Publishing During Doctoral

Candidature From an Activity Theory

Perspective: The Case of Four Chinese
Nursing Doctoral Students
JUN LEI
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Guangzhou, China

Although doctoral students are increasingly expected or required to

publish during their candidature, few studies have focused specifi-
cally on how they manage to do so while juggling multiple, and often
competing, demands from their busy doctoral studies. This study set
out to bridge this gap by examining the strategies adopted by four
Chinese nursing doctoral students to deal with the time pressure in
meeting institutional publication requirements, and the impacts of
the publication requirements and the strategies on their scholarly
publishing experiences and practices. Drawing on activity theory and
its notions of boundary crossing, boundary object, and contradiction, the
study revealed that to fulfill institutional publication requirements
amid competing demands from their doctoral studies, the students
employed two main coping strategies: boundary crossing through
starting early and refashioning the scholarly publishing activity
through orchestrating one’s research and publication with those of
others. It also found that, although effective in mitigating time pres-
sure and boosting publication output, the strategies tended to under-
mine the students’ aspirations to participate fully in scholarly
publishing and to join the disciplinary community. The implications
of these findings for doctoral publication are discussed.
doi: 10.1002/tesq.501

W ith the ever-intensifying global competition for research excel-

lence, researchers across the world are under intense pressure to
publish more and faster in international English journals (Aitchison,
Kamler, & Lee, 2010; Flowerdew, 2013; Lillis & Curry, 2010). This pres-
sure has trickled down to doctoral students with the result that pub-
lishing in English is increasingly institutionalized as a graduation
expectation or requirement for them (Casanave, 2010; Habibie, 2016;

TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 0, No. 0, xxxx 2019 1

© 2019 TESOL International Association
Kwan, 2010). As Aitchison, Catterall, Ross, and Burgin (2012) point
out, “doctoral students are expected to be, or to quickly become, profi-
cient and prolific writers” (p. 435). Against this backdrop, in the past
two decades or so increasing pedagogical and research attention has
been given to doctoral students’ scholarly publishing endeavors. With
some notable recent exceptions (e.g., Fazel, 2019; Habibie, 2015,
2016, 2019; Shvidko & Atkinson, 2019), this body of literature has
focused primarily on English as an additional language doctoral stu-
dents’ experiences and practices of publishing in international English
journals (Aitchison et al., 2010; Flowerdew, 2013; Hanauer & Englan-
der, 2013; Kwan, 2010, 2013; Uzuner, 2008). Although this body of lit-
erature has shed much light on a wide range of challenges and
strategies in doctoral students’ scholarly publishing efforts, there is a
paucity of research on their scholarly publishing experiences and prac-
tices in the context of competing demands from their busy doctoral
studies (Ho, 2017; Li, 2006). To fill this gap, this study investigated
how four Chinese nursing doctoral students sought to publish within
their tight time frame to meet institutional publication requirements
for graduation. Drawing on activity theory and its notions of boundary
crossing, boundary object, and contradiction as a conceptual lens, it
analyzes the strategies deployed by the doctoral students to meet insti-
tutional publication requirements amid competing demands from
their busy doctoral studies, and the impacts of the publication
requirements and the strategies on their scholarly publishing experi-
ences and practices. By explicating the strategies and their impacts,
this study advances our understanding of doctoral students’ scholarly
publishing experiences and practices and has implications for doctoral
publication.

SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL

CANDIDATURE
Research shows that doctoral students tend to face a myriad of chal-
lenges in their scholarly publishing endeavors (Aitchison et al., 2010;
Blakeslee, 1997, 2001; Habibie & Hyland, 2019; Ho, 2017; Li, 2006).
One of these challenges is juggling multiple, and often competing,
demands from their doctoral studies alongside their scholarly publish-
ing efforts (Lee & Aitchison, 2011; Lundell & Beach, 2003; Prior, 1998;
Simpson, 2013). This challenge often manifests itself as time constraints
that doctoral students encounter in their attempts at scholarly publish-
ing during their candidature (Casanave, 2010; Habibie, 2015; Hartley &
Betts, 2009). Specifically, writing for publication is a time-consuming
activity itself, and doctoral students have to engage in various other tasks

2 TESOL QUARTERLY
and responsibilities at the same time (Casanave, 2016; Lundell & Beach,
2003; Mizzi, 2014). As Kwan (2010) points out, “publishing during the
doctoral years is rarely an easy task,” especially “when it is done in a per-
iod when the new researcher is already intensively engaged in the daunt-
ing tasks of researching and thesis-writing” (p. 55). The doctoral
students in Beauchamp, Jazvac-Martek, and McAlpine’s (2009) study, for
instance, reiterated tensions related to “lack of time or interference of
other activities” (p. 273). As a result, doctoral students likely lead
“packed and pressured lives” and face “impossible circumstances” in
their scholarly publishing endeavors (Casanave, 2010, p. 48).
A frequently recommended strategy for alleviating the time pressure
arising from the competing demands of doctoral study is to align schol-
arly publishing with other activities (e.g., Casanave, 2010; Kwan, 2010,
2013; Lundell & Beach, 2003; Mizzi, 2014). Kwan (2010), for example,
suggests aligning the activities of conducting research, writing up the
thesis, and publishing, such as “the alignment of publishing and thesis-
writing or thesis-publication conversion” (p. 65). Likewise, Casanave
(2010) recommends “dovetailing” activity systems of class work, thesis,
and scholarly publishing to avoid “duplicat[ing] (efforts and resources)
needlessly” (p. 55). Successful implementation of these strategies is,
however, anything but an easy task. On the one hand, other activities
may compete against scholarly publishing for doctoral students’ limited
time (Hartley & Betts, 2009; Lee & Aitchison, 2011; Watts, 2012). On
the other hand, scholarly publishing and other activities (e.g., thesis
writing, course assignments) tend to follow different norms, conven-
tions, and practices, which may give rise to contradictions or systemic
conflicts (Lundell & Beach, 2003; Paltridge & Starfield, 2007, 2016;
Simpson, 2013). The doctoral student in Simpson’s (2013) study, for
example, came across “a systemic conflict” between his thesis writing
that valued individual work and his scholarly publishing that called for
collaboration (p. 243). These studies suggest that although connec-
tions can be made between scholarly publishing and other activities to
reduce the time pressure faced by doctoral students seeking to publish
during candidature, successfully doing so may not be easy. There is
thus a need to explore how doctoral students cope with potential time
pressure emanating from competing demands of their doctoral studies
and how the time pressure and the strategies adopted to tackle it bear
on their scholarly publishing experiences and practices.

ACTIVITY THEORY

In view of doctoral students’ simultaneous engagement in multiple

activities while attempting to publish, possible connections they may

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 3

make between activities, and potential challenges in making those con-
nections, activity theory provides a promising theoretical framework
through which their publishing experiences and practices can be
unpacked. Based on Vygotsky’s notion of mediated action, activity the-
ory takes activity system or network of activity systems as its unit of
analysis (Barab, Evans, & Baek, 2004; Engestr€ om & Miettinen, 1999)
and is well equipped to capture possible connections and interactions
between activities and potential challenges in the connections and
interactions.
An activity system comprises seven components: subject, object, out-
come, mediating artifacts, community, division of labor, and rules
(Engestr€ om, 1987). Take a doctoral student’s scholarly publishing
activity system as an example (Figure 1). The subject of the activity sys-
tem is the doctoral student. The object is to produce publishable jour-
nal articles, learn how to participate effectively in the academic
community, and make knowledge contributions. The outcome could
vary from (1) publishing of articles, fulfillment of the university’s pub-
lication requirements, the student’s development as a scholarly writer,
and contributions to knowledge to (2) rejection of articles, failing to
fulfill the university’s publication requirements, the student’s frag-
mented development as a scholarly writer, and limited contributions
to knowledge. The mediating artifacts could include relevant literature,
manuscripts, comments on manuscripts, and target journals’ guides
for authors, among others. The community members may comprise the
university administrators, supervisors, professors, journal editors and

FIGURE 1. The scholarly publishing activity system.

4 TESOL QUARTERLY
reviewers, fellow students, and other members of the academic com-
munity. The division of labor refers to both distribution of tasks and
hierarchies of status and power. For example, the university adminis-
trators are expected to manage the student’s attainment of the object
of publishing journal articles; supervisors to mentor the doctoral stu-
dent; journal editors and reviewers to safeguard and help improve the
quality of submitted manuscripts; and fellow students to help and sup-
port each other. Regarding the hierarchies of status and power, the
university administrators, supervisors, and journal editors and reviewers
tend to have higher statuses and greater power than the doctoral stu-
dent. The rules of the activity system consist of the university’s rules
and regulations concerning scholarly publishing and the norms and
conventions of scholarly publishing in general.
The scholarly publishing activity system is, however, just one of the
many activity systems nested within the doctoral study activity system,
which also includes the coursework activity system and the thesis
research activity system, among others. These activities interconnect
and interact with each other. For instance, the coursework activity sys-
tem is expected to produce the outcome of developed scholarly knowl-
edge and skills that would function as mediating artifacts for the
scholarly publishing and the thesis research activity system. The out-
come of the scholarly publishing activity system could contribute to
the attainment of the object of the coursework activity system, if the
objects of the two systems are well aligned. In addition, the activity sys-
tems of scholarly publishing and thesis research may also interact with
each other and contribute to the attainment of each other’s object. If
doctoral students write compilation theses or complete their PhDs by
publications (Kamler, 2008; Lee & Kamler, 2008), their scholarly pub-
lishing activities would contribute more to their thesis research activi-
ties. On the contrary, if they complete their theses first and then
transform their theses into publications, their thesis research activities
would contribute more to their scholarly publishing activities.
The concepts of boundary crossing and boundary object in activity the-
ory provide a useful conceptual lens to analyze and understand such
connections and interactions between activity systems. Based on their
review of 181 studies on boundary crossing, Akkerman and Bakker
(2011) define a boundary “as a sociocultural difference leading to dis-
continuity in action or interaction” (p. 133). This definition suggests
that boundaries may lead to disruptions, difficulties, or problems in
action or interaction. However, a number of researchers (e.g., Akker-
man & Bakker, 2011; Daniels, 2008; Engestr€ om, Engestr€ om, &
K€arkk€ainen, 1995) have noted that sociocultural differences between
activity systems are sources of not only difficulties and problems but
also change and development. In view of this, Akkerman and Bakker

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 5

underscore the value of “perceiving boundaries not only as barriers to
but also as potential resources for learning” (p. 153). Accordingly, they
define boundary crossing as “a process of establishing continuity in a
situation of sociocultural difference” (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011, p.
152) and boundary objects as “either (in Star’s sense) localized as simi-
lar artifacts in the upper triangle that mediate two or more systems or
localized as ‘the potentially shared or jointly constructed object’
between two activity systems (Engestr€ om, 2001, p. 136)” (Akkerman &
Bakker, 2011, pp. 147–148). Taking scholarly publishing during doc-
toral candidature, for example, doctoral students’ scholarly publishing
and coursework activity systems constitute two potentially intercon-
nected activity systems. The students’ attempts to connect them can be
seen as an example of boundary crossing with the course assignment
being the boundary object, that is, functioning as the object in the
coursework activity system but as artifacts in the scholarly publishing
activity system. An example of a shared object or a boundary object
between two activity systems would be a manuscript intended to be
published as a journal article and to be included as a chapter in a the-
sis.
Additionally, the concept of contradiction offers a powerful concep-
tual tool for understanding possible challenges that doctoral students
may face in their scholarly publishing endeavors. As “historically accu-
mulating structural tensions within and between activity systems”
(Engestr€ om, 2001, p. 137), contradictions can both constrain and
enable change and development. According to Engestr€ om (1987),
there are four types of contradictions: primary, secondary, tertiary, and
quaternary. Primary contradictions exist within individual constituent
components, such as tensions related to doctoral students’ dual role as
student and expert scholarly writer in their scholarly publishing
endeavors during their candidature (Aitchison & Lee, 2006; Hakala,
2009; Lei & Hu, 2019). Secondary contradictions are found between
constituent components, such as challenges that doctoral students
tend to encounter in completing their doctoral studies on time (the
object) while meeting the multiple, and often competing, demands
from other activity systems in their doctoral studies (the rules) (Hart-
ley & Betts, 2009; Lundell & Beach, 2003; Watts, 2012). Tertiary con-
tradictions “exist between the object (motive) of the dominant and
the object of a culturally more advanced form of the activity” (Roth &
Lee, 2007, p. 203). An example of a tertiary contradiction related to
scholarly publishing during doctoral candidature might be the intro-
duction of the article-compilation thesis in lieu of the traditional thesis
format (Kwan, 2010, 2013; Lee & Kamler, 2008; Paltridge & Starfield,
2007, 2016). Because the article-compilation thesis activity system has a
new object different from that of the traditional thesis activity system,

6 TESOL QUARTERLY
the rules, division of labor, mediating tools, and community of the old
activity system may all undergo changes. Quaternary contradictions
exist between a central activity system and its neighboring activity sys-
tems. An example of this type of contradiction is the difficulty often
faced by doctoral students in their attempts to transform their theses
(the central activity system) into journal articles (a neighboring activity
interacting with the central activity system) (Lee & Aitchison, 2011;
Lee & Kamler, 2008; Simpson, 2013).

METHOD

Context and Participants

This study was conducted in the Nursing Department of the School

of Medicine at a major comprehensive university in mainland China.
The nursing discipline was chosen as my focal discipline for two main
reasons. First, nurses’ scholarly publishing practices, particularly those
of nursing doctoral students, have received considerably less attention
than those of other professionals, such as clinician-researchers (Li,
2014). Second, despite nursing’s long history as a professional disci-
pline in mainland China, Chinese higher educational institutions did
not start to offer doctoral programs in nursing science until 2003
(Gao, Chan, & Cheng, 2012). Therefore, a focus on nursing doctoral
students’ scholarly publishing practices has the potential to broaden
our understanding of doctoral publication, an area that is receiving
growing attention from researchers and practitioners alike (Aitchison
et al., 2010; Flowerdew, 2013; Kwan, 2010, 2013; Uzuner, 2008).
As one of the earliest nursing departments to offer master’s and
doctoral programs in nursing science in mainland China, the Nursing
Department studied in this article ranks among the top nursing
departments/schools in mainland China. The focal nursing doctoral
program is a 3-year research doctorate. In addition to this program,
the Nursing Department also offers a joint-degrees program in part-
nership with an English-medium university outside mainland China
(hereafter the partner university).1 The joint-degrees program is also a
research doctorate. Students in the joint-degrees program are required
to meet the graduation requirements of both universities to be
awarded both degrees, including coursework required by both
universities, the focal university’s publication requirements (i.e., one
first-authored science citation index (SCI) journal article), and a

1
Information about the partner university is not provided for the sake of anonymity.

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 7

doctoral thesis written in both Chinese (for the focal university) and
English (for the partner university).
Four doctoral students from the Nursing Department participated
in this study. Whereas Dong, Fang, and Xiao (all names in this study
are pseudonyms) were enrolled in the focal nursing doctoral program,
Liang was among the first cohort of the joint-degrees program. Liang
and Xiao were under the supervision of Professor Liu, whereas Dong
and Fang were supervised by Professor Wu. Professor Liu participated
in this study, but Professor Wu declined to participate due to her
heavy administrative responsibilities. Professor Liu was included in this
study because supervisors are expected to play a pivotal role in their
doctoral students’ scholarly publishing practices and experiences, and
their perspectives could triangulate (i.e., confirm, extend, and/or con-
tradict) student perspectives. Dong, Fang, and Liang did their master’s
studies at the focal university, whereas Xiao obtained her master’s
degree from another top medical university in mainland China. Dong
and Liang were also under Professor Liu’s supervision for their
master’s studies at the focal university.
While Xiao continued her doctoral study immediately after complet-
ing her master’s study, Dong, Fang, and Liang worked for several years
before they were enrolled into the doctoral program. Specifically,
Dong worked as a lecturer at a nursing school affiliated to a Level
3-Grade A (sanjia) hospital.2 Fang worked as a nurse at another Level
3-Grade A hospital. Liang graduated from the master’s nursing pro-
gram at the focal university in 2006 and then started to work there as
a staff member.
All four students were enrolled in September 2011. Fang and Xiao
graduated on time in May 2014, but Dong did not graduate until May
2015. Liang was still striving to meet the university’s publication
requirements in May 2015, when my data collection ended.

Data Collection

This study focused on the doctoral students’ scholarly publishing

experiences and practices and their perspectives on the experiences
and practices rather than texts or text production per se (Lillis &
Scott, 2007). Thus, its primary source of data comprised interviews
with the students. Following Seidman’s (2006, citing Schuman, 1982)
three-interview series structure, I conducted three rounds of interviews
2
Sanjia or Sanji Jiadeng, the highest grade of hospitals in mainland China. As of November
2016, there were a total of 29,140 accredited hospitals in mainland China, of which
1,308 were Sanjia hospitals (National Health and Family Planning Commission of the
PRC, 2016).

8 TESOL QUARTERLY
(face-to-face, email, or social media) with each doctoral student, with
each round comprising multiple interviews (as explained below in
more detail). The first round of interviews probed their life histories,
focusing specifically on their literacy histories (Lillis & Curry, 2010)
and the contexts of their learning and writing experiences. These
interviews were conducted shortly after they agreed to participate in
this study. Because the focus of my study shifted from doctoral publi-
cation in general to doctoral publication in the context of competing
demands from doctoral study, I also explored in ensuing interviews
their perceptions, experiences, and practices related to their course-
work and thesis research. The second round of interviews centered on
the details of their scholarly publishing experiences and practices. This
round of interviews was conducted around some critical moments in
their scholarly publishing efforts, such as finishing drafting a manu-
script, submitting it, receiving comments on it, revising it, and resub-
mitting it, or receiving the final editorial decision on it. Finally, the
third round of interviews revolved around their thoughts, feelings,
reflections, and emotions regarding their scholarly publishing experi-
ences and practices, particularly the meanings they made of those
experiences and practices. These interviews were built on the previous
two rounds of interviews and conducted near the end of their doctoral
studies. I considered that a prime time to ask them to share their
thoughts, feelings, reflections, and emotions regarding their scholarly
publishing activities during their doctoral studies.
The interviews took the semistructured format and were guided by
an interview schedule, which “serve[d] as a basic checklist during the
interview to make sure that all relevant topics are covered” and
allowed them to initiate and discuss issues interesting and significant
to them (Patton, 2002, p. 342). In each round of interviews, I
attempted to start with questions about the context and then move on
to questions regarding their experiences and practices, and the mean-
ings of their experiences and practices to them whenever possible. I
kept field notes for each major interview to record potentially interest-
ing and relevant issues for follow-up interviews with both the same and
other students. The number of interviews in each round ranged from
two to eight for each participant depending on their progress in pub-
lishing their manuscripts, and the length of each interview varied from
15 to 48 minutes. All interviews were conducted in Chinese, recorded,
and transcribed for analysis.
In addition to student interviews, I also collected other types and
sources of data to triangulate the student interview data—examine
whether and how themes emerging from student interviews were con-
firmed, extended, and/or contradicted in these data sources—and to
provide information on the contexts for the students’ scholarly

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 9

publishing activities. The supplementary data included (1) interviews
with Professor Liu; (2) students’ manuscript and thesis drafts, course
assignments, and related artifacts (e.g., comments on manuscript and
thesis drafts, instructions for course assignments); (3) text-based inter-
views with the doctoral students about, among other issues, the histo-
ries of their texts and connections among their various texts; and (4)
institutional policy documents regarding objectives of doctoral educa-
tion, graduation, and publication requirements, among others. For
example, I drew on the interviews, manuscript and thesis drafts, and
text-based interviews to establish and verify the complex interactions
among Fang’s professional work, scholarly publishing, and thesis
research activity systems (as elaborated below).

Data Analysis
Following Yamagata-Lynch’s (2010) suggestion, I first conducted a
thematic analysis to identify themes and relationships among them for
further exploration from an activity-theoretic perspective. This analysis
consisted of initial coding, focused coding, and axial coding (Char-
maz, 2006). In initial coding, I read the data line by line and seg-
mented the data into categories using in vivo codes (i.e., using
participants’ words or phrases to label a segment of data) wherever
possible. In focused coding, I went back and forth between the initial
codes and the data to determine “which initial codes make the most
analytical sense to categorize [my] data incisively and completely”
(Charmaz, 2006, pp. 57–58) and then recoded the data accordingly.
Finally, in axial coding, I attempted to “relat[e] categories to subcate-
gories” and/or “specif[y] properties and dimensions of a category” to
build links among categories (Charmaz, 2006, p. 60).
Subsequent to the thematic analysis, the data were subjected to an
activity systems analysis (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010) to identify (1) the unit
of analysis, bounded system, and activity setting; (2) networks of activ-
ity systems; and (3) contradictions within and between activity systems.
Because my research questions centered on the doctoral students’
scholarly publishing practices in the context of their doctoral studies,
their scholarly publishing activity system was selected as the unit of
analysis. Accordingly, the doctoral students’ scholarly publishing activ-
ity system was identified as the boundary system, and the doctoral
study activity system and its embedded activity systems the activity
setting.
After pinpointing the unit of analysis, bounded system, and activity
setting, I went on to identify the doctoral students’ networks of activity
systems, which was guided but not confined by the notions of unit of

10 TESOL QUARTERLY
analysis, bounded system, and activity setting discussed above. For
example, although I identified the doctoral study activity system and
its embedded activity systems as the activity setting based on the focus
of my study, I included in my final analysis two activity systems that
were outside of the initial activity setting but were closely intercon-
nected with the students’ scholarly publishing activity systems—Xiao’s
master’s study and Fang’s professional work activity systems (see Park
& De Costa, 2015; Prior, 1998, for similar expansions and shifts in the
sociocultural contexts examined in their studies).
Finally, to identify contradictions related to the doctoral students’
scholarly publishing activity, I went back and forth iteratively between
the results of the thematic analysis and the activity systems analysis to
map them onto one another (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). In the process, I
drew on activity theory and its concepts (e.g., contradiction, boundary
crossing, boundary object) as sensitizing concepts to guide my analysis
(Charmaz, 2006). For instance, in mapping the results of the thematic
and activity systems analyses, I came to realize that participants’ strate-
gies of starting early were all manifestations of boundary crossing,
hence the code boundary crossing through starting early.

FINDINGS

As expected, the students reported facing competing demands from

multiple activities of their doctoral studies and being pressed for time
to fulfill the university’s publication requirements. In particular, the
university’s Regulations for Doctoral Education mandated that “doc-
toral students should complete their studies within three years, though
it is possible for them to apply for extensions of up to three years
beyond the expected graduation date under compelling circum-
stances.”3 Moreover, the university also stipulated that in addition to
completing the required coursework, “PhD candidates must publish at
least one first-author article in an SCI journal and submit a doctoral
thesis to be eligible for the award of PhD degree” (“Requirements for
Thesis Research and Scholarly Publishing Concerning the Application
and Award of Ph.D. Degree”). The stringent time frame and the
daunting requirements placed the doctoral students under tremen-
dous pressure. As Liang pointed out,
I feel it’s extremely difficult to publish an SCI journal article based on
your own research within 3 years, the common length of doctoral can-
didature at universities in mainland China. After all, you need to do
3
The references to this and following institutional documents are not given for the sake
of anonymity.

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 11

 coursework during your first year. You may start to work on your pro-
ject from the beginning of your second year or the second semester of
your first year. But it takes a long time to write up your research and
then it will also take a long time for journal editors and reviewers to
review it. So if you consider the whole process of publishing an SCI
article, it’s really difficult to achieve that within the 3-year candidature.
(Interview, May 27, 2014)
Liang’s concern was shared by other students. Fang, for example,
bemoaned that “time is too pressing” to meet the university’s publica-
tion requirements within the stringent time frame (Interview, Septem-
ber 8, 2013). These accounts demonstrate that the time pressure was a
manifestation of the contradiction between the object and rules of the
scholarly publishing activity, that is, the structural tension between
attaining the object of scholarly publishing activity system and the
rules of meeting competing demands of doctoral study within a tight
time frame.
To cope with the time pressure arising from the structural tension,
the students employed two main strategies: boundary crossing through
starting early and refashioning the scholarly publishing activity system
through orchestrating one’s own research and publishing activities
with those of others. As elaborated below, although they were effective
in mitigating the time pressure, these strategies either demanded
changes to other activity systems or generated new contradictions that
tended to undercut opportunities for the students to participate fully
in scholarly publishing and to join the disciplinary community.

Boundary Crossing Through Starting Early

To deal with the time pressure, the doctoral students crossed

boundaries through starting early, including working on research from
their master’s study (Xiao) and professional work (Fang), and translat-
ing their course assignments into scholarly publication (Liang). All the
participants placed a high value on the strategy of starting early in
facilitating doctoral students’ timely publication and on-time gradua-
tion. Fang, for example, noted that on-time graduation with the
degree hinged on starting early: “If you want to graduate on time,
you’ve got to start early” (Interview, May 20, 2014). Similarly, Professor
Liu observed that “they must start early if they want to graduate on
time” (Interview, May 27, 2014).
Specifically, Xiao wrote up an English manuscript during her mas-
ter’s study, which had undergone one round of review before her
enrollment into the PhD program. This head start placed her in an

12 TESOL QUARTERLY
advantageous position, because with that experience she started to
work on her second English manuscript based on data provided by
her supervisor not long after her enrollment. Unlike Xiao, Fang fol-
lowed one of her seniors’ suggestions about starting early and took
the strategy to the extreme by collecting data and finishing writing up
two English manuscripts while she was working as a nurse at a hospital
and before she was enrolled into the PhD program. As a result, Xiao
secured four SCI journal articles (not including the one from her mas-
ter’s study) during her candidature. Likewise, Fang managed to pub-
lish one of her two manuscripts before the end of her candidature
and the other one not long after her graduation. There is no doubt
that their early starts played an important role in their successes in
publication, though other factors, as shown below, might also have
played a role in their successes.
Moreover, Professor Liu urged doctoral students to start early by
“integrating their scholarly publishing efforts with course assignments”
(Interview, May 27, 2014). As she suggested,
They should start writing [journal articles] while they are doing their
coursework, because they will be extremely busy once they begin their
thesis research. They’ve got to make the most out of that period of
time and integrate their scholarly publishing efforts with course
assignments. (Interview, May 27, 2014)
In contrast to Professor Liu’s perceived potential of this strategy,
only Liang succeeded in turning a course assignment into a Chinese
journal article. One of the courses she took at the focal university pro-
vided her with an optimal opportunity to participate in Chinese schol-
arly publishing. The course required students to write an assignment
to be submitted to an in-house journal for review and publication.
The in-house journal was edited by the professor who taught the
course and was published by the Nursing Department for an internal
readership. A nurturing senior professor who reviewed submissions for
the journal was impressed by Liang’s article and encouraged her to
submit it to a “public” journal, which accepted it. Liang spoke highly
of this experience, which not only secured a publication for her but
also bolstered her confidence in Chinese scholarly publishing.
These findings illustrate potential facilitative roles for boundary
objects and practices in doctoral students’ scholarly publishing efforts.
From an activity-theoretic perspective, the outcomes of Xiao’s master’s
study, Fang’s professional work, and Liang’s coursework activity sys-
tems served as boundary objects for their scholarly publishing activity
systems (Casanave, 2010; Lundell & Beach, 2003; see also; Barab, Bar-
nett, Yamagata-Lynch, Squire, & Keating, 2002; Miettinen, 2005), and
the professor’s practice of encouraging her students to submit their

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 13

assignments to an in-house journal constituted a boundary practice
(Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Daniels, 2008; Engestr€ om et al., 1995).
However, access to these boundary objects and practices or successful
enactment of boundary crossing required changes in the objects and/
or rules of other activity systems (see Table 1).
For example, regarding the master’s study activity system, only Xiao
had the opportunity to write up an English manuscript during her
master’s study. The other three students in this study and probably
most of their fellow students were engaged only in Chinese scholarly
publishing during their master’s studies, which is common for mas-
ter’s students at universities in mainland China. The focal university in
this study, for example, required its master’s students to publish an
article in a Chinese journal before they were allowed to graduate,
although the university and supervisors were starting to encourage
master’s students to publish in English, too (Professor Liu, Interview,
May 27, 2014). The same was true of Xiao’s alma mater for her mas-
ter’s study. Moreover, a publication “must list the university as the first
affiliation” to be counted toward the fulfillment of the university’s
publication requirements (“University Regulations for Doctoral Educa-
tion”). Therefore, this strategy would not work for students who did
their master’s studies at another university. In Xiao’s case, for exam-
ple, her first English journal article listed her master’s program alma
mater as her first affiliation and hence did not contribute to her fulfill-
ment of the focal university’s publication requirements.
Likewise, the successful implementation of Fang’s strategy of bring-
ing along manuscripts from her professional work activity system also
required changes to the professional work activity system. In particular,
TABLE 1
Changes Required for Successful Boundary Crossing Through Starting Early

Case Changes
The Master’s Study
Activity System (Xiao)
• The object shifting from publishing a Chinese journal
article to publishing an English journal article
• The rules concerning scholarly publishing, particularly
affiliation, changing to listing as the first affiliation the
university with which students undertake their doctoral
rather than master’s studies
The Professional Work
Activity System (Fang)
• The object changing to include publishing English journal
articles
• Community or workplace being supportive of research and
providing access to resources and support from
experienced researchers
The Coursework
Activity System (Liang)
• The object shifting from mastering of existing knowledge
to contributing to knowledge
• The rules regarding course assessment changing from
formal exams to written assignments in English

14 TESOL QUARTERLY
Fang worked at a Level 3-Grade A teaching hospital that was support-
ive of research. The conducive working environment provided her
with access to resources and support from experienced researchers,
which made it possible for her to conduct an action research project
and subsequently turn it into two English manuscripts. However, such
resources and support might not be available in other workplaces. For
example, Dong—who was teaching at a nursing school that was also
affiliated with a Level 3-Grade A hospital but was not so supportive of
research—pointed out that, although she had been thinking about
possible research topics for her publication and doctoral thesis while
she was working, she did not embark on research on her own because
of her concern about the quality of the research without guidance and
support. As she put it,
If you start your research completely on your own before your enrollment
into a PhD program, there’s no guarantee for its quality. Sometimes, you
may think you have done a great job. But you may well have neglected
some important issues in your project because of your lack of access to
guidance, literature, and resources. (Dong, Interview, April 7, 2015)
As for the coursework activity system, that only Liang successfully
translated a course assignment into a Chinese publication indicated
the difficulty in carrying out the strategy. First, as observed above by
Professor Liu, the coursework activity system competed against the
scholarly publishing activity system for the doctoral students’ limited
time. Second, the university’s regulations and guidelines about course-
work tended to restrict the students’ opportunities to turn course
assignments into scholarly publications. Although some courses at the
university required written assignments, they were written in Chinese
and did not contribute directly to the fulfillment of the university’s
publication requirements or the development of the students’ English
scholarly publishing abilities. For example, Liang’s publication based
on her course assignment discussed above did not contribute to her
fulfillment of the university’s graduation requirements because it was
published in a Chinese non-SCI journal. Third, the difficulty might
also have to do with the differing objects of the two activity systems.
Whereas the object of the coursework activity system is to develop and
assess doctoral students’ knowledge that is already established—re-
ferred to as “dead knowledge” by the students—that of the scholarly
publishing activity system is to produce knowledge and reproduce
knowledge producers (Pare, 2010).
To sum up, to cope with the time pressure, three of the four stu-
dents deployed the strategy of starting early. It was shown that this
strategy constituted boundary crossing between the scholarly publish-
ing and other activity systems and that it was difficult to cross the

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 15

boundaries between them because it demanded changes to the objects
and/or rules of other activity systems.

Refashioning the Scholarly Publishing Activity System

Through Orchestrating One’s Research and Publishing
Activities With Those of Others

Another strategy proposed and adopted by the participants to tackle

the time constraints was refashioning the scholarly publishing activity
system through orchestrating one’s own research and publishing activi-
ties with those of others. Professor Liu proposed the strategy to expe-
dite her students’ fulfillment of the university’s publication
requirements. To that end, the student who wrote up the manuscript
and the supervisor were usually the first author and the corresponding
author, respectively, and the other contributors were the middle
authors. In these cases, the manuscript constituted a boundary object,
a potentially shared object between three activity systems: the student’s
scholarly publishing activity, her thesis research activity, and the pro-
fessor’s scholarly publishing activity.4 As such, the professor’s scholarly
productivity was being comanaged with the student’s. The objects of
these activity systems would overlap with each other (e.g., to advance
knowledge), but they would also diverge in that the object of the
student’s activities would be to participate effectively in scholarly pub-
lishing and join the disciplinary community as noted earlier, whereas
the professor’s would probably be more concerned with institutional
rewards in the mix (e.g., promotion, salary, rank).
In adopting the orchestrating strategy, Professor Liu divided her
research projects among her students so that they could have data to
work on as early as possible. As she put it,
The supervisor needs to divide them [her research projects] among
her students. For example, we have collected a lot of data on the . . .
survivors over the past few years. One of my PhD students managed to
publish four SCI journal articles during her candidature and she’s
grateful that I gave her some data to work on as soon as she was
enrolled into the program. (Interview, May 27, 2014)
However, in order for this strategy to work, the supervisor needed to
strategically manage her research projects, as Professor Liu pointed out:
The supervisor needs to timely comb through the data that her students
have collected. For example, I have a list of all the data I have and I
4
I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for drawing my attention to this interpretation
of the orchestrating strategy.

16 TESOL QUARTERLY
 also have a general idea about how they could be used to produce vari-
ous publications. You’ve got to have such an overview. Then you can
ask your students to explore them in depth and see what specific ideas
can be constructed from the data. After that, they can write up articles
revolving around those ideas. So a supervisor’s orchestrating [of her stu-
dents’ publishing projects] plays an important role in her students’ suc-
cess and productivity in publishing. (Interview, May 27, 2014)
All the participants acknowledged the strategy’s effectiveness in miti-
gating the time pressure and facilitating the fulfillment of the univer-
sity’s publication requirements, and Xiao and Dong adopted it to
meet the university’s publication requirements. As noted above, Xiao
was given some data to work on while she was still doing her course-
work, which, according to both Xiao and Professor Liu, was pivotal in
her impressive accomplishment of publishing four SCI journal articles
during her 3-year candidature. Dong managed to meet the university’s
publication requirements by publishing on data derived from one of
Professor Liu’s (her supervisor for her master’s study) projects. How-
ever, although this strategy was effective in helping students alleviate
the time pressure and meet the university’s publication requirements,
it was characterized by an overriding concern about the product of
scholarly publishing. According to the students, this product-oriented
approach generated contradictions that undermined their opportuni-
ties to participate fully in scholarly publishing and to become mem-
bers of the disciplinary community (see Table 2).
To begin, as a new method for achieving the object of the scholarly
publishing activity, the orchestrating strategy changed its division of
labor from the subject being involved in all the actions of the activity
to only part of the actions. This change triggered a contradiction
between the division of labor and the object of developing doctoral
students into autonomous researchers. Both Fang and Dong were cog-
nizant of this contradiction. Fang, for example, raised questions about
the strategy’s potential to compromise doctoral students’ completion
of “the rites of passage” into researchers (Interview, May 20, 2014).
Dong expressed concerns not only about its potential to sabotage doc-
toral students’ opportunities to learn scholarly publishing but also
about its possible harm to the development of the nursing discipline:
Doing that [publishing others’ research that is not related to one’s
own thesis research] makes little contribution to or even obstructs the
development of the nursing discipline. Neither does it do any good to
one’s career other than getting the degree. (Email, October 18, 2012)
Moreover, as a result of the newly adopted strategy, the object of
the activity system was redefined. Hence, the activity system was refash-
ioned, generating a contradiction between the object and the outcome

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 17

TABLE 2
New Contradictions Generated by the Adoption of the Orchestrating Strategy

New contradiction Possible consequences

A tertiary contradiction between the
changed division of labor and the
• Restricting doctoral students’ participation
in the scholarly publishing activity
object of the scholarly publishing
activity system • Undermining doctoral students’
opportunities for learning scholarly
publishing
A tertiary contradiction between the
compromised object and the ideal
• Curtailing doctoral students’ aspirations to
become autonomous researchers (i.e.,
outcome of the scholarly publishing completion of the rites of passage)
activity system
• Inhibiting the development of the nursing
discipline
A quaternary contradiction between
the scholarly publishing and the
• Impeding doctoral students’ timely
completion of thesis research and on-time
thesis research activity system graduation
• Derailing doctoral students’ scholarly
publishing endeavors and successful
completion of their doctoral studies

of the activity. This contradiction was acutely felt by Dong, Fang, and
Liang. Dong’s criticism of publishing others’ research noted above
exemplified their concerns. Liang went a step further and resisted the
strategy:
Now my problem is I haven’t finished data collection for my PhD pro-
ject. So I don’t have enough data to write up a manuscript. That’s why
I haven’t written up anything yet. But I have some data that aren’t
mine but someone else’s. I am really torn, because some people have
written up and published articles drawing upon others’ data and
allowed other people to use their own data later on. That is kind of a
“tradition” here. But I haven’t overcome the barrier yet. So I haven’t
written up anything based on the data even though I’ve had them at
hand for quite some time. (Interview, May 27, 2014)
The above excerpt illustrates the tension Liang felt between adopt-
ing the orchestrating strategy and publishing her own (thesis)
research. The tension did not subside as time went by and inhibited
her from completing an English journal article by the end of her
fourth year in the program.
Fang volunteered a similar concern about the orchestrating strategy,
although she did not adopt the strategy herself and was not even
prompted in the interviews to discuss it:
It’s impossible to publish an article based on your own PhD project
within 3 years. I know some professors encourage their students to
write and publish data from their seniors’ projects and to leave their
own data to their juniors. I’m fine with leaving my data to my juniors

18 TESOL QUARTERLY
 and me writing and publishing my seniors’ data. That can speed up
our efforts to get our papers published. But it has a drawback. After
all, those who did the research know it the best. And I think it would
be more systematic to publish your own research, and it would also
mean that you’ve completed the rites of passage [into researchers].
(Interview, May 20, 2014)
For this reason, Fang had a change of heart about the strategy:
I used to approve the strategy. But because the two articles I wrote up
drew upon the data I collected while I was working, I feel the whole
experience provided useful guidance for my later research. For exam-
ple, what I learned about research methodology from those experi-
ences helped me with my thesis project. (Interview, May 20, 2014)
Fang’s account points to learning opportunities that could be afforded
by publishing one’s own (thesis) research during candidature (see also
Kamler, 2008; Mizzi, 2014). Meanwhile, it also hints at possible nega-
tive ramifications that the orchestrating strategy may have for the
development of the doctoral students’ scholarly abilities and the suc-
cessful completion of thesis research.
Indeed, ripple effects from the orchestrating strategy generated a
quaternary contradiction between the scholarly publishing and the the-
sis research activity system. The interacting activity systems of scholarly
publishing and thesis research were supposed to facilitate each other.
However, the adoption of the orchestrating strategy in the former led to
a misalignment between its object and that of the latter activity system.
The misalignment in turn exerted greater time demands on the stu-
dents’ already stringent schedule, which would impede their prompt
completion of their thesis research and on-time graduation. For exam-
ple, Dong had to ask for an extension to finish her thesis project, thus
postponing her graduation date. An important reason for her delayed
graduation, in her view, was that her thesis research topic was com-
pletely different from the topic of her publication, a common practice
in her department.
The above accounts by Fang, Liang, and Dong highlight the impor-
tance of aligning scholarly publishing with thesis research. However,
doing so was not without problems. Fang and Liang attempted to fulfill
the university’s publication requirements by trying to publish their thesis
research or research related to their thesis. Fang’s case was noteworthy
in that her thesis research was built on her two manuscripts, which grew
out of a research project that she conducted during her professional
work. Her boundary crossing between her scholarly publishing on the
one hand and her professional work and thesis research on the other
contributed to her on-time graduation. By contrast, unwilling to resort
to the orchestrating strategy, Liang was determined to publish her own

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 19

thesis research. However, unlike other students who started early, Liang
did not start her thesis research and scholarly publishing effort until she
completed her coursework. As a result, she had not secured an SCI pub-
lication by the end of her fourth year into the program and had to apply
for an extension of candidature for a second time.
In summary, although refashioning the scholarly publishing activity
system bolstered the product aspect of its object—facilitating the doc-
toral students’ timely publication and on-time graduation—it gener-
ated new contradictions that tended to hinder the achievement of the
process aspect of its object—impeding the doctoral students’ aspira-
tions to learn scholarly publishing and to become autonomous
researchers.

DISCUSSION
This study set out to examine the strategies employed by four Chi-
nese nursing doctoral students to meet institutional publication
requirements within their stringent candidature and the impacts of
the publication requirements and the strategies on their scholarly pub-
lishing practices and experiences. It revealed a contradiction between
attaining the object of the scholarly publishing activity system and
meeting the competing demands emanating from the doctoral study
activity system in a tight time frame (Casanave, 2010; Hartley & Betts,
2009). Manifested as time constraints, the contradiction reflected “the
challenges of a PhD being both a process of learning (for the student
and the supervisor) and a product of a research project” (Kandiko &
Kinchin, 2012, p. 3). Specifically, the university’s publication require-
ments placed an overriding emphasis on the product as opposed to
the process of scholarly publishing. Therefore, to meet the university’s
publication requirements, the students resorted to boundary crossing
and/or refashioning the scholarly publishing activity system, which,
although effective in facilitating their scholarly publishing outputs,
tended to undermine their scholarly publishing experiences.
In particular, through starting early, the students crossed boundaries
between the scholarly publishing and other activity systems. The bound-
ary-crossing practices pointed to the highly fluid and permeable textual
and contextual boundaries for doctoral students’ scholarly publishing
activities, as evident in the connections between Fang’s scholarly pub-
lishing and professional work activity systems and between Xiao’s first
English publication and her master’s study activity system. From an activ-
ity-theoretic viewpoint, the outcomes of these other activity systems func-
tioned as boundary objects for and facilitated the doctoral students’

20 TESOL QUARTERLY
scholarly publishing activity systems (Casanave, 2010; Lundell & Beach,
2003; see also Barab et al., 2002; Miettinen, 2005).
However, the study also revealed difficulties in making connections
between scholarly publishing and other activities. Take, for example,
Liang’s strategy of turning a course assignment into a Chinese publica-
tion, a strategy that has been documented in the literature (e.g., Casa-
nave, 2010; Habibie, 2015, 2016; Lundell & Beach, 2003; Mizzi, 2014).
Habibie (2016), for example, reported a similar case in which a doc-
toral student was encouraged to transform a course assignment into a
publication. As illustrated above, Liang’s case constituted an optimal
scenario, where the objects of the coursework assignment and the
scholarly publishing activity systems were aligned through a boundary
object and a boundary practice (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Daniels,
2008; Engestr€ om et al., 1995). Casanave (2010) observed similar “inter-
mediate practices, between class work and the professional activity of
publishing” (p. 55), where with the help of a faculty member, graduate
students edited series of papers on particular topics, colloquia pro-
ceedings, and working papers from course assignments. While under-
lining their potential for facilitating doctoral students’ publishing
efforts, she also cautioned about possible challenges these practices
may pose to time-strapped doctoral students.
Moreover, the cases of Fang and Liang unveiled challenges in
crossing the boundaries between thesis writing and scholarly publish-
ing, adding further evidence to the literature that has documented
the difficulty in transforming theses into publications (e.g., Lee &
Aitchison, 2011; Lee & Kamler, 2008; Lundell & Beach, 2003; Simp-
son, 2013). Specifically, Fang dovetailed her thesis research, scholarly
publishing, and professional work activity systems by aligning her
scholarly publishing activity with her professional work activity and
building her thesis research on her professional work and scholarly
publishing effort. In doing so, she managed to meet the focal univer-
sity’s publication requirements and graduated on time with the
degree. Her skillful planning and managing of the three activity sys-
tems undoubtedly contributed to her success. In contrast, Liang also
attempted to align her scholarly publishing effort with her thesis
research, as evidenced by her determination to publish her thesis
research to meet the university’s publication requirements. However,
despite her unwavering determination, she had not succeeded in that
by the end of her fourth year in the program. Her unsuccessful
attempt and the enormous effort and skills required for Fang’s suc-
cess might be attributed to the inherently stringent doctoral candida-
ture and the different nature of the two activity systems. On the one
hand, thesis writing and scholarly publishing are inclined to compete
against each other as well as other activities for doctoral students’

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 21

limited time. As Lee and Aitchison (2011) observe, “for students
under pressure to complete their doctoral studies in a timely fashion
and produce a dissertation as well as publications en route, there are
very real challenges concerning how to manage writing multiple
related texts” (p. 69). On the other hand, they tend to follow differ-
ent conventions, norms, and practices, which makes it difficult to
cross the boundaries between them. Lundell and Beach (2003) char-
acterize the difficulty as “a double bind arising from the contradic-
tion between writing according to the genre rules of the Graduate
School and department systems and writing for publications and con-
ference papers” (p. 503). Therefore, a successful alignment of schol-
arly publishing with thesis research and writing requires
recontextualizing in terms of genre conventions, norms, and audi-
ence (Lee & Kamler, 2008; Paltridge & Starfield, 2007, 2016; Simp-
son, 2013).
Furthermore, the study also found similar challenges in making
connections between the scholarly publishing activity system on the
one hand and the master’s study and the professional work activity sys-
tem on the other. Taken together, these findings indicate that,
although boundary crossing can facilitate doctoral students’ scholarly
publishing activities, its success rests on aligning the object and/or
rules of the scholarly publishing activity system with those of other
activity systems.
Unlike boundary crossing through starting early, which has gar-
nered considerable attention, the refashioning strategy has received
relatively little attention. The study found that, although it was effec-
tive in alleviating the time pressure and facilitating scholarly publica-
tion as acknowledged by all participants and evidenced by the cases of
Dong and Xiao, it generated new contradictions that led to a changed
scholarly publishing activity system and a contraction of learning possi-
bilities for the doctoral students. In order to help her students attain
the product aspect of the object of their doctoral studies—meeting
the university’s publication requirements and graduating on time with
the degree—Professor Liu orchestrated their research and publishing
activities and, in the process, refashioned the scholarly publishing
activity system (Engestr€ om, 1987; Kaptelinin, 2005). The refashioned
activity system was characterized by an overriding emphasis on fulfill-
ing the university’s publication requirements and obtaining the
degree, which, according to the students, tended to truncate their
experiences of scholarly publishing and opportunities to learn it, such
as thwarting the development of their scholarly abilities and of the
nursing discipline (Dong), curtailing their completion of the rites of
passage into researchers (Fang), or derailing their scholarly publishing
endeavors and successful completion of their doctoral studies (Liang).

22 TESOL QUARTERLY
This points to the conflict between the outcome-oriented institutional
publication requirements and the doctoral students’ desires to partici-
pate fully in scholarly publishing and to become members of the disci-
plinary community.
In addition to this institutional conflict, the refashioning strategy
also raises significant questions about our conventional understanding
of disciplinarity as a static, homogeneous, and well-defined community
(Prior, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998). The publishing practices entailed in
the refashioning strategy were characteristic of doctoral enculturation
in the hard disciplines, or what Delamont, Atkinson, and Parry (2000)
refer to as the position mode, whereby doctoral students work as a
research team under the supervision of one or several supervisors and
are assigned research topics related to a larger research project (Dela-
mont et al., 2000; Hakala, 2009; Lee & Aitchison, 2011; Watts, 2012).
In contrast, the students’ thesis research projects varied widely and
appeared to follow the humanities and social sciences tradition, or
what Delamont et al. (2000) refer to as the personal mode, whereby
students develop their own research topics, work on their own, have
no research teams to support them, and have a more personal rela-
tionship with their supervisors. It seems that faced with the pressure to
meet the university’s publication requirements in a timely manner, the
supervisors and their doctoral students had generated their “subcul-
tural responses” to “get by” (Delamont et al., 2000, p. 10), indicating
that a subculture of scholarly publishing and thesis research featuring
both the hard and soft disciplines was in the making.
Finally, taken together, the strategies of boundary crossing and
refashioning revealed the fluid and permeable boundaries for doctoral
students’ scholarly publishing activities and the diverse trajectories of
their publishing endeavors. These findings point to scholarly publish-
ing as a locally situated, chronotopically laminated, and dynamically
evolving activity (Prior, 1998; Prior & Min, 2008). They also reveal the
distributed, complex, and political nature of disciplinary authorship
(Blakeslee, 2001; Prior, 1998) and suggest disciplinary enculturation as
“a continuous, heterogeneous process of becoming, the historical co-
genesis of persons, artifacts, practices, institutions, and communities”
(Prior, 1998, p. 244).
In particular, researchers’ institutional roles in a research team
rather than their contributions to a research project alone seemed to
determine authorship attribution to them. The supervisor in this study
was largely responsible for managing research grants and projects,
while the doctoral students were primarily tasked to conduct the
research. This division of labor between supervisors and doctoral stu-
dents is not uncommon in lab research teams (Blakeslee, 2001; Casa-
nave, 2016; Lei & Hu, 2015; Prior, 1998). Blakeslee (2001), for

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 23

example, documented a similar division of labor between a physicist
and his doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow with the former
managing grants and projects and the latter carrying out the research.
With regard to authorship attribution, the supervisor was usually the
corresponding author for the papers emanating from her research
project as well as those based on her students’ doctoral theses, whereas
the students who wrote the papers or theses were usually the first
authors. This resembles the distribution of authorship in a sociology
research team reported by Prior (1998), where a student’s institutional
position in the project was translated into an authorship on a techni-
cal report and later a journal article, despite his limited contribution
to both. Moreover, as Prior (1998) pointed out, “both authorship and
non-authorship need to be accounted for in terms of a situated poli-
tics of representation, a politics that stands in definite but complex
relation to histories of production” (p. 166; see also Prior, 1994,
1995). In the present study, the politics of fulfilling the university’s
publication requirements seemed to override the histories of produc-
tion in determining the timing of assigning authorship and the order
of authorship. Additionally, and relatedly, the politics of fulfilling the
university’s publication requirements, particularly the requirement
about listing the focal university as the first affiliation, tended to dis-
courage continuities in students’ scholarly publishing activities.

CONCLUSION

This study examined doctoral students’ scholarly publishing experi-

ences and practices amid multiple, and often competing, demands
from their doctoral studies. One limitation of this study was its primary
focus on experiences and practices without much attention paid to text
and text production (Lillis & Scott, 2007; Prior, 1998). Although this
constituted a shift of focus in writing research from text to context, it
did not “circulate back from context to text” (Lillis, 2008, p. 382) and
stopped short of “drawing together textual and contextual perspec-
tives” (Paltridge, Starfield, & Tardy, 2016, p. 24). Future research could
attempt to bridge the gap between text and context to yield a more
contextualized and textured understanding of doctoral publication. A
toolkit for tracing the processes of writing (e.g., intertextual analysis,
observations; Prior, 2004) or “combining observations, text analysis and
composing-aloud protocols” (Park & De Costa, 2015, p. 46, citing Petric
& Czarl, 2003) may prove invaluable in that endeavor. Another limita-
tion of this study related to its analytical approach that prioritized
issues over cases. Although well equipped to create a composite portrait
of issues under study, the approach tended to fragment portrayals of

24 TESOL QUARTERLY
individual cases. Future research may take a case-oriented approach
and generate a thicker portrait of individual cases and their activities.
Despite these limitations, the findings of this study add to the grow-
ing body of research on scholarly publishing during doctoral candida-
ture and have several implications for doctoral publication. Most
obviously, the study points to the need to support doctoral students’
boundary crossing between scholarly publishing and other activities
given its potential to facilitate their scholarly publishing endeavors and
possible challenges in boundary crossing. As shown in this study, suc-
cessful boundary crossing hinges on aligning scholarly publishing with
other activities and strategic planning and managing of those activities
(see Kwan, 2010, 2013; Watson, 2012). The literature has, however,
shown that dovetailing scholarly publishing with other activities
requires both discursive and content expertise (e.g., Flowerdew, 2000;
Hanauer & Englander, 2013; Kwan, 2010, 2013). Therefore, to facili-
tate doctoral students’ scholarly publishing endeavors, it is crucial for
content specialists and TESOL or TEFL professionals to collaborate
with each other (Cargill, O’Connor, & Li, 2012; Flowerdew, 2015;
Hanauer & Englander, 2013; Kwan, 2010, 2013; Li, 2006; Simpson,
Caplan, Cox, & Phillips, 2016). Specifically, to integrate coursework
with scholarly publishing, content experts may design assignments that
are better geared toward publication requirements, and TESOL profes-
sionals can provide linguistic and rhetoric support for students to
translate their course assignments into publications. One potential
strategy for facilitating the alignment between scholarly publishing
and thesis research and writing is to adopt the article-compilation the-
sis format (Kwan, 2010, 2013; Lee & Aitchison, 2011). In this case,
content experts and academic writing instructors can work together to
help doctoral students design and develop publications that have an
adequate scope for a doctoral thesis and make the parts a coherent
whole.
Moreover, the study reveals the fluid and permeable textual and
contextual boundaries for doctoral students’ scholarly publishing activ-
ities and highlights the importance of their prior experiences, motives,
and aspirations in their scholarly publishing endeavors (see Park & De
Costa, 2015; Prior & Min, 2008). For this reason, it is advisable for
both supervisors and academic writing instructors to develop an under-
standing of their students’ previous experiences, motives, and aspira-
tions concerning scholarly publishing (Habibie, 2015). Such
knowledge can prove invaluable in facilitating students’ scholarly pub-
lishing endeavors and doctoral studies. For example, in Liang’s case,
her supervisor could have paid more attention to her desire to pub-
lish her own thesis research and therefore helped her strategically
align her publication with her thesis research and manage her

PUBLISHING DURING DOCTORAL CANDIDATURE 25

research and publication output, which might have prevented her pro-
tracted delay in meeting the university’s publication requirements.
Finally, this study also shows that the institutional goal for doctoral
publication may not align with doctoral students’ motive for scholarly
publishing (cf. Prior, 1998). In particular, the product-oriented institu-
tional publication requirements in this study seemed to run counter to
the doctoral students’ aspirations to participate fully in scholarly pub-
lishing and to join the disciplinary community. This calls for a critical
review and reform of publication policies that are intended to encour-
age doctoral students to publish during candidature and to boost the
outcome of doctoral publication, but that actually bring about unin-
tended ramifications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the participants for their cooperation and participation in
this study, editor Peter De Costa, the anonymous TESOL Quarterly reviewers, and
Guangwei Hu for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

THE AUTHOR

Jun Lei teaches and conducts research at Guangdong University of Foreign Stud-
ies, in China. His research interests include English for academic purposes, Eng-
lish-medium instruction, and English for research publication purposes. He has
published in ELT Journal, English for Specific Purposes, Higher Education, Language
Learning, Language Policy, and System.

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