it is so? (Reviewer’s comment, personal communication, July 2018) Publishable in XXX after minor changes. The reviewed article concerns an important and at the same time interesting topic based on the analysis of academic medical texts. The author clearly explains his/her theoretical framework and the data selected for the analysis. Few results and their interpretations need some further modifications and exemplifications, as suggested directly in the body of the text”. (Reviewer’s comment, personal communication, January 2019)

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Undoubtedly, reviewers’ and editors’ comments affect how we perceive our identity. Affective challenges of dealing with negative reviews are an important aspect of non-discursive challenges in scholarly publications. At the beginning of my trajectory, I opened editors’ emails and files, waiting for the worst because I assumed that my cross-bred scholarly identity would prevent me from creating a scholarly publication. I already counted on getting rejected. To deal with procrastination, what helped me the most was engaging in coworking sessions with my female research group colleagues, usually over a coffee or even fullbreakfast meetings. I also shared with them my manuscripts and some reviewers’ suggestions, and they always offered me guidance. Working with colleagues has proven crucial in my identity construction. Now my reaction to reviewers’ and editors’ comments has evolved in a very different direction; I understand editors’ and reviewer’s comments as an opportunity for improvement and a source of learning. I currently see that this interactive, cooperative process has helped me develop the necessary resilience for constructing a publication trajectory. Eventually, this personal account, the experience of revisiting how my identity has developed in my communities of practice at this moment in my life, has helped me to realize that my dual identity as a language professional was not a burden. On the contrary, both identities have completed and illuminated the blurred areas of the other. That idea, combined with hard work and determination, gave me the opportunity to work with well-established members of my community of practice leading to publication of co-authored papers. In these experiences of co-authoring, we wrote the sections which were closer to our areas of expertise. Afterwards, we edited one another’s writing. These experiences brought my visibility and my own credibility to the fore. Over the editing process of those co-authored publications, I realized I deserved to be there for what I have become. Old-timers and well-established members of my community wanted to work with me as an equal and share the agency of a co-authored paper: Our voices deserved to be heard together. Hence, those who were once in the roles of mentor and mentee can become co-creators of academic knowledge and participate equally in these academic spaces, as I also interpreted from this excerpt from a chain of emails:

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I think there are many more research avenues we can pursue together. You are such a good researcher and I’d really like us to work together to get these early publications out. It will also be helpful for me to work with you as you always push me to think about my research in different ways, which is great! (S. John, personal communication, November, 2020)

All in all, gaining knowledge and practice are mutually and socially constructed. In other words, if we want to transform our novice identity through our scholarly publications, we should not fail to consider the relationship between practice and knowing, knowledge and knower and social and individual; all should be integrated. As for me, acknowledging and facing all these challenges and developing strategies to meet them have had a tremendous positive impact on the construction of my identity throughout my publication trajectory.

By Way of a Conclusion Whether the reader has experienced my challenges or not, my testimony might not differ from many others. The elaboration of this self-reflective auto-ethnographic chapter has allowed me to draw some conclusions about my publishing trajectory. Until I began this account, I believed myself to be participating peripherally and illegitimately in my communities of practice since I was still becoming socialized into my research areas due to my dual or “cross-bred” professional profile. I felt as if I did not legitimately belong to any community of practice. Hence, the interpretation of the dynamic development of my dual identity has contributed to unveil the positive role of my complementing, never competing, identities in my scholarly publication trajectory. In addition, I now understand from this therapeutic interpretation of my own reflections that the gender and social power constructs I have unconsciously incorporated as valid into my academic and scholarly publication literacy—also as a white, non-native-English-speaking female scholar—have orchestrated the lexico-grammatical realizations of my own voice and my identity construction in my scholarly publications and community of practice. This might not surprise the reader as much

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as it strikes me, yet it creates a major impact on my current approach to my academic literacies both as a teacher and published scholar. An additional angle that has helped me to interpret my publishing trajectory is directly related to the institutional pressure on scholars regarding our scientific production, a pressure which is raising our anxiety levels. Scholars are put under great pressure by the well-known publish or perish ideology since not only is it a survival situation but rather the only means of gaining access to an accreditation system which opens the gate to an academic career. The wide range of academic and scientific experiences and publication practices novice scholars go through contribute not only to our socialization into scholarly publication but also to our identity negotiation and construction. Then, the more we practice, the more we learn from any publication experience, and yet, we learn that despite the pain of negative reviews, we will not, in fact, perish. Nonetheless, institutions should not abandon their scholars to a fate of acquiring identities by trial and error. I think it is time institutions integrated (non)discursive challenges in staff training programmes to facilitate awareness of the significance and dimensions of our identity and visibility in scholarly publications. In other words, novice scholars should be helped to develop their scholarly identities and also shown how to master the disciplinary and generic (de)voicing mechanisms to successfully develop their publishing trajectories. By way of a final autobiographical statement about my publishing trajectory, I would like to add that this account has been designed, written, reviewed and revised during the final stage of my tenure process. During these last months, I have approached my identity construction in my publishing trajectory over the last 15 years with a range of analytical angles, perceptions and feelings. Before preparing for my tenure examination and writing this chapter, I did not dare reflect on my identity, my voice or my credibility as a scholar. Previous to these two experiences, I thought I just had to work, publish and “get ahead”. Now, I think that this closer look at my own publishing story and its ensuing interpretation have transformed my identity perception. I am able to state how I have matured and how my identity has evolved through critical examination of my teaching curriculum, my publications and my research project plans. Frankly, the most fascinating insight into my scholarly

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publication trajectory analysis is that now I am informed and conscious of my singularity—understood as the most defining value associated with the notion of professional identity in the Human Resources discipline. This account has helped me understand what my dual profile or identity, my background and my experiences can offer to my scholarly publications practices and to see them as an added value. Understanding my singularity crafted by the experiences and the lessons learnt, that is ‘what Isabel’s trajectory can offer that others cannot’, will assist my identity negotiation to have a greater impact on my publications, allowing me to mediate between my research, my vision of the world and my voice as a publishable scholar. Thus, I believe that the study of my identity evolution has generated confidence in my identity and my place in my community of practice. It has also revealed the numerous possibilities for my identity to evolve in my forthcoming publication trajectory. My final personal thoughts are addressed to a newcomer or early-career scholar who may wonder about his/her/their identity construction in scholarly publications. I would not be what I am and who I am without all the experiences experienced and without the help and support of my mentors and very dear colleagues, who I regard as close friends after all these years. In our community of practice, other members’ ideas and support could be the foundation of our knowledge construction and transfer since gaining that learning is an evolving form of membership. So, ask for help and listen to, as well as imitating, those who do well. Do always believe in what you can offer and in your research potential since sooner or later, you will find your path—or at least the way of constructing your own publishing strategy, identity and voice. Acknowledgements Since most of my scholarly publication trajectory has been supported by several national and local research projects, I would like to show my gratitude to the Principal Investigators; Dra. Ana Hornero (SwiftH46), Dr. Ignacio Vázquez (InterLAE-H21, FFI2012-32719 and H16_17R), Dr. Pablo León, Dr. Francisco Escribano and Dr. Lorenzo Delgado (CUD2014-09 and UZCUD-2016-HUM-01) and Dra. Rosa Lorés (FFI201784205-R and H16_17R) for having invited me to collaborate on their research projects funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad , the

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Gobierno de Aragón, the University of Zaragoza and Centro Universitario de la Defensa (Spain).

References Burgess, S. (2017). A life-history of humanities scholars’ responses to research publications policies in Spain. In M. Cargill & S. Burgess (Eds.), Publishing research in English as an additional language: practices, pathways and potentials. Adelaide University Press. https://doi.org/10.20851/english-pathways. Canagarajah, S. (1996). “Nondiscursive” requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written Communication, 13, 435–472. Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method . Left Coast Press. Curry, M. J., & Lillis, T. (2014). Strategies and tactics in academic knowledge production by multilingual scholars. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22(32), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v22n32.2014. Ellis, C., Adams, T., & Bochner, A. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research, 36 (4), 273–290. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Routledge. Flowerdew, J. (2020). Perspectives: English for research and publications purposes. A personal view. Journal of English for Research and Publication Purposes, 1(2), 170–183. https://doi.org/10.1075/jerpp.20013.flo. Goffman, E. (1969). Strategic interaction. University of Pennsylvania Press. Goodall, B. H. L. (2006). The need to know: The clandestine history of a CIA family. Left Coast Press. Ivaniˇc, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. John Benjamins. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2006). Reframing notions of competence in scholarly writing: From individual to networked activity. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 53, 63–78. Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Routledge.

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Pelias, R. J. (2007). Jarheads, girly men, and the pleasures of violence. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(7), 945–959. Poulos, C. N. (2008). Accidental ethnography: An inquiry into family secrecy. Left Coast Press. Swales, J., & Freak, K. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: A course for nonnative speakers of English. University of Michigan Press. Takouda, C., & Koutsogiannis, D. (2020). Identities under negotiation in a second language academic literacies course. In E. Skourtou, V. KourtisKazoullis, T. Aravossitas, & P. P. Trifonas (Eds.), Language diversity in Greece. Springer International.

Part III Ideology, Power, Struggle

14 An Account of Bifurcated Senses and Spaces in the Pursuit of Early-Career Academic Publications Kevin Gormley

Introduction In the Summer of 2019, the Second Annual Creativity Conference in the beautiful town of Ashland, Oregon, presented an opportunity for my first visit to the West Coast of the U.S. I anticipated that this conference would be a “restorative niche” (Cain, 2013, p. 219) or a place that would recharge and recalibrate my senses. Here, I believed I would find new purposes and approaches for my research on creativity in education. And I did. Here, a distinguished professor of psychology who I have long admired, was celebrated for his contribution to the field of creativity research. One speech given was about his output record of twelve items per year on average over a long career, and it detailed the quality and

K. Gormley (B) Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_14

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impact of his research publications. I knew his output was of exceptional proportions even in comparison to other scholars that held the same status. At first, I couldn’t avoid the well-rehearsed routine of comparing the profile of other researchers to my own. Before berating myself too much, I reminded myself of how pointless it would be to compare myself. After all, this conference was an expensive and much-anticipated retreat from teaching and the associated administrative duties. This professor’s methods and position in the social and political research hierarchies were altogether different to mine. Comparisons between his journey, and my own trajectory of PhD studies in education at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and work at Dublin City University, were not helpful. My research foci (creativity in education policy and practice, neoliberalism in education) and my teaching/supervision (music education and extended periods of school placement) mean I have a different research and researcher profile. I’m also aware that the tendency to count publications, to query the impact factor of a publication, along with other calculative and competitive measures, signify my place in a neoliberal imaginary (Hartman & Darab, 2012; McLachlan, 2017), an imaginary that I aspire to resist however micro levelled, problematic or contradictory the forms of such resistance. My three years of experience as an Assistant Professor means that there is still plenty of time to add to my published works. No, there was no point comparing his work with mine; the word count of his reference list would be higher than the count for the entire text of my output. Yet, here I was confronted at the same conference with a dichotomy between the idea of time to explore and imagine on the one hand, and the reality of another individual publishing twelve high quality articles, chapters or books every year. In that fresh mountain air of Oregon, there was the possibility to acquaint myself with new research approaches and to immerse myself in disciplinary study of creativity and learn, for example, about the neuropsychopharmacology of creativity before embracing possible interdisciplinary work. And yet, in the same air was the discourse of productivity, outputs and of celebrating phenomenal publication records. There was a bifurcated sense of space and openness to allow new work to emerge, and at the same time, a sense of unease that

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I was already behind, needing to be and to do more. Slow, fast, narrow, wide, immersive, strategic, intrinsic, extrinsic, process and product all collided and jarred together. All of these words became little hyperlinks to an uneasy sense of working in alternative temporalities.

Purposes and Directions This chapter is an autoethnographic account of an early-career scholar’s trajectory of writing for publication. The experiences of such scholars are currently under-investigated and under-explored in the research. My negotiation of a sense of clashing temporalities in writing for publication is an overriding theme in the chapter. It addresses the simultaneity of finalising work and getting lost in study. The idea of “finalising” acts as an umbrella term for outcome-oriented endeavour, for working efficiently and for working to short-frame deadlines. “Getting lost” is an umbrella term for gradual exploratory work, for the sustained percolation of ideas and for grappling with conflicting ideas over time. At the outset, I don’t see these as neat, well-defined categories. For example, I’m aware that work that begins in an exploratory way needs to be conducted in part or in whole within narrow time frames, and that there are always deadlines and activities that must be completed within given time frames. Any work submitted for publication will be reviewed by individuals who have their own time constraints and priorities. In my experience, the skill set and mind-set required for such work as drawing inferences from esoteric writings or seeking out resonances between writings and data sets prepared in different times and spaces is different to that required for finalising work. This chapter will explore that difference and associated tensions. This chapter is autoethnographic in nature. It uses elements of storytelling alongside ethnographic data to relate personal experience to wider social and political contexts. The “in nature” tag was chosen for two reasons. Firstly, ethnography is a sustained piece of research that draws on multiple data sources and perspectives. It extends to writing about the self in an ethnographic study context. While this chapter does not arise from a conventional ethnographic study, it draws on some elements of

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this mode of study. For example, study of documents exchanged with me, analysis of reflective accounts and analysis of written communications between myself and others feature in the work. Secondly, the “in-nature” term allows for some demarcation of my terms of reference. It is an understatement to say that autoethnography is a disputed term. Its purposes and methods, for example, are never quite uniform across seven definitions from seven keys figures in Denzin’s (2013, pp. 19–20) seminal text Interpretive Autoethnography. The individualised description of a phenomenon from a place of immersion in the field or the experience is the hallmark of autoethnographic writing. Turner (2018, p. 5) sees autoethnographic writing as a “craft that requires the time and space to think, feel and be immersed within your culture while noticing your immersions and how it is to be immersed”. After reading Anderson’s (2006) paper on analytical autoethnography and Ellis’s (2004) work on emotional dimensions to the methodology, I took inspiration from Stanley’s (2015, p. 150) idea of the “middle way”. This combines “an evocative, creative, testimonio of lived experience that is critically analysed with the aim of grounding theory in the data to produce broader understandings that may inform people in conceptually comparable, but distinct, situations” (Stanley, 2015, p. 150). The point about conceptually comparable situations here, and earlier discussion about relating the personal to a wider social and political context, requires some discussion of neoliberalism. Although far from a one-dimensional concept, neoliberalism cannot be ignored in discussing the current context within which I am embedded. The chapter takes account of the argument that neoliberal thought and capitalism have become deeply embedded in the fabric of our social and political lives. One consequence of this is that the value and worth of academic writing is often associated with economic impact and marketable value of that research. The embedment of points made throughout the narrative within the literature on neoliberalism, academic writing and the academy provides a means to contextualise the work. Foucault’s work, more specifically his writings on discourse (Foucault, 1970, 1972) and power/knowledge (1977) are drawn upon throughout this chapter. His writings focus on central themes like power and they afford conceptual and meta-level points of connectedness between

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my experience and the experiences of other early-career researchers. Although I am aware that power relations are continually evolving and resist static meaning, I point out some examples of how I perceive power to construct my knowledge and my experience of writing. The paper leads from the premise that academic writing for publication is a discourse. This highly prized and valued activity is constructed by specific gatekeepers and political contexts. In turn, it too constructs such truth configurations as one’s association with a particular field, one’s status in that field and how one progresses through that field. Discourses “form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972, p. 49). Looking at our practices and assumptions and the practices of those that influence us as power/knowledge relationships presents an opportunity to access a more nuanced account of what we do and why we undertake particular actions. I discuss a range of experiences throughout the chapter and then relate each of these to wider discourse of socio-political contexts and power relations. Many of these experiences are not bound to a singular specific time but encompass experience over time, like my practice of writing notes to myself on drafts. Other specific experiences are discussed as lead-in examples to engage with broader discursive and non-discursive bearings on my work towards publications. Even though all of the experiences arose at different times and for different writing projects over the last three years, three chronological headings are used to weave the points together into a narrative.

Before Writing: Belonging and Outlets Perhaps, the fluidity and openness that characterises my experience of academic writing stems from the slippery nature of my field(s) and of my objects of study. Direct answers are seldom available for questions such as: In what field do I belong? What is the best journal to target for this paper? Even though my research is broadly about the intersection of policy and creativity, telling a colleague or an interview panel member that my research was about “creativity” invariably meant a very different conversation than would have taken place had I said my research was

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about “policy”. I could move those descriptors around depending on whether I wanted to be judged as “arty”, as “critical”, as “political” or as “colourful”. My PhD thesis and publications dip into several research interests—arts education, creativity, music, policy, post structuralism, Foucault studies, education reform—and I’m enthused by the idea of drawing all of these together. Thinking alongside Foucault, each discipline of academic study (knowledge) has particular conventions, rules and formulae in place to be guarded and policed by gatekeepers (power relations). Throughout my life, I have truly valued multiple perspectives in understanding any phenomenon: I chose primary teaching as my first career as it was important to me to have a little experience of all subject areas, and to witness children’s first encounters with multiple subjects, rather than encountering the painful experience of choosing to pursue a single discipline or subject. I am enthused by role model writers who combine divergent research interests and perspectives in their writing, sidestepping conventional presentation and singular perspectives. I think here of Holm-Hadulla’s (2013) writings that bridge perspectives on creativity from the humanities and sciences or Ramm’s (2017) work on the relevance of the Faust legend to contemporary ecological concerns. I am inspired by such research exemplars, and aspire towards such boundary-crossing writing as a kind of resistance to locating my research in a single discipline and singular perspective. That openness continues into and is amplified by writing activities. After some experience, what I now consider academic writing to be is vastly different to how I previously understood this. I once considered it as a visibly action-oriented activity; if two hours yielded five hundred words, four hours would bring the count up by one thousand. Now, I use “writing time” as a catch-all for all of those processes like reading, thinking about connections, drafting rambling sentences in the hope that some kind of pattern will emerge, or going back to earlier stages along the way. There is no agreed-upon format for the abstracts, no blueprint for how a theorist’s writings are merged with current contexts. It can be a delightful process. The words and the possibilities for expressing an idea all coalesce together, prompting a playful wrestle until the best-fit-for-now text emerges. That feeling of grappling around gives way to immense satisfaction when the nets are gently reconfigured to

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release that sentence, phrase or word and allow it to breathe. My experience of seeking out a sense that a particular wording or phrasing works is rather similar to Claxton’s (2006) description of soft creativity. I identify with his “hazy sense” and eventual “small feeling of ease or release” (Claxton, 2006, p. 354) when framing ideas in my writing. It can also be an infuriating process where no phrases enter the space between intention and delivery on the page. On those days, there is nothing to grapple or wrestle with. Instead, there is a dull void filled with angst and feelings of inadequacy while a cursor flicks on a blank white screen. The drafts of work in progress resemble construction sites and illustrate the gradual coming-into-being of a paper. I write way too much and later scrap or reword. I join ideas together that make sense at that moment in time yet don’t when I revisit. I scrawl notes in italics that make sense when finished for a given day, yet when reopened require a frustrating retracing of my steps. In the middle of my prose paragraphs, I also write notes or orders to myself. I intend these notes to push the work onwards on revisiting. Such notes often fulfill this purpose, sparking ideas as to how the work may be deepened or ideas on how the work may be cross-referenced with other research. Occasionally on revisiting such notes, I find them vague and unhelpful and lose track of the lines of thought that led to them. On those days, I question if the writing underway is misaligned with the journal which I plan to target. I ask whether attempts to bridge different fields will result in questionable contributions to a number of areas rather than a widely regarded contribution to a discrete field. I question whether changing the outlet and target audience for the writing might re-establish my creativity or what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) terms “creative flow”. While publications in journals and books are highly valued in university discourse, another outlet that attracts great attention is media content derived from our research and made available publicly. After attending a number of events that highlighted the importance of reaching wider interested audiences with our research, and training on how to write for media outlets, I was determined to disseminate my work beyond a journal readership. I wanted to make an impact and increase my engagement . These were words that proliferated at that training. I

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submitted a “story” proposal to a popular blog-style site that disseminates academic research among wider audiences. The research to be communicated came from my thesis. I soon realised the challenge in translating work from a Foucaultinspired thesis, with all of its defamiliarisation and discourse focus, to a short blog-style piece. It became more and more apparent that the essence and framing of my thesis was difficult to reconcile with the idea of such translation. I tried my best to contract my argument by completely removing material and got braver with the punchiness of my phrases. I was reassured by the fact that the editor’s four emails informed me that the topic was interesting and was the kind of topic that readers would find engaging. These emails ended with a question: Was I really making point x? I would then promptly reply saying that point x was one possibility but that such a point could only be made under particular circumstances. Despite my efforts, the piece was continually returned to me asking for more punch and clarity. My attempts to justify why I couldn’t provide direct answers brought me back to the PhD-study annual review days, where individuals whose research was premised on data results and statistically provable evidence-based conclusions would question why my research didn’t look like theirs. There, I also found myself in a chasm between Foucault’s decentering of truth claims, and questions about which model I followed. I endeavoured to reach more open conclusions and to question assumptions upon which conventional wisdom rested. The “figure of truth” (Foucault, 1994, p. 367) at which I wished to arrive was not premised upon taking one conventional position over another, but rather on drawing attention to the impacts and effects of taking positions. This openness is difficult to reconcile with expectations for punchy or impactful statements, and therefore translating my work into this style of a blog piece was particularly challenging. McLachlan (2017) critiques the resignation and inevitability discourses that surround neoliberal logic where, even among critical scholars and senior academics, the emphasis is on how the individual needs to fit the system. While one may strongly feel that a short attention-grabbing story might not be compatible with their style of research, and could argue that a translation culture is a new phenomenon driven by an agenda outside of education or research, the bottom line

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remains that gatekeepers of my profession prize such outlets as research dissemination fora. On reflection and considering the presentation of work I’ve enjoyed reading on such fora, I believe that this quest for punchy truth statements was also a quest to compose headings, tag lines and hyperlinks. The prioritisation of punchiness in research and publication culture can illustrate the “relation of interiority” (Kendall & Wickham, 1999, p. 51) between power and knowledge. In some of his earlier works from 1972 to 1977, Foucault argued that power is not an abstract or a given fixed state. Rather, it is actively deployed and strategically negotiated. Throughout such negotiation of power relations, knowledge is constructed. I identify with McLachlan’s (2017) experience of a dominant discourse where one needs to fit a status quo to legitimate their research. In my work, I simply needed to find a way to make the story fit. If I couldn’t, it was my problem to resolve. On the one hand, in amendments and revisions, I tried to fit my work in that publication by moving towards words and phrases of higher modality where I saw it was possible. On the other, I resisted overall truths or absolute takeaway messages by sending back these further drafts and explanations as to why my work precluded the kinds of truth statements sought by the editor. Although not published in that particular outlet, the work was published elsewhere and, in hindsight, the exchanges helped to clarify my thinking. The exchanges represent simultaneous resistance to the dominant discourses of evidence and truth-statements and attempts to work within them.

Writing in Progress: Evidence and Narratives The “politics of evidence” (Bunds & Giardina, 2017, p. 228) plays a pivotal role in research and academic publication discourse in neoliberal times. What can be claimed objectively in funding and grant bids is more marketable than work that celebrates the contingent and defamiliarises truth claims. Although “evidence” is not a neutral word in itself and the grounds on which conclusions are reached and on which claims are made varies greatly across disciplines and fields, the term belongs in the realm

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of arriving at truth claims and closing off an enquiry rather than being immersed within and attuned to the complexity of ideas. Documents like descriptors for career progression and funding calls are replete with the language of deliverables and calculation. In many ways, researchers’ work is subjected to the “tyranny of numbers” (Lynch, 2015, p. 202). At times, there is tension between my aspirations or preferences for my research, and the discourse of evidence in academic publication culture. When writing, my interest is in engagement with few policy artefacts or with case-study examples of the experiences of few participants. One of my publications (Gormley, 2020) was centred solely on one participant, where I explored how particular discourses of creativity inform one’s teacher identity. I wanted to illustrate how Foucault’s writings could inform our understandings of how various versions of creativity are taken on board or countered by an individual. This approach was appropriate for the particular field and journal, where analysis and theorisation of cases was welcome in the pursuit of new understanding. However, perhaps owing to the aforementioned experiences of PhD annual progress events, I still found myself trying to prepare for questions about evidence. How did I know if this one participant’s experience was in any way representative of other teachers? What evidence did I have for my claim that this study contributed to knowledge about creativity in education? I felt sure that readers of that journal would ask alternative questions, but still felt I should point out how this analysis foregrounded “micro critical practices, very much lacking in grandeur” (Ball, 2016, pp. 1130–1131) that foregrounded “another figure of truth” (Foucault, 1994, p. 367) into the construction of knowledge about creativity. I had responded to possible questions of evidence and applicability by pointing out that the interest here was in how the micro-levelled points of analysis inform truth and knowledge. I also encountered questions of evidence and deliverables when submitting a recent book proposal, within which I had to address questions of competing titles, the marketability of the proposal, and of the target audience. The reviewer reports returned to me also addressed the same questions as well as offering reviewer views on whether the sample size was appropriate. Making a case for the text against the backdrop

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of such evidence discourses creates challenges for presenting unconventional ideas or proposals. There is a dualism between establishing how a project is new and different or may be premised on alternative claims about knowledge creation, and establishing this project within particular frames of reference for what has sold well in the past or what kinds of sample sizes or audiences could be targeted. While there is always room for negotiation and space for new proposals to be developed and considered, a sense of bifurcation between freedom and evidence prevails. The disconcertion of becoming aware of gaps and shortcoming in making arguments is challenged by the realities of normalising discourses in academia. On the one hand, I am continually drawn into quests to explore avenues that open up while writing. The recursive nature of writing and research means that one argument often leads to another perspective to be explored. On the other hand, there are contractual obligations, the effect of which is the “fabrication of the disciplined individual” (Foucault, 1977, p. 308): I must publish and simultaneously must attend to a myriad of other duties that exist in different temporal spaces. I must carve out space for the writing work that leads to publications and have outputs to display on my university profile. All of these “must” statements that I have internalised are a form of Foucault’s disciplinary power, constituting a normalising and regulatory system. Foucault did not write that we are disciplined by such “must” statements in a punitive sense, but that individuals come to regulate themselves according to normalising systems. When I compare my work and my output to others or consult the reported quality of outlets by way of journal rankings, I take up a role in a normalising system that hides the construction work behind these outputs. Similarly, when I make multiple edits to a piece to try to fit in with popular publication outlets despite the difficulty inherent in aligning my work with such outlets, I try to fit with a narrative: work needs to be made available out there. Such actions show that I have internalised regulative systems. As well as the written manuscript that represents the quantifiable artefact or outcome of writing, non-discursive and situational factors (Hyland, 2016) such as pressure to publish or time constraints also inform my writings. While

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normalisation is very rarely the only modality of power at work, and the final section of the chapter will conclude with some ways that it can be negotiated, it is disingenuous to separate writing practices from wider job descriptions and roles as if the former somehow remains independent of the latter.

Nearing the End: Reviews Manuscript reviews can take many forms. The experience can be incredibly affirming where peers acknowledge contributions of the work, provide balanced and thought-provoking commentaries, and endorse publication. At other times, the experience of receiving a review can be fraught with great trepidation and disillusionment, where the writer is presented with conflicting or ambiguous remarks that leaves one unsure as to how to proceed with revisions. I’ve experienced both types of review, but here I foreground one instance since it captures a range of reactions and points of interplay between Foucault’s writings and neoliberal contexts. Balancing up the points made throughout three anonymous reviews of my submitted manuscript, an editor’s message gave me a high level of control. Major revisions would involve revisiting the work of a particular theorist to which I had briefly alluded. Drawing on a consistent message from one reviewer, it was made clear to me that deeper engagement with this theorist’s work was necessary as was consultation of other works that I had not yet fully explored. Alternatively, the editor added, I could remove the brief mention of that theorist and, in that case, only very minor revisions were required. Should I go back to primary sources? Should I read deeply and widely and then spend time articulating and justifying points of resonance between my work and that work. After all, that particular point was more of an example, an interesting point en route between points of my main argument, a point which could be substituted or replaced without dismantling the main argument. It was clear to me that further engagement with the ideas referenced by the reviewer and editor, and more nuanced articulation of how my writing intersected with those ideas, would require slow scholarship.

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The concept of slow scholarship (Hartman & Darab, 2012; McLachlan, 2017) aligns with ideas of study as indeterminate. To revisit a theorist, to better understand the ramification of his or her writing and better construct an argument for how those writings intersect with the concerns of my writing, requires slow scholarship. I consider the preparation and planning before putting words to page to be like one’s acclimatisation in another country before they can visit tourist sites. It takes time to appreciate and understand ideas just as it takes time to recover from jet lag, to acclimatise to temperatures changes, to acquaint oneself with some phrases and to become aware of the news headings of the day. Slow scholarship and deep engagement stubbornly require time. Hartman and Darab (2012, p. 59) discuss how “time is an essential factor for the kinds of deep cognitive processes that are involved in innovative and creative thinking… the freedom and time to engage in thinking, to immerse oneself in experiential encounters, to synthesize information and reflect upon it—this is how new ways of knowing are formed”. Capturing the inherent difficulties in carving out this time and freedom in neoliberal times, these writers caution how our understandings of “what it means to be a scholar need renewed interrogation (Hartman & Darab, 2012, p. 59). Attempts to squeeze in some writing time between classes or expectations that I will make up for lost writing over a writing blitz usually fail. Since my experience of writing is a largely independent endeavour, whereas all teaching and administrative requirements of my role are completed in accordance with others’ calendars and deadlines, writing often only comes in second or third place. Space is often afforded to the kind of academic writing that leads to publication only after I have attended to other types of writing such as preparing teaching materials, feedback to students or responses to colleagues. In isolation, such emails, requests and reminders are entirely acceptable, important for the teaching and learning work of my workplace and well within my contractual obligations. It is their relentlessness that often makes slow scholarship an ideal, at times beyond the reach of my day-to-day work. These other occluded forms of writing (Hyon & Chen, 2004) compete for the resources of time, focus and effort and, in so doing, have an impact upon scholarly publication outputs. Writing for publication and

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these other forms occupy the same discursive space of a “role description” in a seemingly neutral way, but situational factors like colleague’s timeframes and unquantifiable administrative duties mean that some forms become more urgent that others. I’m aware that writing can be the most inspiring and scholar-affirming aspect of my work that links my work to theorists and to new directions in research nationally and internationally, and I plan for discrete writing time every week, yet this writing often has to fit in the margins of the workday. Back to the decision on how to respond to the review: my response was to leave out the questionable reference and return the manuscript to the editor after some minor edits. I debated with myself on whether I could devote the time for more reading, reflection and clarification of arguments, a kind of input–output consideration. I was already behind time. Like an overdue library book, this publication for an early-career academic was also overdue. Getting something published in a journal that I and my peers respected was simultaneously an attractive, necessary and time-sensitive prospect. I felt an overwhelming urgency to respond to the editor’s email as quickly as possible with my decision to proceed without including that theorist’s ideas. Publication workshops which I had attended and peers who had already published more than I had reinforced this narrative of urgency. At the same time, the inclusion of this writer’s work represented an original idea for me, and I felt certain that slow scholarship would have resulted in a much more convincing argument throughout the article. There was a freedom in the editor’s comments along with a facilitation of the time it would take to make major changes, and I trusted that the article with major changes would still be of interest. As Foucault reminds us though, one’s freedom is never outside of societal and community expectations. The editor’s comments and my situatedness presented an agonism, or “permanent provocation” (Foucault, 2002, p. 242) between freedom and structure. I was not rendered helpless or held to any absolute conditions. Rather, I actively chose not to make further amendments to the article at that time, certainly not in avoidance of slow scholarship but against the backdrop of the challenges to such scholarship.

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Bifurcation Is Not Debilitation This chapter has detailed some experiences of my publication trajectory. It has drawn upon Foucault’s writings on power and knowledge to probe as to how my experiences are never isolated phenomena but products and effects of the neoliberal context within which early-career scholars work. We exist in a time of great bifurcation for academic writing. The practices of academic writing exist in the same discourse spaces as the proliferation of neoliberalised university cultures. We hold onto cultural legacies of what counts as good academic writing, the scholar, the academy, the academic, which I believe predate current modes by which our work is governed. We cannot sidestep this bifurcation or perpetuate a myth that one can work outside of discursive frames that shape their work. Yet, inkeeping with a Foucauldian perspective, there is always space for ethical action. I am inspired by people like Cheek (2017, p. 225) who points out how choosing to pursue a publication in a lower ranked journal “will free us from having to outsource the thinking about aspects of our research”, and argues that time spent in conversation with others at conferences rather than focusing on hurried strategic encounters, can begin to push back against neoliberal mantras of productivity. Another action in the face of constraint is exemplified in Stanley’s (2015) work, where the lines between writing academically and writing creatively are blurred. It is hoped that my embedment of isolated experiences within their wider social and political context will provide other early-career scholars with accounts of neoliberal intersections with our work. The focus on Foucault’s power/knowledge will hopefully provide a novel theorisation of such intersections and inspire other scholars to look at how configurations of power and knowledge play out in their own contexts. The focus on contextual and situational factors here that are specific to an early-career scholar draws attention to discursive and non-discursive realities of writing. Ways by which the early-career scholar is disciplined in a Foucauldian sense are highlighted as are tensions inherent in adopting taken-for-granted constructs like “evidence” in all writing endeavour. This chapter provides another perspective on tensions that are potentially universal and the perspective here may be new to scholars outside of neoliberal critique or Foucault studies. In joining my experiences and

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theorisations with those of other scholars, I hope this chapter will play a role in the collective imperative to speak back to challenges inherent in our work, to negotiate power relations and to act within spaces of coincident constraint and freedom.

References Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35 (4), 373–395. Ball, S. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: Refusing neoliberalism? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37 (8), 1129–1146. Bunds, K. S., & Giardina, M. D. (2017). Navigating the corporate university: Reflections on the politics of research in neoliberal times. Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, 17 (3), 227–235. Cain, S. (2013). Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. Broadway Books. Cheek, J. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and the research marketplace: Putting some +s (pluses) in our thinking, and why this matters. Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, 17 (3), 221–226. Claxton, G. (2006). Thinking at the edge: Developing soft creativity. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36 (3), 351–362. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row. Denzin, N. K. (2013). Interpretive autoethnography (2nd ed.). Sage. Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Altamira Press. Foucault, M. (1970). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1994). Des traveaux. In Dits et ecrits. Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2002). The subject and power. In J. Faubion (Ed.), Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984, Volume 3: Power. The New Press. Gormley, K. (2020). Foucault’s ethical self-formation and David’s articulation of a creative self. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(14), 1493–1502.

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Hartman, Y., & Darab, S. (2012). A call for slow scholarship: A case study on the intensification of academic life and its implications for pedagogy. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 34 (1–2), 49–60. Holm-Hadulla, R. M. (2013). The dialectic of creativity: A synthesis of neurobiological, psychological, cultural and practical aspects of the creative process. Creativity Research Journal, 25 (3), 293–299. Hyland, K. (2016). Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. Hyon, S., & Chen, R. (2004). Beyond the research article: University faculty genres and EAP graduate preparation. English for Specific Purposes, 23(3), 233–263. Kendall, G., & Wickham, G. (1999). Using Foucault’s methods. Sage. Lynch, K. (2015). Control by numbers: New managerialism and ranking in higher education. Critical Studies in Education, 56 (2), 190–207. McLachlan, F. (2017). Being critical: An account of an early career academic working within and against neoliberalism. Sport, Education and Society, 22(1), 58–72. Ramm, B. (2017, September 26). What the myth of Faust can teach us. BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170907-what-the-myth-offaust-can-teach-us. Stanley, P. (2015). Writing the PhD Journey(s) An Autoethnography of zinewriting, angst, embodiment, and backpacker travels. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 44 (2), 143–168. Turner, L. (2018). Introduction: A place to start. In L. Turner, N. Short, A. Grant, & T. Adams (Eds.), International perspectives on autoethnographic research and practice. Routledge.

15 Establishing a Track Record in an Age of Precarity Sharon McCulloch

An Academic ‘Life Story’ Probably in common with many in my field, I did not set out to become an academic. I had been working as an English language teacher for around 15 years, and I was in something of a rut, both personally and professionally. Scrolling through jobs.ac.uk one day, I stumbled upon an ad for PhD scholarships specialising in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and thus began my journey from Tokyo to the damp North West of England, where I sit today. Since graduating six years ago, I have worked as a learning developer, research associate, teaching fellow, lecturer, and now senior lecturer. With regard to academic publishing, before I left Japan, I had already published a short article in a professional teaching journal. While completing my PhD, I published two journal articles, and since graduating I have published a further five articles, one S. McCulloch (B) University of Central Lancashire, Lancashire, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_15

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book chapter, and one monograph, as well as various blog pieces and book reviews. Presented this way, my research trajectory sounds rather neat and tidy: a straightforward story of progression towards more senior academic roles and the all-important ‘track record’ of publication. This is the success story I have told to potential employers and funders, but of course behind it lies a messier truth that looks less like the single, elegant arc of a trajectory and more like an assault course beset with obstacles. Above, I refer to six years, and list five different job titles. In fact, I had seven different posts in this period (three with the same title) in four different universities in three different corners of England. While in the final year of my PhD, I took a job as a learning developer. This was classed as a ‘professional’ rather than an ‘academic’ role. It was a permanent post within academia, but did not include any time for research. In the two years I worked as a learning developer, I did not publish anything, and it took a further two years after leaving this post before any publications appeared in print, so there is a four-year gap in my publication record. You may also have noticed the mention of 15 years in relation to my teaching career. I was 40 years old when I started my PhD, which is worth bearing in mind when I talk about the challenges of being an ‘early-career scholar’ or what is sometimes referred to as a ‘junior researcher’ or ‘novice academic’. I never really felt like a novice, and my journey into academia has always felt more like a slow evolution than the start of a new career. My next post was my perfect job: as a research associate on a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Perfect, that is, aside from the fact that it was only funded for two years. These two years were extremely fruitful in terms of scholarly writing and acted as the springboard to establishing a publication trajectory, but there were setbacks along the way, which I describe in more detail below. My stint as a research associate was followed by three part time, temporary teaching posts, which were, for reasons I describe below, not conducive to scholarly writing even though much writing was done during that time. Eventually, I found a lectureship at a university commutable from where I live. The contract was temporary, but it has been extended several times, I am now a senior lecturer, albeit still on a temporary contract.

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As I set out to explore my transition from a PhD student to an ‘established’ academic, I wonder what makes one ‘established’ and what gives me the right to occupy this subject position. Does this rest on time passed since the completion of my PhD? Having published more than once or twice? Having published a monograph? Being invited to do peer-review? Securing a permanent post that involves teaching and research? Being included in the UK’s research evaluation scheme, the REF? I have passed some, but not all of these milestones and the truth is I do not feel very ‘established’. In particular, I still do not have a permanent academic post. My trajectory has been characterised by highs and lows, with moments when I have wanted to give up, and moments when I have felt like the luckiest woman alive. The writing I have published tells the world about who I am as a researcher, but as I navigated different roles, many of them precarious, much of it has been produced at times of struggle and doubt. This chapter aims to demonstrate, with reference to my own experience, the ways in which academic publishing by early-career scholars both shapes and is shaped by wider socio-political forces in the academic job market and in higher education more broadly. I take as my starting point the understanding that scholarly writing is both social and ideological. Having described my own academic ‘life story’, I outline the theoretical lens that this autoethnographically-oriented account takes, before exploring my own writing experience in relation to three types of contextual factors that have influenced its development. I briefly discuss factors that have played a facilitative role in developing my academic writing before reflecting on the personal cost of this journey.

The Theoretical and Methodological Lenses Academic writing for publication lies at the heart of what it means to be an academic and is closely intertwined with the notion of identity. Earlycareer scholars are in the process of carving out their research niche and figuring out what sort of academic they want to be. Writing is an integral part of this as it is one of the central means by which legitimate membership of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) can be claimed. It is therefore an important marker of identity, legitimacy and

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of status in the academy. As French (2019) has noted, the feeling that one can make a meaningful contribution to one’s disciplinary network is key to early-career scholars’ sense of being accepted as a disciplinary insider. However, the journey from periphery to centre may not be as unproblematic as the community of practice model implies. Gourlay (2011), for instance, investigated new lecturers’ transition to the textual practices of their academic discourse communities and found that Lave and Wenger’s conditions for a community of practice: shared repertoire, mutual endeavour, and expert-novice interaction, were not consistently met. Instead, novice lecturers were plagued by a sense of confusion, isolation, and inauthenticity. Scholarly writing is a site of struggle for newcomers because it entails not simply language, but also the cultures, practices, identities, structures, and ideologies that facilitate and constrain text. In this sense, it is a form of social practice (Duff, 2010) situated within its socio-cultural context. An academic literacy studies perspective on scholarly writing (Barton, 2007; Gee, 2000) takes account of the ways disciplinary, institutional, and wider socio-cultural issues and priorities can shape academics’ writing practices. It is this theoretical perspective on scholarly writing that informs this chapter. The socially situated nature of scholarly writing means that autoethnography is a suitable method for investigating the lived experience of scholarly writers, as it acknowledges the role played by one’s location and identity (Canagarajah, 2012) in conducting research. Gee, for example, stated that ‘reading and writing only makes sense when studied in the context of social and cultural practices of which they are part’ (Gee, 2000, p. 180). While the auto element of autoethnography entails the study of the self, the ethno element facilitates the examination of ‘cultural ways of utilising written language’ (Barton & Hamilton, 2000, p. 7). In their study of post-doctoral academics, Skakni et al. (2019) found that early-career scholars’ personal and professional identities were inseparable, and a broadly autoethnographic account allows both of these dimensions to be taken into account. The story of my scholarly writing development is a personal one, but it is embedded within the broader context of the UK higher education

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and three intersecting aspects of this context that have mediated its development: the geolinguistic, the geographical and the geopolitical. In the account below, I describe the discursive and non-discursive (Canagarajah, 1996) challenges and opportunities I have encountered in connection with these and how they have interacted with what Skakni et al. (2019) describe as the institutional, networking, and intellectual strands of a research career trajectory.

Contextual Factors that Have Influenced My Scholarly Writing Trajectory The Language Factor The first contextual factor that has had, at once, a huge influence and no influence at all on my scholarly publishing is language. English, the lingua franca of international research, is my mother tongue, and in this sense, language has been a non-issue in my own publishing efforts. I have never considered publishing in any other language since I do not know any other languages well enough for this to be an option. At the level of the self, then, language is of no relevance to my development as an academic writer. Drawing the lens back, however, to see the self as embedded within culture and context, it is clear that only someone in a position of privilege can claim such a stance. My native tongue gives me the unearned privilege of facing virtually no linguistic barriers to publishing in an international context. Of course, this does not guarantee success. Hyland (2016) and Habibie (2016) have pointed out that academic discourse must be learned by everyone, including those with English as their first language. Ivaniˇc (1998) and others have shown that academic writing is an ‘act of identity’ (p. 32) that extends far beyond linguistic structure and form, to encompass socio-rhetorical, epistemological, process and disciplinary dimensions. Confidence in writing for publication, even in one’s first language, may be linked to educational background or social class, and even Anglophone scholars experience difficulties and self-doubt in attempting to navigate the academic publishing landscape. Hyland (2016) claims that

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being a native speaker of English therefore brings no particular advantage. However, as Politzer-Ahles et al. (2016) have observed, the concept of ‘privilege’ does not mean that everything is easy for native English speakers. Rather, it means that whatever barriers I have faced in building a track record of publication, language was not one of them perhaps in part due to my experience of studying and teaching language and linguistics, including academic writing. I loved academic writing, felt at home there and, if anything, embraced its potential as a way to transcend issues such as social class. When I speak, I am immediately seen as different from most of my academic colleagues and perhaps as not quite belonging because I have an accent that is associated with low social prestige in the UK (Donnelly et al., 2019). When I write, I am freed of this prejudice and can communicate with my peers on an equal footing. I love the feeling of an argument falling into place, when an idea pushes my thinking forward, and when I read something I’ve been working on and think, ‘Yes, this is what I wanted to say’. In this sense, academic writing represents a discursive opportunity to me. Overall, geolinguistic factors have meant that I have experienced few discursive struggles and, rather, enjoyed what Lillis and Curry call a ‘geolinguistic advantage’ (2010, p. 6) in my academic writing endeavours.

Geographical Place The second contextual factor in the development of my scholarly writing is my geographical place in the world. I was born in Scotland and live and work in England, one of the richest countries in a relatively rich continent. This places me, personally and professionally, in a ‘centre’ rather than a peripheral context in Canagarajah’s terms (2002, p. 7). The higher education sector in the UK is relatively well-resourced in that most universities have the social and material resources needed to facilitate research writing, including well-stocked libraries that subscribe to major international journals and ready access to research networks that can foster publishing opportunities. Throughout my PhD, I could apply for funding to attend international conferences. When I worked as a research associate, funding for attending conferences was built into

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the grant, so in the two years of work there, I presented at numerous conferences in the UK and internationally. Being British, it is relatively easy to travel internationally without applying for visas and sponsorship. I had a computer and the basic software I needed. This is in contrast to those in peripheral or semi-peripherical contexts who have documented non-discursive challenges such as lack of resources and access to research networks (Abdeljaoued, 2018; Englander & Corcoran, 2019; Lillis & Curry, 2010; Salager-Meyer, 2014). As I had access to stimulating talks, books, and articles, and could extend these networks by attending conferences, this aspect of context has brought few challenges and some non-discursive advantages in terms of the networking and intellectual strands of academic life that facilitate scholarly writing.

Geopolitical Factors: Precarious Employment Practices The third contextual influence on the development of my writing for publication is closely related to my geographical location: the geopolitical context, as manifested in English higher education through precarious employment practices and research evaluation practices. I discuss employment practices in this section, and research evaluation practices in the next section. The UK higher education sector is highly marketised and has high mobility of both staff and students. One effect of this is that the academic job market has become more competitive, and employment conditions have worsened. Recruitment onto PhD programmes has increased far faster than the number of vacancies (Larson et al., 2013) meaning that more candidates are applying for each academic position. At the same time, insecure fixed-term contracts are now the norm for early-career scholars. According to the University College Union, more than half of all academic staff are on insecure or fixed-term contracts (Grove, 2016; UCU, 2020). Since completing my PhD almost six years ago, my only permanent job has been in a non-research position, which I then left in favour of a temporary job as a research associate because insecurity felt like a price

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worth paying for gaining research experience. I was only in the luxurious position of being able to pay this price because I do not have dependents relying on my income. The research position was externally funded by a research council for two years. Financially, it was a gamble, but I reasoned that I would produce research outputs, which would make me more employable in the long term. But, of course, research outputs tend to cluster at the end of a project and they take time to appear in print, so by the time the funding ended, I was job-hunting with a CV that listed my last publication as four years previously. While, once upon a time, having any publications at all would have been a bonus, employers were now looking for that ‘strong track record’ of publications. I then taught in three part-time, temporary posts scattered around the country. One was in London, one in the South West of England, and one in the North West. Although I loved working with students and the experience of different university systems was valuable, this period of my career was characterised by self-doubt. I wondered how long I would be stuck in these low-status, insecure posts, and why I could not get something better. Aside from the personal and financial insecurity, I experienced frustration and loss of academic identity. I spent a lot of time (and money) on trains and sleeping in friends’ spare rooms. I did not have an office in any of the universities I worked at and would meet my students in whatever windowless storeroom happened to be free, sometimes on a different floor from the rest of the department. I would travel to each institution for two or three days per month, filling those days with supervision meetings and doing the rest of my work remotely. I could not attend research seminars or other training or social events or get to know the other academics because the limited days that I was physically present were filled with student meetings. As a temporary teaching fellow, one is not invited to departmental meetings, since the role does not include any administrative or management duties relevant to the running of the department. This meant that I could not build the kind of meaningful relationships that are so important to scholarly writing (Tusting et al., 2019), nor engage in professional networking that might lead to shared research and collaborative scholarly publication. No-one knew me as a researcher, and before long, I hardly knew myself due to my uncertain status.

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Early-career scholars are likely to be negotiating multiple identities as they learn their various roles within a department and institution, as members of their discipline and as emerging researchers (Warhurst, 2008). When there are multiple role changes in a relatively short time, this can lead to an academic identity crisis. In a study of early-career academics in the UK and Sweden, Skakni et al. (2019) found that those in post-doctoral positions had blurred institutional status and this led them to fear not being intellectually recognised by their disciplinary community. This was also my own experience. I continued working on publications with my colleagues from my previous post, but I had to squeeze this writing in between my three other jobs. The time lag between writing and publication meant that my CV did not look particularly impressive, making it hard to get a permanent post. I knew that this ‘publication gap’ in my CV was harming my chances, and it did not help that I could see another gap looming on the horizon. Although research outputs were in progress, I could not embark on any new projects as none of my three teaching posts included any research time or responsibility. Aside from the issue of time, one cannot apply for research funding unless one’s employment contract lasts at least as long as the funding period. These employment conditions for early-career scholars make it less likely that they will be able to establish a track record of publications, and thus secure a permanent post. After a year and a half of working in these precarious posts, I had almost given up. A low point came when I received, on the same day, an appraisal document praising the high quality of my work and a rejection letter for a permanent lectureship in the same department. Juggling multiple insecure posts presented an emotional challenge to my scholarly writing, in that my research capability was reduced by both practical constraints and by loss of academic identity. The emotional side of trying to establish a track record of publications was, at times, the most difficult aspect of my academic writing life, but the affective dimensions of academic writing are relatively under-researched (although see French, 2018; Heron et al., 2020; Sword et al., 2019). My failure to secure a job that included research led me to doubt that my research was good enough. I reflected on my research areas and wondered if these were not considered relevant enough, or if my research not rigorous enough.

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Not only did I doubt my own choices and expertise, but I began to doubt that academia was for me. Did I really want to put myself through this gruelling experience of constantly competing with others and being found wanting? Gill (2016) has highlighted many of the ‘hidden injuries’ of neoliberal academia, such as exhaustion, guilt, shame, and feelings of ‘out of placeness’ (p. 40) and has argued that these are consequences of the hyper-competitive system of becoming a full academic ‘citizen’.

Geopolitical Factors: Research Evaluation Regimes The second element of the geopolitical context that has influenced my academic writing is the UK’s research evaluation and funding regime. Changes since 2010 in the way British higher education is funded mean that universities now compete with each other to recruit international students, whose tuition fees make up a large part of their income. Institutions are branded, marketed, evaluated, and ranked in numerous league tables, operating in what Warren (2017) calls a ‘status economy’, whereby their main currency in this global market is their status according to international rankings. The data that feed into these rankings come from a set of performance indicators, including the UK’s national Research Excellence Framework (REF). This is the national research evaluation system whereby academics’ research outputs are rated, the scores in a given unit aggregated, and government funding allocated accordingly (REF, 2014). The REF is not only a direct means of allocating funding; it also affects universities’ ability to attract income from tuition fees because REF scores feed into league tables. Most universities in the UK manage academics’ scholarly writing in order to score highly in the REF and thus secure income and status. This includes policies around minimum numbers of outputs to be published, types of publications to be produced, and venues in which these should be published (Tusting et al., 2019). Academics’ scholarly writing is, therefore, often linked to promotion or probation conditions, which places them under enormous pressure and looms large over their sense of identity. This can be particularly problematic for earlycareer scholars. For example, the policies around the REF can mean that

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single-authored papers are given more status than co-authored papers and that academics are forced to target journals with high impact factors (McCulloch, 2017a). However, it may be unrealistic to expect those at the beginning of their careers to publish in the highest-ranking journals, which typically have rejection rates of around 90%. For early-career scholars, an important way of getting a foothold in scholarly publishing is to work with a more experienced colleague, but if co-authored papers are seen as less prestigious for REF purposes, then they may feel pressured to publish alone. Early-career academics are more vulnerable to these pressures because accruing highly-rated outputs of the ‘right’ type in the ‘right’ venues is seen as essential to securing a permanent post (McCulloch, 2017a). The most recent REF period in the UK was 2014–2021, which my stint as a research associate falls within. In total, the period I worked as a research associate resulted in four journal articles, one book chapter and one monograph. These, plus another article from a different project mean that I have met my current department’s expectations in terms of the REF, and reached the UK’s version of academic Nirvana by becoming ‘REF-able’ (McCulloch, 2017b). Nirvana is a misnomer; it is more of weight off my mind than a state of bliss. Furthermore, although these publications stemmed from the research project that I worked on then, the majority of the writing took place after the project funding had ended, when I was no longer employed on the project. In this sense, the work that made me REF-able was mainly unpaid and written in my own time, while I was employed in three teaching posts. It was produced in addition to my paid work and involved significant personal sacrifice. I was only able to make such sacrifices because I do not have dependents. Life events common for early-career scholars such as having children or caring for elderly parents are likely to make such productivity difficult, and this has a disproportionate impact on women (Ivancheva et al., 2019). I am sure I am not alone in having female friends who had to choose between an academic career and starting a family because they could only find insecure work, often many miles from their partners. Nevertheless, in addition to relentless work, there were other factors that helped to facilitate my writing, and it is worth considering these.

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Facilitating Research Writing As a research associate, my main role was to collect and analyse data and disseminate the results of the project that we were working on. Research was, in theory, my only task. I did some teaching and supervision and helped to convene a research group, but this was just a few hours per week, and I had very little administrative work. I enjoyed several luxuries as a research associate that I have never enjoyed before or since, namely my own office and the time not only to write, but also to read and to immerse myself in data. These conditions are similar to those identified by Sword (2017) in her book Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write. Tusting et al. (2019) found similar factors to be helpful in establishing a positive writing culture, but also included relationships and collaborations. These latter two conditions were also facilitative in my two years as a research associate. I worked in a cross-disciplinary team, with three members from Linguistics and two from Educational Research. Every few weeks, we would meet to discuss the data collected so far and to develop our analytical framework. We also had a reading group where we would read and discuss an article relevant to the project. As a result of these interactions, I was able not only to engage with disciplinary knowledge, but also to build productive relationships framed around common research interests. Unlike Gourlay’s (2011) participants, I found that these relationships facilitated my legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This sort of working environment helped to lay the foundations for my scholarly writing by fostering networks and building supportive relationships, although, as noted above, most of the actual writing occurred after the project ended. We wrote the project book collaboratively, working in pairs on various chapters before passing these to the others in the team for feedback. In terms of the micro-processes of writing, this was also extremely useful. I had to learn to write in a different style and to negotiate differing understandings of how a paper should look, what literature should be drawn on, how deadlines should be interpreted, and how much effort should be expended on these matters. Prior to this project, all my academic writing had been single-authored, so co-writing

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was a new experience for me. There could be tensions as well as pleasures, but I look back on this period of my academic life as a kind of golden age of learning and achievement as a researcher. Moving closer to the present, in 2018 I found a fixed-term position as a lecturer in a university relatively close to my home. This was a step forward in that it was a ‘proper’ academic post, one that was not marked as a marginal, ‘blurred’ or junior position. On the other hand, it was not what I’d hoped for in a number of ways. First, it was temporary and thus, still precarious to a degree. Secondly, this was a so-called teachingfocused university. Thus, although research was officially part of my role, it was not given high priority. I was given time for research but also felt actively discouraged from using this time. Another consequence of working in a teaching-focused institution is that there are fewer research groups and a less well-funded research infrastructure in general. Despite these challenges, I am still there and I am now a senior lecturer. I have been lucky enough to secure funding for a couple of research projects, and new publications are in the pipeline. Aside from the space, time, and positive relationships that facilitated my scholarly writing, therefore, institutional factors also play an important role (Skakni et al., 2019) and one that is not always unequivocally positive.

Reflections and Conclusions Reflecting on my own experience has enabled me to see that it is the interaction between several factors that has made my publishing journey messy but also modestly successful. Despite the advantages of having English as my first language and living in a rich country, the precarious academic job market in the UK makes getting published challenging. I have enjoyed opportunities to build fruitful research relationships but have also struggled to find the time to write under a mountain of other work. These non-discursive factors relate to the institutional and networking strands of academic life, and they interact with the intellectual strand, which would not flourish without them. This is why we need to see scholarly writing not as a transparent medium for communicating

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information but as a site of often conflicting sets of priorities and identities. My writing has been influenced by the geolinguistic, geographic, and geopolitical landscape but also mediated by my personal choices, goals, and preferences. So, what has this account revealed? I thought it had revealed, among other things, the damaging effects on scholarly writing of higher education job market and the UK’s research evaluation system. However, when I sent a first draft of this chapter to my friend, she returned it to me with the following comment: You mention nothing about the cost: emotional, physical health-related, and financial. I think you have dismissed these really important factors and if you want to speak to an audience of writers starting out you should at least acknowledge the personal cost to yourself!!

This made me realise that perhaps I had put too positive a spin on my scholarly writing trajectory. I have talked about my love for writing, but this drive can be exploited by employers who demand that we write without providing the appropriate conditions for writing to thrive. My own desire to write, to seek status, to find a permanent post, to be REFable, mean that I have sacrificed aspects of my personal life to do it. Even now, as a senior lecturer, I am writing this chapter at weekends and during my leave because I do not have enough time during the working week. Not everyone can manage this, and no-one should have to. Women in particular may have caring responsibilities that prevent them from devoting the hundreds of hours of unpaid labour that I have spent on building a track record. I hope that the final draft of this chapter tells a more honest story, showing that building a track record of publications takes total commitment in the face of challenging circumstances. My own process of learning to write for scholarly publication has not been an unbroken trajectory from periphery to centre but has been characterised by insecurity and exhaustion as well as pleasure and pride. It is crucial for early-career scholars to develop critical awareness of how the geolinguistic, geographic, and geopolitical contexts in which their own scholarly writing is situated can affect their writing and identity. By doing

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this, they may find ways to resist, to protect their writing time and foster a positive notion of what it means to be a successful early-career scholar. All academics need to resist the unrealistic pressures placed on their writing, but the issues are more acute for early-career scholars due to their precarious position and the threats these pose to their nascent academic identities.

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16 A Scholar’s Efforts to Increase Margin: Reflection on a Journey of Academic Enculturation Tanju Deveci

Introduction One of the best signs of competence in scholarly work is the volume of publications a scholar has achieved throughout his/her career. Prompted by the need to reach wider audiences and acquire better promotion prospects, many scholars seek to publish in English, which is considered the language of science (Kaplan, 2001) or the dominant language in science (Gordin, 2015). Unless equipped with the requisite writing skills in English, non-Anglophone scholars, like myself, are at a greater disadvantage in comparison with their Anglophone counterparts. In my 20-year-long career in the ELT sphere, I have engaged in formal and informal scholarly work. As an emerging author in my discourse community, I have encountered a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic challenges. I have had to develop a strong sense of self-criticism to T. Deveci (B) Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_16

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tackle these challenges. In this paper, which is written from an autoethnographic perspective, I will identify the complementary factors playing a role in the development of my scholarly writing. To this end, I will use a somewhat neglected theory of adult learning: Power-LoadMargin by McClusky (1974). Using McClusky’s theory, I will describe the extent to which I have been able to increase my Margin through the utilization of Power in tackling my Load throughout my trajectory toward becoming a published scholar.

Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks According to McClusky (1963, as cited in Hiemstra, 1993), adults experience continuous growth, change, and integration. Adaptation to these requires constant effort. Adults need to use their available energy in intelligent ways so that they can carry out their responsibilities. He also noted that many people have less than perfect control over many aspects of life. This requires them to attend to unexpected crises or problems, for which adults need a certain amount of margin, described as “a ration or relationship between ‘load’ (of living) and ‘power’ (to carry the load)” (p. 42). The former is “the self and social demands required by a person to maintain a minimal level of autonomy” while the latter is “the resources, i.e., abilities, possessions, positions, allies, etc., which a person can command in coping with load” (p. 42). There are two types of load. The first one is external load, which consists of tasks related to life requirements including family, work, and community responsibilities. The second one is internal load, including a person’s life expectancies such as aspirations, future expectations, and self-concept. Similarly, power includes a combination of external resources and capacity such as family support, social abilities, and economic well-being. Internal power, on the other hand, includes personal skills and experiences such as resilience, coping skills, and personality. A simple mathematical formula for this relationship is M = L/P. Reduction in load or increase in power has a positive effect on margin. That is, a person’s performance is significantly affected by load factors as well as his/her capacity to carry the load. Weiman (1984, as

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cited in Grenier & Burke, 2008) states that the excess of margin allows a person to gain the capacity to move individually within his or her field of life space and the opportunity to explore and take part in creative ideas. When a person possesses excess margin she or he is more likely to be able to pursue dreams and address changes and challenges that arise. (p. 584)

The aforementioned concepts are relevant to scholars, emerging ones in particular. As a learning theory, the Power-Load-Margin elucidates the factors that play a role in adults’ learning experiences. It helps identify their strengths, weaknesses, and potential power required for motivation to engage in learning experiences (Weiman, 1984). It also helps clarify value sets, determine a sense of direction, and implement educational goals (Main, 1979). Emerging authors experience different types of load. As new entrants to academia, for example, they often have the internal load created by the need to establish a scholarly identity. To this end, they are often required to improve their academic literacy skills. To English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) scholars, this usually means mastering language structures. A similar linguistic challenge faces novice Anglophone scholars with limited exposure to academic discursive and rhetorical training that could facilitate their academic acculturation process (Habibie, 2019). Similarly, they are likely to suffer external load such as repaying student loans accumulated over years and providing for their families. On the other hand, their power may include external resources and capacity in various forms. Their access to research mentoring, for example, can help emerging authors increase their knowledge of the discourse community they are to write for. This will also boost their self-confidence to immerse themselves in other types of scholarly activities and contribute to the development of a scholarly identity. Research mentors can organize peer mentoring, sharing examples of professional practice, and sponsoring the opening up research networks (Cotterall, 2011), which provides mentees with additional scholarly networks (Hyland, 2019). Empowered by these external resources of power, emerging scholars will improve both their academic literacy and resilience skills. Ultimately, the reduction in their load and the increase

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in their power will have a positive effect on their margin for academic fulfillment. Using analytic autoethnography (Anderson, 2006), below I examine my personal trajectory toward becoming a published writer. Ellis et al. (2011) note that autoethnography allows researchers (or authors as in the context of the current paper), “to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience” (p. 273). By increasing their understanding of how others influence what they know, how they know and study it, authors make a greater sense of experiences. Those engaged in analytic autoethnography are visible members in published texts and they are committed to developing a theoretical understanding of phenomena (Anderson, 2006). Ellis et al. (2011) describe the process as authors writing about past experiences retroactively and selectively. In doing so, they likely consult a variety of texts (e.g., journals and recordings) and interview others so that they can remember past experiences contributing to their current position. In this way, the account of their journey helps elucidate how their dreams and longings have come to fruition or why and where they may have stumbled. Being a relatively ‘visible’ member in published texts on language learning and teaching, therefore I will use analytic autoethnography to analyze and describe my own lived experiences. This will help me gain an understanding of the factors that played a role in becoming a published author. The Power-Load-Margin framework I will draw on, too, will assist in gaining a theoretical understanding of my experiences. To this end, I will first discuss my load and then my power. In my reflection, however, I refrain from using a mathematical formula. This is mainly due to my belief that a computation of a mathematical formula may not be practical, even possible, to identify the margin in which I have maneuvered to enhance my learning and progress as a published scholar.

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My Load, Power, and Margin My Load External Load I have had a variety of external load throughout my trajectory toward a career in academia. Examples of my external load include the heavy teaching load I was assigned at the initial stages of my career, in particular. As a language instructor, I was not required to engage in scholarly work. However, unofficially there was a certain amount of expectation for publication in educational venues. We, as ‘faculty members,’ were also expected to attend conferences and publish in conference proceedings. We were given credit for these activities during annual appraisals. This created a certain amount of load for me when I had not had the proper time to prepare for such activities, causing me difficulty in balancing different roles and expectations. At the end of the day, an instructor position has a greater focus on teaching than on research. Instructors that are expected to devote time to research and other kinds of scholarly activities such as attending conferences, without impacting their mandated teaching activities are highly likely to experience a myriad of challenges, which faculty with time allocated to research would not experience (Schrader et al., 2011). In fact, my teaching load was increased due to consultancy work I did to increase my income. As a family with two children in a city that is infamous for its high cost-of-living, we needed the extra income. Taken together, these had a negative impact on my time and energy to engage in scholarly publication. My external load was increased by additional factors. One of these was my father’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease, which impacted not only my scholarly work but also my teaching in different ways. First and foremost, the effects of such diseases and illnesses on family members’ emotional health and well-being have been documented in research. For instance, Wittenberg et al. (2013) pointed to the effects of certain feelings such as sadness, depression, worry, fear, stress, and anxiety about social activities. Interestingly enough, at the time I was doing a master’s course on brain-based learning and language teaching/learning. The

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course involved much emphasis on the physical functioning of the brain. As fascinating and informative as they were, the lectures often made me reflect on my father’s deteriorating health. This too negatively affected my performance. Golics et al. (2013) note that “Living with, or caring for, a relative with a disease can have a large impact on the education and careers of family members” (p. 403). Another external factor with a limiting effect on my scholarly publication trajectory was related to gaps in my language skills, often cited as ‘a discursive’ challenge (Hyland, 2016). As a non-native speaker of English, I often felt at a disadvantage. In fact, previous research showed that scholars that are non-native speakers of English had to put more cognitive effort into their writing, and their papers were generally not on a par with the expectations of the English language research community (van Weijen, 2014). Other research also found that writing in English for non-native speakers was 21% more difficult on average than writing in their native language due to reasons such as vocabulary, syntax, and organization (Englander, 2014). Buckingham (2008) found that even advanced scholars tend to face difficulty writing in English because of stylistic features. Convinced that I was one of these authors, I was under pressure and lacked the requisite level of self-confidence. The biggest challenge, I felt, was lexis. To me, it seemed impossible to have a full range of vocabulary necessary for academic discourse. Together with other linguistic features (e.g., syntax), lexis, indeed, has been shown to be a discursive challenge for non-native speakers of English in particular (Hyland, 2015). Somehow, I held the belief that I was supposed to write like a ‘native speaker.’ In retrospect, I could have given more careful thought to the idea of ‘nativeness’ in a language. Now I know that I do not write for native speakers only but for an international audience, members of which may not necessarily be expert users of the English language. In fact, there is now more support for publication in English as a lingua franca, which reduces the stress experienced by non-native speakers of English and encourages more knowledge sharing (Flowerdew, 2013). Also, I am now convinced that more often than not the content matter outweighs the language use unless it severely impacts the message. It is important to become more familiar with the audience and how to frame my discourse according to the expectations and language of

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the target discourse community. However, at the time, I lost sight of these provisos, as a result of which I often suffered the irrational load of language ‘inadequacy.’ Targeting the appropriate venue for my publications was yet another type of external load. My poor understanding of indexing and abstracting of academic publications, in particular, increased this load. I failed to pay attention to choosing where I submitted manuscripts because I was not informed enough about the fact that “If [an author’s] research is not discoverable, it cannot advance science, medicine, or society” and a “lack of discoverability has a negative impact on readership and future citations” (Hindawi.com, 2019, para. 2), As a result, the ‘quality’ of my publications was challenged later in my career. In retrospect, I feel I could have been more careful with this. However, I still question the assumption that non-indexed publications, or those not covered by ‘top’ indexes, are necessarily of less value. For one thing, Balhara (2012) notes that in recent years, more and more indexation services have come up, which brings up the question of which indexation is the best and the most valid. Balhara (2012) also warns that a comparison of the quality of articles published in journals indexed with different indexation services can be problematic. It is also important to note that not all databases provide readers with full, free access to published articles. In many cases, authors are asked to pay a significant amount of money to make their papers open access. This is one of many ‘non-discursive’ challenges creating a burden for authors that are economically, geographically, and/or sociopolitically disadvantaged (Belcher, 2007; Hyland, 2016). Together, these lead many authors to opt for indexes where journals are already open access.

Internal Load I have also had much internal load, the most significant of which was related to my aspiration to do a PhD. in a city 500 km away from where I lived. My family and work responsibilities together with the commute between the two cities increased my load significantly. This was especially the case during examination weeks and when any of my

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family members had health issues that I had to attend to. The experience overall reduced my time and energy I could have spent improving my academic literacy skills and publication endeavors. My internal load was also increased due to my ongoing struggles with my self-concept. That is, I was not sure if I considered myself a ‘teacher’ or a ‘professor.’ I was teaching at a university, but my main responsibilities included instruction. However, at the same time, I aspired to hold a professorial position with teaching and research responsibilities. This confused me in regard to my ‘scholarly identity,’ which Aguilar (2018) defines as “the product of [one’s] training, areas of expertise, methodological inclinations, interests, publications, research agenda, reputation and anything else that may be important in [one’] field” (para. 2). The lack of clarity in my present and future roles, together with struggles with my scholarly identity, created a significant amount of tension which in turn impacted my scholarly writing trajectory. For some time, I was hesitant about whether I should devote so much time to scholarly activities if I were not to be considered a professor in my workplace upon graduation. Together, these created further tension between my academic and non-academic self-concepts. My non-academic self-concept included my perception of self in non-academic contexts (Suntonrapot et al., 2009) including certain social, personal, and familial aspects (Fin & Ishak, 2014). For example, there were times when I had a guilty feeling caused by the limited time I spent with my family in my pursuit of an academic career. I often spent an extended amount of time writing assignments and research papers. During those times, I tended to lose all sense of time. Taken together, these now make me resonate with Austin and Pilat’s (1990) observation that “[m]ost professors regard their work not as a job that can be separated from their other responsibilities and interests but rather a central thread woven through all their lives, blurring the boundary between the personal and the professional” (p. 38). Grenier and Burke (2008), too, found that the struggle to balance personal and academic demands together with resulting stress had negative consequences on individuals’ physical, psychological, and interpersonal selves.

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My Power and Margin External Power and Margin I received assistance in reducing my load through a variety of external power elements. Chief among these is the support I was given by my family. This has also been noted by Carlson and Perrewe (1999) as a significant factor contributing to employees’ efforts to combine work and family roles. My wife, in particular, had such trust in me that I would make a good academician no matter how long it might take. Together with the empathy and care she showed me, this trust provided me with emotional support (House, 1981). As well, her willingness to take on more of the family responsibilities allowed me to allocate a greater amount of time to my scholarly activities. This, in turn, reduced my work-life conflict, which is defined as “push and pull between family and work responsibilities” (Lockwood, 2003, p. 3). This personal experience of mine appears to support the findings of past research that when their career was supported by their wives, men tended to enjoy greater career satisfaction (Rosin, 1990) and male professors received promotion more quickly (Townsend, 2013). It, however, appears that women lack this kind of support from their partners. I also received instrumental support (House, 1981) from the universities for which I worked. One of these was in the form of financial aid to attend conferences. Presenting my papers to other scholars in my field enabled me to receive feedback on my research that I took into account when revising my papers for the conference proceedings as well as in generating future research areas. I was also able to find out about recent research trends in my field. Exchanging my ideas with others helped establish collaboration opportunities. Kelsky (2015) also notes that national conferences in particular help emerging scholars to “see how various academics in [their] field talk, ask questions, argue, pitch books to editors, schmooze, network, plan collaborations, preen, work a room, and so on” (p. 118). In my case too, all these widened my horizons on different research activities and writing skills.

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Another type of instrumental support I was fortunate to receive was the rich library resources at all three universities I worked at. I appreciated the digital technologies the libraries provided their users with, which not only reduced the time I spent to reach the information I needed but also increased the amount and the type of data I could use in my research. Despite this, I still liked to visit the physical library, especially at the beginning of my career. This was particularly because I could work with other colleagues. Given the absence of digital publications when I was growing up, I also liked to feel and smell the physical book. I also felt that the presence of the librarians often facilitated my search. In fact, previous research found that “faculty members from the humanities still highly esteem printed materials, tangible elements, physical locations, and human contact – which [appear to] affect their feelings, perceptions, and the way by which they experience their research” (Bulger et al., 2011, as cited in Gabbay & Shoham, 2017, p. 3). Further external power came in the form of informational support (House, 1981) that I received in conversations with my colleagues, including my line-managers. During the initial stages of my trajectory toward becoming a scholar, my peers and I often formed study groups where we analyzed academic papers considering both content and rhetorical style. Not only did this increase our understanding of the content, but it also enhanced our understanding of different authors’ styles. We used these in our assignments and early attempts at publication. In fact, Paraskevas (2006) drew attention to a similar way of cultivating writing skills in students through the approach of “Grammar Apprenticeship,” which engages students in the analysis of grammatical structures in texts written by accomplished authors. In this way, students are guided to realize the choices authors make at the sentence level and develop a feel for the beauty of language, for its power and strength and grace” (p. 65). They are, then, asked to write their own texts accordingly. As language teachers ourselves, we instinctively followed this approach for our own writing. An additional factor that played a role in the informal support I received was the peer feedback we gave on each other’s writing. The value of peer feedback in teaching writing skills to university students is well-documented (Hausman et al., 2019; Ion et al., 2016). As language

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teachers well-informed about this, we capitalized on peer feedback as emerging scholars as well. To do this, we engaged in dialogue steering our thinking patterns. In retrospect, I realize we utilized Hawkey’s (cited in Watkins, 2000) scheme of peer work, considered to be “of primary importance in the development of beginner teachers’ meta-learning, the process of understanding their own teaching style” (p. 77). In this way, teachers refrain from advising or questioning one another. Rather, they engage in dialogue to clarify and develop themselves as teachers. What we did in our case was to read each other’s drafts as we were writing and explain the choices we made. Not only did this help us become conscious of our own deeply rooted modes of thinking and stylistic preferences, but it also introduced us to new styles that we could incorporate in our writing if we deemed them appropriate. Further reflections on the re-drafted papers gave us more impetus to engage in dialogue. The process as a whole helped create what Bruner (1996) calls a ‘knowledge-generating community,’ which in our case was small but effective.

Internal Power and Margin A variety of sources of power played a role in increasing my margin for engagement in scholarly publication. A requisite quality was the selfesteem I gained over the years. Branden (1988) notes that self-esteem is comprised of two components: a feeling of personal competence and a feeling of personal worth. Together, these reflect our implicit judgment of our ability to tackle the challenges of life. This includes our skills in understanding and mastering our problems. They also include our right to be respected and to stand up for our own interests and needs. At the initial stages of my career, my feeling of personal competence was relatively less developed. I was convinced about my academic skills in general; however, I lacked an established authorial personality, because of which I often relied on my supervisors’ instructions that were heavily based on their own stylistic preferences in academic writing. Given my lack of publication background, this approach to writing was a life jacket at the time. Prior to and during my graduate studies, I had produced

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several academic assignments, but they were distinct from a thesis, a dissertation, and other journal publications. Englander and Corcoran (2019) also note that lack of genre and disciplinary knowledge often challenges emerging scholars who have little to no exposure to or practice at writing genre-specific texts. They also note that graduate students quite often may not be receiving adequate writing support from their supervisors or departments. I was lucky that my supervisors gave me a helping hand, which gradually increased my feeling of personal competence. Added to this was my feeling of personal worth, the belief that I had the desire and the potential to contribute to the development of my discipline through research and publications. This provided me with the drive to further my understanding of and skills in the genre and disciplinary knowledge. Linked to my self-esteem was resilience skills that provided me with a significant amount of internal power, thus helping reduce my load. Based on “a set of flexible cognitive, behavioural and emotional responses to acute and chronic adversities which can be unusual or commonplace” (Neenan, 2009, p. 17), resilience skills enable us to endure in the face of adversities and have direction (Greitens, 2015). My initial attempts to produce journal publications failed due to several reasons I discussed above (e.g., limited linguistic dexterity, lack of genre awareness, and inadequate academic writing training). These were often reflected directly and indirectly in peer reviews I received on my submissions. However, I did not let the negative feedback destroy my ambition to emerge as a new scholar and grow to be a published faculty member. This is not to deny the initial negative impact of the feedback on my ‘ability’ to write. Such an impact lasted from a couple of days to several weeks. However, I used the feedback as a springboard to improve my writing and resubmit my manuscripts to other relevant venues. In doing this, I noticed that there were at times conflicting feedback from different reviewers without mediation by supervising editors—an experience reported by other (emerging) scholars as well (Adamson et al., 2019). As I gained confidence in myself and the motivation to understand the feedback thoroughly, I sometimes approached the editors, who were normally positive about my initiative to engage in further dialogue with them on my submission.

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My resilience skills also manifested themselves through my research into academic writing, which assisted in developing an authorial voice for myself. Working with other colleagues, I investigated scholarly writing across different disciplines. Among the noteworthy results that emerged from our investigations was that well-established journals such as Nature as well as publication manuals including APA endorse the use of the personal pronouns and the active voice where relevant to express authorial agency (Nunn et al., 2018). However, it is essential that “professional authors should be aware of possible transitivity choices and should then select the most appropriate choice for their ongoing argumentation” (Deveci & Nunn, 2014, p. 2), including the use of personal pronouns. Although the literature on academic writing indicates that authors’ linguistic choices are often influenced by discipline-specific conventions (Hyland, 2002; Johns, 1997; Swales, 1990), our research points to the evolving nature of language used for authorial agency, the use of impersonal language in particular, that is not necessarily discipline/discourse-community specific (Nunn et al., 2018). It is also important to note that the concept of discourse community is no longer considered static and not all members of a particular discourse community may share the same beliefs, values, and motives (Swales, 2016). Yet still, reviewers’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds, as well as their own established stylistic preferences in academic writing, often dissuade authors from using an authorial voice (Deveci & Nunn, 2020), and many non-Anglophone scholars feel unable to challenge decisions on their manuscripts (Adamson et al., 2019). Combined with my enhanced self-esteem and increased knowledge of academic writing trends, I have become more resilient in the face of negative reviewer feedback. I am now able to initiate dialogue with editors regarding my choices as an author. This, in fact, has proved useful in encouraging some editors to have a wider perspective on voice and agency. Having said that, though, I still see a significant level of resistance in reviewers and editors of journals in Turkish, which is my native language.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have noted the significance of academic literacy skills for scholars, particularly for the emerging ones. I have pointed to the challenges many non-native speakers of English face no matter how proficient in the language they may be. I reflected on the challenges my professional and personal life has been beset with (i.e., Load ). I also noted how my improved skills and the support I received from other significant people boosted my internal and external Power resulting in increased Margin for engagement in scholarly activities. Together, these helped my professional well-being pari passu with my personal wellbeing. However, I am conscious that the zeitgeist of continuous changes taking place in my individual world as well as in the wider community will remain a factor, urging me to increase my Margin throughout my journey of continuous academic enculturation. This will require a lifelong pursuit of learning.

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17 Thinking Beyond Ourselves: Career Reflections on the Trojan Horse of Hegemonic Discourses Pejman Habibie, Richard D. Sawyer, and Joe Norris

Introduction Pejman: Unlike other chapters in this volume that present an autoethnographic and self-study account of early-career scholars’ academic publication practices and trajectories, this chapter started as a duoethnography between an early-career scholar (Pejman) and an established scholar (Rick) and evolved into a trioethnography after another established scholar (Joe) joined in. The idea of this chapter partly emerged from my P. Habibie (B) Western University, London, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] R. D. Sawyer Washington State University Vancouver, Vancouver, WA, USA J. Norris Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4_17

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(Pejman) initial attempt and failure to publish an autoethnographic journal article which looked at my doctoral dissertation writing in a number of high-impact academic journals in Applied Linguistics. Although I do not intend to discuss the details of that experience, it had two direct messages for me as an early-career scholar. First, narrative, self-study, and dialogic methodologies like auto/duo/trioethnography do not seem to be privileged research orientations and are still stigmatized by many academic journals and members of my academic community (see Habibie & Hyland, 2019; Starfield, 2020). This was not a new revelation though. As someone whose scholarly interest and academic publications focus on writing for scholarly publication, I was aware of recent calls for the exigency for further ethnographic research in writing for scholarly publication (e.g., Paltridge et al., 2016). However, what these calls mean by ethnographic approach is basically a naturalistic approach to researching writing (Flowerdew & Habibie, 2022) that is rooted in academic literacies orientation and focuses more on the context and inherent sociocultural and ideological aspects of text production in addition to the rhetorical and discursive dimension of the text itself. In other words, they call for more contextual studies of academic writing and do not necessarily encourage individual or dialogic variations of ethnography such as auto/duo/trioethnography. More importantly, this experience also highlighted the ideological and power-laden nature of knowledge creation and dissemination for me. That is, academic texts and scholarly practices are not merely textual products and rhetorical processes; they are also highly political and ideological artifacts and acts and sites of power struggle among different members of academic communities. In other words, all knowledge production, adjudication, and dissemination in an academic field is a game of power for legitimacy and recognition. Consequently, I started to critically reflect on my position in my disciplinary power field as an early-career academic and my scholarly interests and practices. As an

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early-career scholar with limited symbolic capital in the current neoliberal field of academia, I need to enhance my position in the field (in terms of visibility, legitimacy, recognition, promotion, etc.) by obtaining and accumulating more academic capital in the form of scholarly publication on the one hand. On the other, part of my scholarly interests orient toward research paradigms, methodologies, and practices (reflective, narrative, dialogic approaches such as auto/duo/trioethnography in this case) that, if not deemed unorthodox in my academic community, still do not carry a high currency and exchange value and therefore may not result in obtaining the necessary capital. This brought me to two overarching questions: “How can I navigate the power field of scholarly publication and negotiate its ideological and political dimensions?, and How do I begin to reconceptualize and humanize my relationship to discursive and practical dimensions of my academic field?” To discuss and reflect on these questions (and probably carve out some answers to them), I thought I should network with those members of my broader academic community who have experience in these selfstudy and dialogic approaches to knowledge construction. Accordingly, I reached out to Rick and Joe, the developers of duoethnography (Sawyer & Norris, 2015), as more established members of my academic community. Therefore, we use our experiences and differences as a reflective opportunity, an excavation site, and a chance for transformation.

Theoretical and Methodological Frameworks The first theoretical lens that frames our reflections and understanding is the social constructionist notion of discourse community (DC). Swales (1990) defines a DC as people with shared social conventions “who link up in order to pursue objectives that are prior to those of socialization and solidarity, even if these latter should consequently occur” (p. 24). In this chapter, a view of writing for scholarly publication as initiation into and membership in an academic discourse community frames our understanding of writing for scholarly publication practices of early-career scholars like me. Based on such a view, academic discourse communities through their inclusionary/exclusionary mechanisms (discourses

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and practices) determine access, inclusion/exclusion of newcomers, their entry, affiliation, and position. Membership in such communities and gaining legitimacy and recognition require that the newcomers learn and know the conventions (genres and rhetorical norms), “the conversations of the discipline” (valued discourses, discussions, etc.) (Bazerman, 1985), and the practices. By extension, this can also include adherence and commitment to the privileged and hegemonic scholarly culture of the target discourse community (which is ideological in itself ). Therefore, membership in a discourse community is not merely knowing or learning the ways in which they talk and write. More importantly, it is imagining and understanding the world and making meaning within a specific ideologically charged ontological, epistemological, and methodological framework. This theoretical notion helps us to interpret how an early-career scholar can be recognized as a legitimate member of an academic community and yet deviate (if they want to) its privileged epistemic norms and scholarly imaginings as well as the negotiating leverage they have at their disposal for that. Our second theoretical lens is postcolonialism. It involves both the structural, such as imperialism between countries, power dynamics, conquest, genocide, and also the imposition of one culture on another. It also involves the personal, such as how we are socialized into and perpetuate dominant discourses in our personal and professional lives. For us, the “post” in postcolonialism guides us in an ongoing critique and rebalance of central-peripheral relations within colonialism, asking us to examine how the personal (and collective) are nested within larger global patterns of domination, power, and inequity. In this examination, dialogic and reflexive methodologies provide a means for inquirers to examine their relationship to colonialism and engage in a process of “decolonialism.” As Dimitriadis and McCarthy (2001) state, “[Dialogue] challenges us to rethink the discourses in which we operate and the language we use to fashion the ethics of our professional lives…” (2001, pp. 9–10). Post-colonial scholars examine discourses of knowledge building, genres of representation, dynamics of genre confinement, and forces of cultural reproduction. Methodologically, we adopt the dialogic framework of duoethnography (Sawyer & Norris, 2013). Drawing on William Pinar’s concept of

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currere (Pinar, 1975a), duoethnography aims to exemplify our learning process about the key questions of the chapter: How can one critically negotiate power dynamics within the field and influence (or resist) scholarly discourses and practices (doxa) of one’s academic community?; and How can one begin to reconceptualize and humanize one’s relationship to discursive and practical dimensions of one’s academic field? To investigate these questions, we revisit our scholarly publication practices as “research sites” (Oberg & Wilson, 1992) and juxtapose our narratives and lived experiences. Working dialogically, we articulate how we develop a deeper understanding of ourselves in relation to the other, and how this helps us “interrogate and reinscribe [our] previously held beliefs” (Norris & Sawyer, 2012, p. 9) and ultimately transformed our perspectives. As Norris and Sawyer (2012) claim “[t]he conversations of duoethnographers assist readers in recalling and reconceptualizing their own stories” (p. 10). In other words, “[d]uoethnography’s style avoids the creation of grand narrative or metanarrative, as readers find themselves alternating their allegiance among the storytellers as meanings emerge and transform” (Norris & Sawyer, 2012, p. 10). In addition to the personal level, duoethnography affords us the opportunity to explore our scholarly publication practices within the broader sociocultural and socio-political contexts wherein they are situated and reconceptualize our perceptions of forces and ideologies that shape our experiences.

Our Conversations and Reflections Discourse Communities and Colonization Pejman: I think there are different ways and modes of knowing, meaning making, and representing that meaning (epistemes and genres if you will) in different disciplines and academic cultures. However, they have different exchange values in disciplinary interactions and practices such as publishing and among the members of different academic communities. It goes without saying that you achieve different forms and amounts of capital by (not) adopting them and

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position yourself (and are positioned) differently in the power relations of your disciplinary field and its structures. Auto/duo/trioethnography is a good example in this case as both process and product where you are dealing with both an epistemological and methodological paradigm or discourse and also the realization of the discourse in the form of auto/duo/trioethnography (a genre). A lot of times, these so-called unorthodox modes of knowledge construction do not sit high on epistemological stratifications and are even dismissed by disciplinary gatekeepers including journal editors and reviewers, funding committees, even supervisors under different epistemological, theoretical, and methodological pretexts: deficient design, thin description, ungeneralizable findings, subjective perspective, etc. In sum, they are not considered as objective and real (normal) empirical science. That’s a big concern for an early-career scholar who wants to incorporate such research approaches for their future academic life and career. I think that what is so-called normal science and how people should go around doing that is to a great extent ideological and political (especially in social sciences). It is a way of social control and hegemony within and beyond academic tribes, a way of identification and distinction. A mechanism to hold power, reproduce the dominant culture, advantage (include) some, and disadvantage (exclude or even discredit) others. More importantly, I think that at the end of the day each of us as academics have specific epistemic habitus that are shaped by the academic tribes into which we have been socialized. All of us are epistemologically and methodologically colonized by our disciplines and discourse communities one way or another, whether we like it or not. The difference is in the nature of the colonizer and what prestige it bears and what position it accords to you in a disciplinary power field. So a key question here is whether one can burst out of the epistemic bubbles and echo chambers (Nguyen, 2020) of one’s discourse community and be epistemologically decolonized?

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Pejman, I like how you are thinking about this project as a way for us to begin to unfreeze our thinking about our disciplines to new perspectives. My field is curriculum studies and theory. Within that field there are different schools of thought and stances. Initially in curriculum studies there was an emphasis on curriculum instrumentality—that is curriculum design and implementation—and social foundations. Then, almost fifty years ago there was a tectonic shift toward curriculum reconceptualization. Scholars in the reconceptualization school considered curriculum as both artifact and discourse of ongoing dynamics involving power, race, politics, and gender, for example. Since then there has been an increased bifurcation of the two, with the former moving toward standards and accountability, and the latter toward post reconceptualization, involving, for example, a greater emphasis on subjectivity, self-study, the resurfacing of silenced voices within curriculum, and the internationalization of curriculum. In my earlier years, while I would have claimed philosophical allegiance to the latter, all my actions seemed to be much more grounded in the former. I may have tried to talk like Bill Pinar, but I continued to walk like Ralph Tyler. LOL, Rick, nice way to put it. Our habits of thinking are engrained and while an aim of reconceptualization is to break out of these, it is hard to do so personally and more so within a DC that reinforces other patterns of thought. For me, originally, it was difficult to break with what I saw as the more prominent and powerful school of curriculum studies. The university where I got my degree was somewhat conservative (but with a reputation of being leftist). I was trained there to do qualitative research of curriculum in a rigorous, objective, and distant way. This training was underscored by my first job in teacher preparation. I found myself at a small public university located on a traditional academic landscape. With my research on teachers’ views of curriculum, I tried to discover findings within the data. Instead, though, I

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realized that I was situated within the data and experienced examples that were contradictory, fluid, and layered. I was working with stage theories of teacher development, but all I encountered was the multiplicity and entanglement of identity. Terrified that I wouldn’t receive tenure—that basically, after six years, I’d be fired–I put my questions of subjectivity and even epistemological framing onto the backburner. Joe: Rick, part of duoethnography is examining the situational geographical. My experiences were different. Having started my career in Canada and later employed in the United States for a short time, I found that I felt less such a pressure at Canadian institutions that enabled me discover/create my own academic voice. So, maybe you can expand it. Rick: Well, basically, as a minority member I felt that I was being watched in a way that other people weren’t being watched. And then also I remember an exceptional burden of work at the time. I was asked to complete all the projects other people didn’t want to do. The exploitation was pretty amazing and in some way I began to tie it to my identity. As a gay man, I felt vulnerable and seriously at risk in my work place, that I was being evaluated and judged in ways that other people weren’t. I didn’t have the time to reflect on what I was doing: I just tried to publish everything I could. Joe: Can you tie your feeling of needing to publish as much as you could to this topic of hegemonic discourses? Rick: Hegemonic discourses tend to be conservative. As a gay man with others dependent on me, I felt I was held to a higher standard but within a more narrow band of what was considered acceptable. Innovation was easily dismissed or even attached as identity politics. Pejman: Right, what you said is the case for many novice scholars and even doctoral students now. Rick: I found that I began to slowly lose my voice as a writer the less I told my own story of curriculum and the more I tried to tell other people’s stories of curriculum. It was only after I received tenure that I realized I had no choice but to change

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the focus of my work. And here I was lucky. I rediscovered the reconceptualist field of curriculum theory (as opposed to the more traditional and practical field of curriculum studies as I saw it). Examining curriculum as both artifact and discourse of political/sociological/identity dynamics was liberating to me. Within that much more dynamic, open field I then began to construct and experiment with duoethnography with you, Joe, and I finally began to become a scholar. Joe, why don’t you talk a little about your socialization into your field. Joe:

My field was drama education, (using drama to teach across the curriculum). Not only was/is the subject area marginalized in the school system as an elective not a core subject, in the area of theatre, it is given secondary status to all that is mainstage. My doctoral advisor received promotion to full-professor on the basis of teaching, coordinating the writing of curricular guides and creating instructional video, not academic publications. I did not have exemplars to emulate. In addition, academic publishing opportunities were scant. Mainstream high-impact journals, as you indicate Pejman, were not as receptive (note that this was at the dawn of the acceptance of qualitative research and arts-based research was yet to arrive). For better or worse, I decided not to spend my time courting the aloof which would require extensive justification. Rather, over time, I found pockets of colleagues within the academy who were receptive to my playful style of inquiry. My first juried publication was actually a poem published in a journal that did not typically do so. During a workshop on reflective practice, I wrote a poem that I thought that it had enough merit to publish. Pejman: LOL. Very interesting and unimaginable for me. Joe:  I believe in Eisner’s (1985) personal relevance/selfactualization model (p. 69) for education and am distressed when I hear that, contrary to its purpose, the academy systemically impedes it. So, looking back over my career, I guess

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that I have been more of a Field of Dreams (Robinson, 1989) kind of academic; my attitude was/is, “If I build it, it will be published”. Yes, I have had my fair share of rejections, but some were reframed and eventually found their place in print. For me, it often about fit. It was/is also about finding one’s voice and recognizing that it evolves over time. Early in my career, I directed teams of cast members in the writing of social issues plays. We toured them and gave workshops to teachers and their students. Some institutions value this ‘creative work’ as an equivalent to scholarship and research. Because I was in a faculty of education at that time, it was also valued as it was connected to the field. The live and video performance/workshops were considered part of my academic work. Pejman: Fortunate! Joe: I did, however, publish about this work. Reviewing an early publication about a safe and caring school tour (Norris, 1999), I was a bit shocked that it was written as a script with me, as researcher, interviewing myself, as practitioner. While I wouldn’t call it a duoethnography, I would consider it dialogic in form. I was told by an editor that this was considered the most readerly of the collection. Shortly after, I published a juried article (Norris & Theatre, 2001) about the tour that also included the entire script. I believed that academic discourse was too much framed by the expository essay style and took it upon myself to expand the repertoire. Part of my academic success was creating and presenting performances and then writing about them. My writing to a large extent was about my professional practice. I guess I have been somewhat lucky; I was able to follow my intuitive path that led me to kindred spirits who could assist me and I, in turn, assist them. I regarded my publications as steppingstones or markers of justification that others could use along their journeys. So, yes Rick, socialization to my field was both finding the appropriate fields to play in and to build them when I could not.

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Agency and Structure Pejman: Yes, Joe, like you, what I have also been thinking is the ways in which I can negotiate my agency in adhering to or contesting those epistemic and discursive structures and practices at this early stage of my academic life and ultimately have a decolonizing influence on my disciplinary conversations and dynamics. In other words, navigating and negotiating my agency in relation to what Nguyen (2020) calls epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. That is, networks or structures that exclude, marginalize, and discredit other voices and other epistemic imaginings of knowledge and its generic representations. Having said that, I think that decolonizing is much more possible at personal level through reflexivity and openness to unthink one’s thinking and unfreeze/thaw one’s epistemologically colonized mind. However, I do not think that I have much leverage now as an early-career scholar at the collective level (in prestigious scholarly journals and among their gatekeepers who comprise of the elite members of each academic community), and there is limited possibilities of decolonizing (alternative epistemologies and practices) in spite of all those calls for and buzz words cheering the narrative turn. When I think about my rejection experience I mentioned earlier, or look at the aims and scopes of many prestigious journals in my discipline, or even talk to both established and emerging colleagues at conferences, a lot of times I see a collective resignation to hegemonic discourses and practices, especially on the part of novice academics and early-career researchers. One of my research participant’s (Habibie, 2015) comment about navigating the review process and dealing with journal reviewers’ comments is a good example here. I feel that there is not that much negotiation happening, they’re just like here take it or leave it … ninety nine percent of the time I say I’ve just sort of taken what they’ve said and done what they’ve requested … (Larry)

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I see different reasons for that. As I said earlier, it is a matter of capital and your negotiation leverage. As an early-career scholar, you do not have enough cultural, social, and even epistemic capital to be able to negotiate, challenge, resist, or subvert the dominant culture and hegemonic discourses and practices. They are decided for you, and you have to play the game irrespective of what you want or think is right (or not). I am not saying that as an early-career scholar I cannot engage in counter hegemonic discourses and practices. I am saying that it takes a lot of time, energy, and strategizing before those members of your academic community who see their role beyond merely reproducing the hegemonic culture to notice you. More importantly, it is very risky. Counter-hegemonic and decolonizing discourses are a two-edged sword. They may take one to the Hall of Fame in your academic community. On the other hand, they can most likely get one marginalized and put an end to one’s future academic aspirations. Joe:

The adage, “To thine own self be true”, Shakespeare, (1987, p. 52) seems appropriate here. Pejman: What do you think Rick? Rick: When I consider the topic of structure and agency, I first think about Foucault (1980), who helped reveal that as we navigate discourses, often intergenerational, that regulate our thoughts and behavior, we do have agency. Maxine Greene (1977) underscored this thought when she reminded us that the arts allow us to dismantle crystallized thought structures that appear normal and taken-for-granted. The arts help us to become more “wide-awake” to how we are situated in discourses that course through historical time. She mentioned that “encounters with the arts can lesson the immersion we see around us today, and that they may do so by enabling people to break through the horizons of the ordinary, of the takenfor-granted, to visions of the possible, of ‘what is not’” (1977, p. 287). She is discussing the dialogic and transactive nature of the arts and how we find agency as we reconceptualize our

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engagement with the world. In our conversation here, we are discussing how the tensions that both regulate our conceptions of our disciplines as well as our attempts to break from that regulation themselves becomes generative and dialogic. When I listen to your story, I consider how I began to free myself from my socialization into a somewhat positivist researcher’s stance. Until I got tenure, I worked in relatively conservative ways. But my receiving tenure was for me a profound turning point. In my first year after my promotion, I went on sabbatical to northern Mexico with a group of teachers as part of a Rethinking Schools project. We met people whose lives had been uprooted by NAFTA, teenage females who found themselves working in a maquiladora, older women leading protests against toxic dumping next to their villagers, squatters creating democratic structures in their makeshift communities, and artists documenting a race to the bottom on a neoliberal landscape. I began to understand in an embodied way how the personal was political and voice and agency needed to be protected. I started to experiment with dialogic texts and contingent, reflexive inquiry. I remember I wrote a paper with a colleague where we each examined a personal topic in a different way and then explored what the differences meant. When we went to present at a conference my colleague didn’t show up. Dejected and isolated, I delivered the paper myself. Then Joe Norris and I started playing with duoethnography. As we wrote the first official duoethnography, we kept track of what we were doing and the approaches we were following. We took inspiration and guidance from a number of theorists in education. And, of course, we were lucky enough to find some kindred spirits in curriculum theory who worked with us as we experimented and really played with duoethnography. Duoethnography, with its grounding in polyvocal dialogue and currere, acted as a heuristic for change. After I received tenure and Joe and I (and others) started exploring and creating something new, I felt both liberated

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by duoethnography but also psychically and intellectually attacked by people hostile to change and duoethnography. And I experienced these hostilities both at conferences as well as at work, where I was told, when I applied for another promotion, that my work was “out on a limb”. It was only after I started working with duoethnography and started to hear the human voice of another person inquiring with me, that I began to experience a new sense of humanity. Pejman: Based on my experience talking to other established academics, it seems that tenure is a focal emancipation juncture in one’s decolonization trajectory. Joe: My doctoral program was rich and liberating. I had the opportunity to study with Ted Aoki (Aoki et al., 2005) and in addition to the process drama literature, I was introduced to the reconceptualists (Pinar, 1975b), Luce Irigaray (1985) and others, who challenged hegemonic discourses. I was especially drawn to Harold Benjamin’s sabre-tooth curriculum allegory (1939) and later, Robinson’s (2006) famous TED Talk presentation also challenged curriculum designs that are based upon the needs of the past and designed for one type of learner. Could not education be considered a colonization of the mind in that it takes an infant, tabula rosa, and teaches them how to behave in a particular culture?, There are null and hidden curricular forces at play (Flinders et al., 1986) that influence beliefs and behaviours. We all have been influenced not only by our educational system but by our language itself as binary opposites are polarized into dominant and subordinate categories among other factors. Pejman: I totally agree with you Joe. We are all colonized. Joe: So, how does one free oneself from the habits of thought so engrained by our system of learning? Cochran-Smith (2003) “makes the case that the education of teacher educators is substantially enriched when inquiry is a stance on the overall enterprise of teaching, schooling, and teacher education” (p. 5). Reflective practice can be but is not necessarily a guarantee as how can one see beyond self as we are caught in our own

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system of framing. For me, the dialogic holds promise as we recognize that others can assist us in seeing beyond ourselves (Lévinas, 1969). For me, this is a form of ‘conscientization’ (Freire, 1971). Pejman: I see what you mean and can now more appreciate the value of dialogic approaches in providing alternative epistemes and imaginings. Joe: The challenge is to invite others into questioning their frames of reference in non-threatening ways. Throughout the years I have attempted to implement these theories into my teaching and assessment of learning. The picture book, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Scieszk, 1989) explores the difference between cultural truths and point of view. The near ending line, “I’ve been framed”, makes a strong introduction to frame analysis (Goffman, 1974). Gadamer (1975) claims that in the act of translation one begins to see the inadequacies of all representations. This led me to the creation of artsbased projects with metacognitive logs. Students would create art pieces about concepts and keep logs on how meanings emerged through the process. One student wrote three jazz pieces with his band as part of his chapter analysis. Graphic novels, paintings, stained glass, dances were a few other media chosen. Of course, one choice was the traditional expository essay. I received many positive responses from students over the years. These rigorous playful assignments assisted students in entering a state of inquiry through which they could, like Neo in The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999), reconceptualize themselves and the world. Part of my curriculum of addressing hegemonic practices was in the designing lessons that could do just that for my students. Much later, with the confidence that was rooted from these experiences, I added to the discourse by writing a piece (Norris, 2008) that was published in “Learning Landscapes”, a journal that was receptive to this type of work. Over time, I researched my own practice and by putting it out there, I was able to provide possible ways for instructors to free their

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students and themselves from hegemonic restrictive structures. Perhaps, I created a counter-culture within my own classroom and publications?

Possibilities of Decolonization Pejman: As I said, possibilities for decolonizing hegemonic discourses and practices (counter-hegemonic of some sort if you will) are limited (but not non-existent) for early-career scholars like me because of limited symbolic capital we possess. More importantly, such possibilities should be created by earlycareer scholars themselves and should also be scaffolded by better-positioned members of their academic communities like mentors, supervisors, and other like-minded scholars. I see that as a change from within academic discourse communities. It is kind of a Trojan Horse but in a positive sense. Early-career scholars enter academic communities (Troy) play the game, accumulate capital gradually, and when the right time presents itself, they may be able to change (or at least influence on) the dynamics of the game. As I said, one should be very strategic because of all the risks. Strategies can come in different forms and shapes. Joe: I guess, for me, the risk was not taking them. I felt that I had an obligation to expand academic discourses and practices that were more open to diversity. It was as much as a sense of creating spaces for others as it was about me. Conferences were good testing grounds. I consider sessions ‘speed-dating’ for the valuable conversations that would take place after them. I go to sessions that seem to resonate with me and welcome the opportunity to discuss my presentations afterword. A husband, who attended one, introduced me to his wife, who he believed shared a common interest. She and I then co-authored my first book with another colleague who attended a session at another conference (Norris et al., 2000). One of my first chapter publications was based upon meeting

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someone in an elevator. One of my strategies was to put myself out there and being receptive to others with whom I believed had something in common. But not all have been successful and that is part of the learning. Some of my research was selected as a finalist for a research award for an international drama organization. I presented along with others and at the award banquet, it was announced that they found none deserving that year. Not only was I embarrassed; I was subjugated to being “mansplained” by a female adjudicator about the basics of qualitative research. I partially rewrote that piece which became part of a chapter in an award-winning book (Norris, 2009). Part of taking risks is recognizing that some will turn out and others will not. As Robinson (2006) states in his TED Talk, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will not come up with anything original”. Rejection is part of our domain whether justified or not. Pejman: For me, writing this chapter and editing this book is a decolonizing strategy (among many other things) at both personal and collective levels. It is opening myself to alternative ways of knowledge building and representation defying epistemic colonization and genre confinement. It is both participating and critiquing and contesting the so-called “normalcy”, the forces of cultural reproduction, the imaginings in my discipline. I am also opening a forum for at least hearing about other imaginings and inviting other members of my academic community to engage in a decolonizing critical and transformative dialogue where we can co-create a cultural third space beyond core-periphery binary in which all imaginings can be recognized, valued, and legitimate equally. If autoethnography (as well as other reflective and dialogic practices) is not still a prestigious discourse (see Starfield, 2020) and stigmatized by the my disciplinary gatekeepers (journal reviews and editors), what I can do is to promote those alternative (and also subversive) discourses in the form

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of book chapters and edited volumes where ideological surveillance is less strict and gatekeeping panopticon (Foucault, 1980) is more tolerant. This gives me the opportunity to have my and others’ voices heard, and it contributes to impacting the epistemic and discursive landscape of my discipline. More importantly, it also provides me with the chance to connect with other like-minded early-career scholars who may have similar expectations and aspirations for contributing to disciplinary discourses. It creates smaller discourse communities within the broader one and adds more polyvocal discourses to the menu. As the next generation of scholars in our discourse community, we can definitely have a stronger voice in the conceptualization, creation and dissemination of knowledge and cross-pollinating our disciplines and making them more pluro-epistemic. As you both said earlier, I also think that international conferences (with more flexible acceptance policies compared to academic journals) can also be an ideal forum for voicing decolonizing discourses and critiquing hegemonic ones. They are places were you can sow the seeds of doubt and help people see that alternative ways of knowledge and representation are as valuable and legitimate as the established ones and expose the ideological and political backstage of the academic power game further. Rick: Pejman, I am really honoured to be part of this decolonizing process. It must be obvious to almost everyone at this point in 2021 when civilization is suffering from business as usual approaches to normalized colonial discourses, that as academics we have to change. Our work is not somehow disconnected from the myriad crises in human and post-human ecologies. As Kurt Lewin said shortly after WWII, “Research that produces nothing but books will not suffice” (Lewin, 1948, p. 203, as cited in Smulyan, 1983). In our scholarly work, we must be accountable to each other and to the world.

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Part of our self-accountability involves a difficult reckoning with our own privilege. One of the challenges to our trying to change systems of privilege and power is that we are socialized into the very scripts that we seek to change. Critical dialogue helps us to understand how discourses that run though our disciplines align with those of institutional power structures. For me, the power of this trioethnography lies in our naming some of those regulatory structures and examining our positionality in relation to them. The personal, from how we view individual merit to collective responsibility, is political. Joe: In writing this, I have come to recognize that we three have difference thresholds of risk that are place and temporally situated. When I was in high school the running joke was, “You have a PhD? You must drive a taxi.” Stability of employment was uncertain then but given the reduction of tenure-track positions and the increase of part-time staff, I believe that it is worse now. I can appreciate the need to secure one’s place and the pressures to conform in order to do so. As I head into retirement, I feel lucky for the degree of stability that I had that served as a springboard to my “calculated” risks. Also, Rick claims that our meeting was lucky, and it was. But it was also much more than that. We both recognized the tyranny of systemic individualization through which assessments are based upon individual not collective work. In our time this was the gold standard. We dared to break that structure and published together. Were we out on a limb? How Far? I believe that we needed this place to find/create the academic discourses to which we both were called. Looking to the future, based upon our conversations, I challenge us (including readers) to expand our practices by moving beyond the individual by employing more group work in both our instructional strategies and forms of assessment; to build a more interactive educational model that creates communities of learners and researcher that fosters

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global competence—a person’s capacity to examine and appreciate multiple world views of complex issues situated in local, global, and intercultural contexts; and collaboratively act for collective wellbeing and sustainable development (Fong & Slotta, 2018. P. 534)

thereby expanding our ways of thinking beyond ourselves and the current hegemonic practices that frame us. Therein lies the, dare I say, hope. Pejman: What this conversation with you has helped me to think about is that decolonization from disciplinary cultures and structures is a spatiotemporal and ongoing process that depends on both individual and contextual factors and takes different shapes throughout one’s academic trajectory. Maybe at a more cautious and slower space at earlier years and a faster and riskier way in more established years. The most important thing, as you said Rick, is that we see that as a personal and communal responsibility and mission for ourselves and others.

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Index

A

Academic discourse socialization 13, 55, 191, 192 Academic literacy(ies) 15, 24, 99, 160, 166, 232, 239, 266, 283, 288, 294, 300 Academic publication trajectories 299 Academic publishing 34, 62, 70, 71, 106, 191, 196, 203, 263, 265, 267, 307 Academic writing 5, 11, 24, 32, 34, 38, 43, 54, 55, 60, 61, 64–70, 73, 74, 80, 84, 96, 99, 100, 105, 109, 134, 136, 145, 154, 160, 248–250, 257, 259, 265, 267, 268, 271, 272, 274, 291–293, 300 Affect 44, 214, 215, 237, 276, 290 Affective challenges 227, 237

Agency 9, 185, 192, 228, 237, 293, 309–311 Agonism 258 Alignment 62, 64, 73, 115, 123, 136, 185 Anglophone scholars 2, 4, 5, 267, 283 Apprenticeship 35, 51, 54, 61, 62, 67, 68, 73, 81, 82, 117, 228, 230 Authorial identity 12, 163, 166 Authorial voice 10, 14, 293 Autoethnography 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 38, 43, 44, 62, 63, 97, 108, 109, 115, 136, 138, 143, 144, 152–155, 162–164, 173, 181, 192, 209, 221, 225, 227, 228, 248, 266, 284

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 P. Habibie and S. Burgess (eds.), Scholarly Publication Trajectories of Early-career Scholars, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85784-4

321

322

Index

B

Bifurcation 14, 255, 259, 305 Bilingual writer 162, 165 Boundary crossing 209, 210, 213, 214

C

Capital 3, 4, 98, 100, 107, 172, 173, 181, 183, 184, 301, 303, 310, 314 Care 15, 64, 70, 74, 87, 193, 289 Career reflections 300, 301, 303 China 60, 66, 114 Colonization 303, 312, 315 Community(ies) of practice 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 25, 32–34, 36–38, 47, 51, 62, 64–66, 68, 69, 71–74, 82, 114–117, 121, 122, 165, 226–228, 230, 231, 233–235, 237, 238, 240, 265, 266 Conference participation 119 Cultural capital 11, 98–100, 102, 103, 108, 109, 183 Cultural change 228 Currere 303, 311

D

Defamiliarisation 252 Diagnosis 12, 135, 136, 138, 141–145, 285 Digital practices 171 Disability 143, 144 Discipline(d) 255, 259 Discourse 4, 5, 9, 43, 49, 51, 53, 55, 109, 174, 215, 229, 249, 251, 252, 254, 259, 266, 267,

281, 283, 286, 293, 304, 307, 315 Discourse analysis 124, 125, 174, 230 Discourse community(ies) 54, 91, 287, 293, 301–304, 314, 316 Discursive challenges 286 Dis-identification 122 Dual professional profile 226 Duoethnography 299, 301–304, 306–308, 311, 312 Dynamic multiple identities 14, 227, 231

E

Early-career 5, 24, 28, 29, 34–37, 73, 113, 166, 189, 190, 258, 300 Early-career researchers (ECRs) 1, 3, 9, 11, 13, 14, 38, 69, 77, 83, 114, 119, 120, 154–157, 163, 165, 166, 207, 208, 216, 221, 222, 249, 309 Early-career researchers (ECRs) identity 10, 155, 213 Early-career scholars 2, 4, 9, 10, 12–14, 26, 29, 31, 32, 37, 38, 60, 71–74, 84, 87, 103, 170, 175, 178, 179, 181, 185, 240, 247, 259, 264–266, 269, 271–273, 276, 277, 299–302, 304, 309, 310, 314, 316 Economic capital 101, 107 Emic and etic perspectives 6, 8, 9, 165, 174 Engagement 36, 42, 47, 49–52, 56, 62, 115, 159, 192, 197, 203,

Index

221, 251, 254, 256, 257, 291, 294, 311 English as an additional language (EAL) scholars 2, 115, 153, 190 English for research publication purposes (ERPP) 2, 12, 96, 121, 136 English-medium 30, 33 Evidence 3, 31, 37, 79, 85, 86, 160, 252–255, 259

F

Festschrifts 126 Field 5, 34, 37, 42, 52, 55, 60, 68, 69, 106, 145, 160, 171, 197, 200, 201, 248, 249, 251, 254, 288, 300, 301, 303, 305, 307, 308 Foucault, Michel 116, 248, 250, 252–256, 258, 259, 310

323

I

Identification 32, 46, 47, 54, 114, 115, 304 Identity 9, 14, 24, 48, 55, 63, 121, 136, 153, 162, 170, 172, 174, 181, 185, 191, 192, 196, 201, 209, 213, 214, 227, 230, 231, 234, 239, 240, 265, 266, 272, 276 Identity evolution 240 Identity negotiation 13, 14, 47, 51, 181, 208, 209, 214, 217, 222, 227, 239, 240 Ideology(ies) 5, 9, 10, 13, 53, 172–174, 181, 184, 185, 192, 193, 196, 197, 203, 216, 217, 239, 266, 303 Imagination 46, 115, 177 In-house editor 78, 80 Intersubjectivity 218 Investment 13, 53, 54, 170, 172, 176, 177, 185, 190–192, 195–197, 199, 203, 232

G

Gatekeeper(s) 14, 79, 83, 85, 88, 89, 92, 182, 211, 220, 235, 249, 250, 253, 304, 309, 315 Growth 63, 73, 100, 203, 282

H

Habitus 3, 11, 98, 102–104, 304 Hegemonic 8, 15, 44, 48, 115, 173, 302, 306, 309, 310, 312–314, 316, 318

K

Knowledge 3, 5, 8, 9, 11, 14, 24, 25, 43, 47, 49, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 66, 74, 97, 109, 142, 143, 160, 169, 170, 185, 192, 197, 226, 227, 229, 233, 234, 237, 238, 240, 248–250, 253, 254, 259, 292, 300, 302, 316 Knowledgeability 107, 109, 115, 158, 163

324

Index

L

Legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) 12, 14, 47, 55, 61, 62, 79, 82, 87, 88, 91, 117, 165, 226–228, 274 Life histories 115 Linguistic repertoire 35, 70, 170 Load 15, 103, 136, 282–285, 287–289, 292, 294 Lucky Anglophone scholar discourse 4

M

Margin 15, 282–284, 289, 291, 294 Mature scholar 215 McClusky, Howard Y. 15, 282 Mediation 32, 292 Mentor(s) 10, 12, 14, 33, 35, 44, 47, 49, 54, 55, 61, 64, 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 92, 105, 115, 116, 123, 124, 134, 138, 145, 166, 192, 202, 237, 240, 283, 314 Mentor(s) and colleagues 228 Mentorship 9, 12, 26, 27, 33, 42, 47, 48, 52, 54, 55, 60, 61, 109, 142, 164, 165, 201 Modelling 51 Multilingual communities 12, 30, 35 Multilingual writers 134, 189, 217 Multi-membership 32, 33 Multiple Sclerosis (MS) 139–144

N

Negotiation 10–13, 53, 63, 79, 84, 85, 174, 235, 236, 247, 253, 255, 309

Neoliberalism 3, 10, 14, 193, 246, 248, 253, 256, 257, 259, 272, 301 NES status 122 Networked participatory scholarship 13, 170 Network(s) 10, 25, 28–30, 32–35, 38, 107–109, 135, 136, 162, 169, 179, 182, 202, 203, 233, 234, 268, 269, 283 Non-discursive challenges 9, 43, 237, 269 Novice teachers 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 29, 32, 38, 47, 55, 64, 68, 74, 79, 88, 92, 96, 137, 189, 192, 197, 201, 203, 215, 220, 228, 232, 238, 239, 264, 266, 283

P

Participation 11, 25, 34, 36, 44, 51, 53–55, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 115, 121, 125, 164, 169, 171, 173, 174, 184, 185, 226, 229–234 Peer review 11, 42, 51, 77–79, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 123, 126, 292 Peer review process 32, 74, 121, 194, 210, 217 Perezhivanie 208–210, 214, 217, 221 Peripheral participation 62, 72, 118 Perseverance 161, 166 Positionality 43, 317 Post-colonialism 302 Power 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, 44, 47, 62, 171, 173, 181, 185, 248, 253,

Index

259, 282–284, 291, 292, 294, 302, 305 Power dynamics 8, 68, 182, 184, 192, 302, 303 Power relations 10, 14, 97, 219, 249, 250, 253, 260, 304 Pracademic 79, 80, 84 Precarious work 80 Productivity 3, 4, 10, 24, 26–32, 35–38, 135, 144, 176, 221, 246, 259, 273 Professional identity 202, 210–214, 240 Publication practices 6, 24, 29, 31, 35, 157, 239, 299 Publication strategies 236 Publication trajectory 26, 27, 37, 135, 164, 166, 171, 225–227, 237, 238, 240, 259, 264 Publishing in L2 134

R

Receiving feedback 216 Reflection 12, 15, 38, 135, 142, 159, 165, 178, 184, 213, 216, 217, 227, 253, 258, 284 Reflective and dialogic approaches 5–8 Reflective research diary 79 Reflectivity 8, 63, 143, 301, 312, 315 Reflexivity 8, 38, 97, 136, 309 Reification 114, 126 Rejection 12, 65, 69, 70, 83, 91, 123, 145, 155, 158, 160, 161, 164, 166, 195, 203, 217, 271, 273, 309, 315 Researcher development 61, 64, 69

325

Researcher identity 212, 220 Researcher self-care 12, 135–137, 142, 145 Research evaluation 14, 27, 31, 265, 269, 272, 276 Research quality 26–32, 39 Research trajectory 67, 145, 264 Reviewer feedback 82, 293 Revising manuscripts 85, 199, 218, 221

S

Scaffolding 33, 38, 42, 51, 52, 55, 116 Scholarly publication 1–6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 26, 27, 29, 31–34, 37, 38, 42, 69, 117, 122, 124, 134, 136, 190, 192–195, 197, 199, 202, 208, 209, 211, 213–216, 220, 221, 225–231, 233–235, 237–240, 257, 270, 276, 285, 286, 291, 300, 301, 303 Scholarly trajectory 10, 14, 30, 119, 175, 226, 237, 276 Scholarly writer identity 217 Self-inventorying 10, 25, 26 Self-reflective auto-ethnographic account 79, 226, 238 Self-study 299–301, 305 Singularity 227, 240 Situated learning 11, 25, 33, 61, 228 Social capital 104, 107, 183, 184 Social interactions 13, 51, 172, 221, 222 Stance 47, 55, 79, 163, 267, 311, 312 Strategies 26, 27, 38, 96, 104, 108, 109, 189, 220, 226, 238

326

Index

Structure 9, 49, 86, 91, 171–173, 229, 258, 267, 309, 310, 317 Support network 11, 107, 109 T

Teacher education 69 Teacher identity 213, 254 Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) 42, 144, 145, 170, 216 Technology(ies) 38, 169–171, 173, 181, 182, 185, 231, 290 TESL 195 Theory of Margin 15, 282–284 Therapeutic experience 228, 238 Trioethnography 7, 9, 15, 299–301, 317

V

Voice 9, 54, 135, 137, 154, 155, 163, 220, 226, 229–232, 234, 236–240, 293, 306, 308, 309, 311, 312, 316

W

Writer’s identity 154, 155, 230 Writing for publication 3, 13, 14, 33, 42–44, 48–55, 81, 144, 154, 155, 159, 189, 190, 197, 200–202, 211, 213, 215, 216, 247, 257, 267, 269