Journal of Academic Writing

Editorial and Production Credits (Vol. 14 No. 1 Summer 2024)

Magnus Gustafsson — 2024-09-04

Editorial: The Boundary Condition of Human Interaction for Written Communication

Magnus Gustafsson — 2024-09-04

The Contribution of Professional Authors in Developing Academic Writers: Navigating Identity in The Third Space in Higher Education

Ursula Canton — 2024-09-04

Professional writers are among several kinds of practitioner offering writing development to postgraduates and research staff in universities. As ‘third space’ professionals they bring expertise from the commercial world of writing into their academic writing interventions with students and staff. Yet, the difference professional writers’ experience can make for participants’ writing, in comparison to other writing developers, has hardly been examined. This paper begins to explore the contributions Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellows (RLF CFs), a community of UK-based fiction and non-fiction authors, can make through their writing interventions. It explores these writers’ perceptions of their dual identities – as writers and writing developers – and their perceived benefits of having professional writers work with students and staff. The data reveal the central role writing plays for RLF CFs’ professional identity, which allows them to model a holistic approach to writing together with strategies for managing its affective dimension. Exploring their contribution to Higher Education (HE) writing development, the paper also prepares the ground for future studies into the impact of RLF CF interventions from the participants’ perspective.

Exploring Human-Generative AI Interaction in L2 Learners’ Source Use Practices: Issues, Trials, and Critical Reflections

Qingyang Sun — 2024-09-04

The emergence of generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT has attracted wide attention in the field of L2 writing and academic writing, but few papers to date have analysed GenAI’s potential application (positive and negative) in source use practices in academic writing. This article discusses three key aspects of source use – academic attribution, searching and reading sources, and source integration. AI tools are trialled for each aspect, followed by an overall SWOT analysis. While writers can use AI tools to assist on several source use practices, they are not recommended to use AI without a deep understanding of academic writing and source use principles. This article concludes with suggestions for student writers, academic support providers, and institutions.

Communicative Awareness is the Key: Using The Rhetorical Triangle for Improving STEM Graduate Academic Writing

Tzipora Rakedzon — 2024-09-04

The ability to carefully craft writing for an intended audience is crucial in creating persuasive rhetorical arguments. Learning to do so requires knowledge beyond IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion). Many graduate students learn by mimicking this structure, yet lack audience awareness and overuse jargon, producing low-readability texts. What is more, they increasingly rely on AI-based writing tools that mimic the same structures that are already often poorly written. The results are too often uncommunicative articles that fail to persuade the intended audience. Therefore, we suggest writing pedagogy includes a deeper understanding of effective written science communication using the rhetorical triangle. As graduate students most readily understand the importance of logos, i.e., the scientific content, our job as writing instructors should be to emphasize the role a carefully aimed pathos and ethos plays in producing highly readable, persuasive, publishable articles. To this end, this paper first presents a brief background on the IMRaD structure before outlining the much-overlooked role of the rhetorical triangle in scientific writing. Specifically, we offer a detailed table for graduate students to use in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Getting Your Scholarly Papers Published: A Guide on How to Avoid the Top Ten Most Common Causes of Paper Rejection

Dickson Adom — 2024-09-04

Scholarly writing and publishing are activities marked by intellectual honesty, integrity, and excellence. Together, they are an indispensable requirement for academics to maintain and sustain their careers in various academic institutions. However, in higher education institutions, the infamous aphorism 'publish or perish' has resulted in unethical academic practices. These practices derail the quality expected of scholarly writing and publishing. This paper is a collection of advice to novice writers on the ten most common reasons why scholarly papers are rejected, offering sound solutions to these problems. Though an unpleasant experience, scholarly paper rejection keeps authors on guard against unethical academic writing practices. It helps them to transform their scholarly papers to meet the high standards of academia. The paper contends that scholarly paper rejection is an important activity in scholarly writing and publishing because it ensures quality in academic knowledge production and dissemination.

Review: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI

Christopher Eaton — 2024-09-04

This review considers Ethan Mollick's Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI and its implications for writing pedagogies.