| Author: | Ren, Songsha |
| Title: | Chinese medical doctors’ scholarly publishing practices : a multiple-case study |
| Advisors: | Hu, Guangwei (ENGL) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2024 |
| Subject: | Scholarly publishing Scholarly publishing -- China Physicians -- China Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of English and Communication |
| Pages: | xi, 388 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | With the prioritisation of English-medium publications for the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) researchers have been under pressure to publish in English-medium international journals. Medical doctors, or clinician-researchers, are no exception to such publication pressure, especially with the emergence of English as the lingua franca for medical research. Although there is a large body of research on EAL researchers’ scholarly publishing experiences and practices, few studies have specifically focused on medical doctors’ scholarly publishing in their professional context. As an attempt to address this gap, the present study sought to explore eight Chinese medical doctors’ scholarly publishing practices within their professional context. Specifically, it investigated the situated contexts and the motives of the major stakeholders (i.e., the university, its affiliated hospital, and medical doctors) for the medical doctors’ scholarly publishing activities as well as the influences of the contextual factors and the motives on their scholarly publishing practices; pinpointed the challenges that they faced in their scholarly publishing activities; identified the strategies that they adopted to cope with the challenges in their scholarly publishing processes; examined how these strategies shaped their scholarly publishing practices. Drawing upon Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), this study employed a multiple-case study design and collected multiple types of data from the eight Chinese medical doctors at a top-ranked hospital affiliated with a top research-intensive university in mainland China. The primary data were in-depth interviews, whereas complementary data comprised artefacts (e.g., the participants’ manuscripts), documents (e.g., policy documents), and text-based interviews with the doctors. A thematic analysis and an activity systems analysis were conducted on the collected data, the results of which were presented in narratives accompanied by CHAT diagrams. Complementary to the narratives, the triangular CHAT diagrams schematically presented the constitutive components (i.e., subject, object, rule, tool, community, and division of labour) of the doctors’ various activity systems (i.e., the activity systems of clinical work, research, and scholarly publishing) embedded within their professional work activity system and the mediational relations within and between the components, and between the activity systems. Specifically, in the scholarly publishing activity system, the subjects were the doctors; the objects were the carriers of the subjects’ various motives for scholarly publishing; the rules included but were not limited to publication requirements and scholarly publishing norms and conventions; the community comprised the doctors, the institutional administrators, journal editors and reviewers, and fellow colleagues; the division of labour concerned both the horizonal division of work between the community members and the vertical division of power and status (e.g., the higher status that journal gatekeepers tend to have than authors ). The concept of contradiction in CHAT offered a useful analytical lens to illuminate the cause of the difficulties faced by the doctors and unravel the nature of the strategies adopted by them. The findings show that the major stakeholders’ shared and conflicting motives for scholarly publishing, their prioritisation of some motives over others, the complex and dynamically evolving activity settings for the doctors’ scholarly publishing activity system, and their influences on the doctors’ scholarly publishing practices. These findings reveal that the doctors’ difficulties in scholarly publishing were rooted in the contradictions arising from the duality of the object and the subject of their scholarly publishing activity system. The primary contradiction inherent in the duality of the object (i.e., the object of developing doctors’ clinical skills and scholarly publishing expertise to make knowledge contributions and the object of getting promoted timely by having their knowledge contributions published within an institutionally stipulated timeframe) was reflected in the secondary contradictions between the object and the rule (i.e., time pressure) and between the object and the division of labour (i.e., lack of institutional support). Another primary contradiction ingrained in the duality of the subject (i.e., junior doctors’ dual role as fledgling clinician-researcher still developing their clinical skills and scholarly publishing expertise and as expert/full-fledged contributors of scientific knowledge) was manifested in the secondary contradiction between the subject and the tool (i.e., lack of conceptual tools and signs necessary for effective scholarly publishing). Their strategies for addressing the difficulties, or solving the contradictions, drew on their agentive navigation of the rules (e.g., institutional publication requirements and scholarly publishing rules) and the tools (e.g., cultural artefacts and social others) that framed their scholarly publishing activities to facilitate their scholarly publishing endeavours. The findings suggest that scholarly publishing within the doctors’ professional work context is an artefact-mediated, socially distributed, and historically embedded activity. This study has made contributions by shedding light on promotion mechanism in China’s health system and producing findings that can assist stakeholders (e.g., governmental and institutional policy makers) in reflecting on their policies and providing tailored support for Chinese medical doctors. The study has also contributed to the research on English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) by offering insights into medical practitioners’ scholarly publishing practices in a professional context. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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