Navigating scholarly writing and international publishing: Individual agency of Taiwanese EAL doctoral students

Although previous research has examined the academic writing and publishing endeavors of scholars whose English is an additional language (EAL), very few studies have focused on the role of agency in international publishing among multilingual doctoral students. This study addressed this gap by exploring how novice EAL doctoral scholars exercise agency to negotiate for fuller participation in their learning to write for publication and how they tackle exigencies arising from the writing-for-publication processes. The participants were nineteen EAL doctoral students and four professors in the hard sciences from different institutions in Taiwan and the US. Findings showed that most participants as active agents managed to overcome the exigencies by resorting to various strategies, such as seeking mutual engagement in manuscript drafting and taking initiative to negotiate with advisors regarding different directions of revision before and after submission. Many students were found to maneuver different submission strategies to fulfill the international publishing requirements, specified by their respective institutions. Several participants also successfully coped with difficulties in scholarly publishing when only limited advisory guidance was available. The conclusion outlines implications for academic advisors and EAP professionals. Suggestions for future research are also discussed. •This study explores how EAL doctoral writers exercise agency to tackle exigencies in the writing-for-publication processes.•Students took agentive actions to seek more participation in manuscript drafting and revision.•Negotiating and weighing submission strategies led to successful publishing in indexed journals.