282 Journal of Scholarly Publishing

8. I expect Helen Sword’s forthcoming book, Writing with Pleasure (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2023), to be filled with creative and inspiring ideas.
9. Patricia Oman, email message to author, 24 May 2022.
10. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), 7.

John Flowerdew and Pejman Habibie. Introducing English for

Research Publication Purposes.
London, UK: Routledge, 2022. Pp. vi, 150. isbn: 978-0-367-33058-3, us$44.95.

Reviewed by keyi zhang and jun lei

Scholars around the world have been increasingly pressurized to publish

internationally in English over the past few decades. Concomitantly, in-
ternational scholarly publishing has gained traction as a field of research,
leading to the coinage of the term English for Research Publication Pur-
poses (ERPP), which is conceptualized ‘as a branch of EAP [English for
Academic Purposes] addressing the concerns of professional researchers
and post-graduate students who need to publish in peer-reviewed inter-
national journals’ (75, parentheses added).1 Despite this development, no
single book has treated ERPP research, practice, and pedagogy compre-
hensively and coherently. Co-authored by John Flowerdew and Pejman
Habibie, Introducing English for Research Publication Purposes is a timely
response to this urgent need and a remarkable addition to the field.
The volume comprises ten chapters. In the introductory chapter, the au-
thors first sketch out the background to the development of ERPP. Then they
present the goal of the book, which is to ‘provide a comprehensive over-
view of what ERPP encompasses as a scholarly field, including its anteced-
ents, its disciplinary boundaries, its competing discourses, and its principal
research and practice paradigms’ (2). Next, they move on to delimit the
scope of ERPP by characterizing it as ‘an academic field concerned with the
investigation of the nature and use of English in research and publication

keyi zhang – Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China

jun lei – Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1030-0715

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 Book Reviews 283

contexts and at the same time a field of practice focused on the needs of
those who wish to publish in international journals’ (2). Finally, they end
the chapter with a brief overview of the book.
The next three chapters explore the emergence and expansion of ERPP.
Focusing on the background to the emergence of ERPP, chapter 2 begins
by highlighting the mounting ‘publish or perish’ pressure and its impacts.
The authors then detail some of the global socio-political, socio-economic,
and ideological factors that have contributed to the culture and ideology of
‘publish or perish.’ They also note that such pressure has spread unequally
across different academic systems. Finally, they observe that international
scholarly publishing poses additional challenges for EAL scholars, which
provides the significance of and the driving force behind the development
of ERPP as a research field.
Chapter 3 charts the emergence of modern scientific inquiry and the
development of scientific communication from a historical perspective.
Focusing specifically on the emergence and development of research ar-
ticle (RA), the authors first dissect the rhetorical and linguistic features of
RA. Then they introduce the peer-review mechanism characteristic of the
publishing of RA. Finally, they discuss impact factor and h-index as two
key scholarship assessment metrics.
In chapter 4, the authors cover various perspectives on English as a
global language and discuss how those perspectives relate to ERPP. They
first introduce two mutually exclusive discourses on English—laissez-faire
liberalism and linguistic imperialism—and stress the need to break down
this dichotomy and to explore a middle ground between them. Then they
thoughtfully address domain loss in other languages and inequality for
EAL researchers that may result from the dominance of English as the
global academic lingua franca. In closing, the authors explore the impli-
cations of World Englishes (WE) and English as Linga Franca (ELF) for
ERPP research and practice.
The next two chapters are concerned with the key theoretical and meth-
odological orientations of ERPP research. The authors critically examine
three major theoretical orientations of ERPP in chapter 5, namely, genre
theory, social constructivist theory, and world systems theory. They first
identify several issues that genre theory has been employed to address,
such as the discursive and rhetorical challenges faced by EAL and/or
novice writers. Then they map out two social constructivist approaches

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284 Journal of Scholarly Publishing

to ERPP—academic literacies and situated learning. Finally, they intro-

duce Wallerstein’s world systems theory, which has been applied by ERPP
scholars to analyze the positions of core and (semi)peripheral countries/
regions in the production and dissemination of scholarship.
Building on chapter 5, the authors delve into two principal research
approaches to ERPP in chapter 6, namely, genre analysis and naturalistic
studies, which correspond respectively to the genre theory and the social
constructivist theory presented in chapter 5. The authors concentrate on
genre analysis of RA, including both recent corpus-based research and
Swales’ seminal work, and point out that this approach places a greater
focus on text and generates textual descriptions that can be used to devel-
op pedagogical materials. By contrast, the naturalistic approach focuses
more on practice and context and is better equipped to illustrate the text
production process and ‘provide valuable exemplars that can be used as
case studies in ERPP courses’ (58–9).
Chapter 7 attends to the practice of peer review and the framework of
academic gatekeeping. The authors start off by identifying the goals and
benefits of peer review. Then they underline the perspectives of editors
and reviewers and unpack the question of whether there is bias against
EAL scholars in the review process. While some believe that EAL scholars
are discriminated against, others argue that such systematic bias does not
exist. The authors also grapple with the perceived structural bias against
scholars from the periphery countries whose research is found less likely
to be published. To demystify these issues, they conduct a genre analysis
of peer-review reports and editors’ letters to provide a deeper understand-
ing of the gatekeeping mechanism and the peer-review process. Finally,
they call for more research into ‘gatekeepers’ (editors and reviewers) expe-
riences, practices, and perspectives’ (82).
In chapter 8, the authors turn their attention to the digitalization of
scholarly publication and its ramifications for knowledge construction and
dissemination. They present such changes from four perspectives: Eth-
noscape, Epistemoscape, Genrescape, and Pedagoscape. They first point
out that the community of scholarly discourse has been largely reshaped
by digitalization, making available virtual scholarly communities without
spatio-temporal boundaries. They also explore how digital technologies
have facilitated the mobility of information and altered scholars’ concep-
tion of knowledge. While highlighting the added value of digitalization

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 Book Reviews 285

to ERPP pedagogy, they also discuss its adverse effects and identify the
failure to make its benefits equally available to all scholarly communities
as one of its main downsides.
The authors zoom in on the learning and teaching of ERPP in chapter 9.
They begin by pointing out that most scholars have not received systematic
instruction in academic publication. In presenting the ERPP competency
model proposed by Kwan,2 they elicit two essential stages of ERPP pedagogy
practice, namely ‘communicating one’s research through an RA’ and ‘com-
municating with gate-keepers about the RA.’ Following that, they outline
the key models of ERPP pedagogy, which include supervisor mentoring,
self-help manuals, course books, courses and workshops, writing groups,
and writing retreats. They then identify several common methodological
approaches in ERPP pedagogies, including task- and genre-based pedago-
gy, corpus-based approaches, and critical-pragmatic approaches. Towards
the end of the chapter, they stress that ERPP teacher education is still under-
developed and warrants more attention.
In the final chapter, the authors first draw attention to some limitations
of the volume and point to several under-explored issues that are in dire
need of further research. Then they discuss the positioning and practice
of ERPP in universities. Finally, they envisage the future development and
orientation of ERPP.
As acknowledged by the authors, one minor limitation of the volume
is its primary focus on the genre of RA and limited attention to other
important academic genres. More space devoted to these genres might
have provided a fuller picture of current ERPP practices. Another minor
limitation that one might mention is the lack of a separate chapter on
ERPP policies. Although the volume has touched on policies governing
scholarship assessment and their impacts on scholars and scholarly publi-
cation, it would have been helpful if ERPP policies and their impacts had
been treated in greater depth.3 Additionally, it might also be helpful to di-
vide the book into sections and provide substantive section headings (e.g.,
Chapters 2 to 4 under the emergence and development of ERPP), which
would help the reader better navigate through the book.
These minor limitations notwithstanding, this volume offers a concise
and well-rounded overview of a burgeoning field and delivers a sore-
ly needed introductory book to ERPP. It provides valuable insights into
a wide range of issues related to ERPP and useful guidance for ERPP

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286 Journal of Scholarly Publishing

research, practice, and pedagogy. It is thus a must-read for all concerned

with or involved in scholarly publishing, such as ERPP/EAP researchers
and practitioners, newly minted researchers, and graduate students.

keyi zhang is affiliated with Ningbo University.

jun lei is affiliated with Ningbo University.

notes
1. Margaret Cargill and Sally Burgess, ‘Introduction to the Special Issue: English for
Research Publication Purposes,’ Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7, no. 2
(2008): 75–138.
2. Becky Siu Chu Kwan, ‘An Investigation of Instruction in Research Publishing
Offered in Doctoral Programs: The Hong Kong Case,’ Higher Education 59, no. 1
(2010): 55–68.
3. Jun Lei, ‘Neoliberal Ideologies in a Chinese University’s Requirements and Re-
wards Schemes for Doctoral Publication,’ Studies in Continuing Education 43, no.
1 (2021): 68–85.

Kim Wilkins and Lisa Bennett. Writing Bestsellers:

Love, Money, and Creative Practice
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. iv, 75. Paper: isbn 978-1-108-
72563-7, us$12.99.

Reviewed by ting zhang and ju wen

It is widely acknowledged that writing a best seller is indicative of career

success for a writer. For this reason, the research on best sellers has attract-
ed numerous attention from the academia.1–3 For example, by examining
the best-selling books on New York Times’ (NYT) best-seller list, Yucesoy
and colleagues1 found that 1) books sell best during holidays; 2) fiction
books have better sales than nonfiction books; and 3) there is no obvious

ting zhang – School of Liberal Education, Chengdu Jincheng College, Sichuan, China
ju wen – School of Liberal Education, Chengdu Jincheng College, Sichuan, https://orcid.
org/0000-0002-6778-5098

© University of Toronto Press, 2022 doi: 10.3138/jsp-2022-0051

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