1. Introduction
The pressure to publish can be high for graduate students as well as higher education faculty. Graduate students strive to publish in refereed journals to increase competitiveness in the job market and, in many cases, to satisfy graduation requirements. Although the requirement to publish peer-reviewed journal articles has been relaxed in many universities, there may still exist “an unwritten expectation” ([
1], p. 160) for many graduate students, with pressure from supervisors and students themselves. With English as the lingua franca of the research world and given the challenges of academic publication, novice writers who learn English as a foreign or second language need guidance from language teachers and academic supervisors. English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) can provide crucial pedagogical support for the publication success of those novice writers, and hence has been receiving increasing research attention in both the English-speaking context [
2] and the non-English-speaking counterpart [
3,
4,
5].
A large body of literature has investigated written corrective feedback from language teachers on second language (L2) writers’ texts [
6,
7,
8]. For example, based on a comparative textual analysis of the drafts and final published versions of 15 SCI-indexed journal articles, Flowerdew and Wang [
6] revealed that the second researcher, who worked as an English language teacher at a major research university in China, employed five types of revision strategies (substitution, correction, addition, deletion, and rearrangement) across four lexico-grammatical levels (morpheme, word, group, and clause/clause complex). Cheng and Zhang’s [
9] investigation revealed that native English-speaking (NES) teachers of English as a foreign language tended to invest more effort in addressing global issues regarding content and organization, whereas non-native English-speaking (NNES) teachers provided more local feedback concerning linguistic errors. Hyland and Anan [
10] also explored differences between NES and NNES teachers in providing feedback and found that NES teachers provided more indirect and less harsh feedback than did their NNES counterparts.
Since language teachers’ lack of content knowledge may interfere with their attempts to provide valuable feedback on students’ writing, it is worthwhile to investigate feedback from supervisors as well since their feedback can be quite different from and thus complement that provided by language professionals [
11,
12]. Benfield and Howard [
12] compared revisions suggested by peer reviewers of the European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery and those suggested by a language professional (an applied linguist) for research articles. Their study revealed that feedback offered by the language professional addressed problems of form and presentation, whereas feedback from the peer reviewers focused on ideas and content. In addition, the language professional tended to focus more on the use of language for particular rhetorical effects (e.g., placing old information before new information for a better information flow), while peer reviewers were better equipped to provide suggestions regarding discipline-specific terminology and could read between the lines thanks to their subject matter knowledge. The latter finding is supported by Benfield and Feak [
11].
A review of the relevant literature shows that the small number of existing studies on supervisory feedback were mainly undertaken in English-speaking countries (e.g., [
13,
14,
15,
16,
17]). For instance, Basturkmen et al. [
13] examined on-script feedback comments that supervisors provided for drafts of master’s and doctoral theses in three disciplinary fields across six universities in New Zealand. Morton et al.’s [
16] case studies in the Australian context examined feedback comments on a master’s student’s minor thesis and a doctoral student’s assessment report (both in applied linguistics). Also set in Australia, Wang and Li [
18] explored international doctoral students’ thesis writing and feedback experiences at an Australian university, based on the semi-structured, face-to-face interviews of ten non-English-speaking doctoral students from six disciplinary areas. Data analysis revealed three main themes (emotional responses, supervisory relationship, and pedagogical needs) with two tendencies (frustrated/uncertain and inspired/confident). These studies were all conducted in English-speaking countries. Even though some supervisors in English-speaking countries are non-native speakers of English, they can be more proficient in English than most of their counterparts in non-English speaking countries since they use English in their work and life on a daily basis. Research on supervisory feedback in non-English-speaking countries is lacking. One exception is Gezahegn and Gedamu [
19], examining feedback received by students during doctoral studies in four Ethiopian universities. With both supervisors and supervisees working with a language other than their native one, such research is expected to provide valuable insight into supervisory feedback.
Meanwhile, previous studies on supervisory feedback mostly examined supervisors in the area of applied linguistics, who probably have more in common with language professionals than with supervisors in many other research areas [
15,
16,
17,
20]. For example, Kumar and Stracke [
15] combined their linguistic backgrounds and insider perspectives as doctoral supervisors to examine the specific functions of the language used in the in-text feedback and overall feedback on the first draft of a doctoral dissertation. Similarly, a more recent study examined the power relations between two master’s students in applied linguistics and their supervisors at an English-medium university in Hong Kong through an examination of supervision meetings and a detailed textual analysis of supervision transcripts [
20]. As argued by Kumar and Stracke, it is “essential to cross the boundaries” of applied linguistics since feedback is provided in disciplines other than applied linguistics as well ([
15], p. 463).
Equally important, the existing studies on supervisory feedback predominantly focused on master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and thesis and dissertation proposals, rather than writing for publication purposes [
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
19,
20,
21,
22]. For instance, Bastola and Hu [
22] examined supervisory comments on drafts of master’s theses, and Xu [
17] investigated a supervisor’s feedback on a draft of a doctoral dissertation proposal and the student’s responses to the feedback in the revised version. However, writing for scholarly publication purposes is distinct from writing master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in terms of writing purposes and readership [
23]. Writers may employ different strategies for the two types of writing in consideration of different discourse communities. For instance, Li [
24] found that a novice research writer adjusted her strategies for negotiating the knowledge contribution to the domestic discourse community (in a paper intended for publication in a journal of her country) and to the international discourse community (in a paper intended for presentation at an international conference). All these differences may lead to differences in supervisory comments, making it worthwhile to investigate supervisory comments on writing for scholarly publication purposes as well as those on theses and dissertations.
One study did examine research writing for publication purposes [
25]. The researchers explored doctoral supervisors’ roles in their students’ attempts at scholarly publishing in the Chinese context and found that supervisors played a critical role, shaping students’ manuscripts and developing their “apprenticeship in scholarly publishing” ([
25], p. 27). The researchers observed that one of the essential roles played by supervisors was as “manuscript correctors” and that supervisors’ corrections might encompass various aspects of writing, including the structure, word choice, grammar, and logic and flow of the manuscript ([
25], p. 34). This study was conducted via semi-structured interviews. Other research methods, such as textual analysis, may also yield valuable insight.
In the literature above, there is a striking paucity of studies examining supervisory feedback provided to students writing for research publication purposes. There is also a general lack of research investigating feedback provided by supervisors from non-English-speaking countries and working in research areas other than applied linguistics. Therefore, this current study explored the feedback that a Chinese supervisor in computer science and technology provided to his doctoral supervisees on drafts of a research paper that they intended to submit for presentation at a top conference (with conference presentation generally preferred to journal publication in computer science for the timeliness of knowledge exchange, according to computer science faculty members and students that we know). The aspects of writing that the supervisor focused on when providing corrective feedback were examined. The following research questions helped guide this study:
- (1)
What aspects of research writing does the doctoral supervisor focus on when providing feedback?
- (2)
In what categories can the feedback be classified?
4. Discussion
This study investigated the focus categories of the feedback provided by a Chinese supervisor on his doctoral students’ research article intended for submission to a top conference. Via an analysis of the supervisory feedback comments and a comparison of different versions of the research article, we found that the supervisory feedback could be classified into five categories: content, requirements, cohesion and coherence, linguistic accuracy, appropriateness and concision, and visual elements.
Four of the five categories of feedback foci revealed in this study resemble those identified by Basturkmen et al. [
13], suggesting that the Chinese supervisor’s feedback foci were similar to those of supervisors in New Zealand. The supervisor placed much focus on linguistic accuracy and appropriateness as well as content. His content-focused comments were concerned with the completeness of idea development, accuracy of claims, accuracy of terminology, and precision of expressions. This is consistent with previous findings that supervisors are equipped to provide discipline-specific suggestions on matters such as terminology [
12], supporting “the supervisor’s role as a provider of academic expertise” ([
13], p. 441). Meanwhile, the supervisor also made several comments on grammatical accuracy and word choice appropriateness. This is different from the finding of previous studies that feedback provided by experts focuses on ideas and content whereas language teachers’ feedback addresses problems of form and presentation [
11,
12]. This discrepancy is likely due to the different roles played by the experts. The experts in the previous studies were peer reviewers of a journal, and it is usually not up to peer reviewers to address linguistic issues. In cases of many linguistic problems in a manuscript, they only need to recommend that the authors proofread the manuscript, perhaps with the help of a native speaker of English. The supervisor in this study, however, needed to ensure the linguistic as well as content quality of the manuscript to meet the expectations for academic writing to be highly articulate and well-proofread [
13,
15,
16]. As revealed by Morton and Storch’s study, clumsy writing with spelling errors, typos, and poorly structured paragraphs seemed to have a strong negative impact on the reader, who would be “less inclined to believe what the writer says” and “would read much more critically” ([
28], p. 20).
Different from the supervisors in Basturkmen et al.’s [
13] study, who provided very few requirement- or logic-focused comments (in particular the latter), the supervisor in this study offered quite a few of both. With regard to the requirements, he kept reminding students of the need to appropriately borrow and incorporate ideas from other resources for a plagiarism-free research article. The importance of academic integrity and ethical behavior can never be overstated, especially in the context of the development of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT. Measures should be taken to educate students about the proper use of the versatile tool to mitigate the risk of plagiarism [
29,
30]. In addition, he suggested adequate and clear descriptions for a broad readership. This is consistent with Wallwork and Southern, who maintained that the aim of academic writing is “not to force your reader to decide what certain phrases mean, but instead to make those phrases so clear that reading your paper is effortless” ([
31], p. 49). The supervisor also underscored the need for a clear thread of logic. The more emphasis on logic by the supervisor in this study than by those in Basturkmen et al.’s [
13] study may be due to the different natures of the text on which the supervisors provided feedback: a draft of a manuscript to be submitted to a top conference versus drafts of master’s and doctoral theses. Basturkmen, East, and Bitchener attributed the extreme rarity of logic-focused comments in their study to the “difficulty of diagnosing and commenting on problems in the coherence of writing” ([
13], p. 442). Identifying an error in coherence entails deconstructing the text to understand the logic underlying it and to detect any flaw in the logic. Therefore, it is highly demanding to detect and comment on coherence errors. Nevertheless, the supervisor made quite some coherence-focused comments as a result of the high value that he attached to the logical development of the manuscript.
In addition, the current study revealed three feedback foci—concision, consideration of reviewers and readers, and the use of visual elements—which were reported neither in Basturkmen et al.’s [
13] research examining supervisory comments on master’s and doctoral theses nor in Lei and Hu’s [
25] study investigating supervisory comments on research writing for publication purposes. The supervisor under study suggested removing redundant words for concision, in line with advice frequently provided to novice academic writers (e.g., [
32]). He also emphasized the consideration of reviewers and readers in writing, suggesting revisions intended to impress reviewers favorably. In addition, the supervisor commented on visual elements. He preferred clear and concise statements and figures to equations and tables, respectively, believing that the former could better promote understanding by the reader than the latter. One possible reason for the new feedback foci could be the ability of the supervisor in the current study to provide detailed guidance on subtle language issues and discipline-specific issues as he was a prolific research writer and skilled at English writing. In contrast, supervisors in some previous research lacked the ability to provide such guidance [
21,
33,
34]. Another possible reason for the new finding might be that both supervisees in the current study were at their early stage of doctoral studies, and the supervisor attempted to support their development of research writing skills by providing detailed, specific guidance in the form of feedback concerning both subject knowledge and discursive competence. The supervisor provided manageable yet not overwhelming feedback [
35] to the supervisees to facilitate the novice writers’ “initiation into scholarly publishing” ([
25], p. 35).
Admittedly, this study has its limitations. Three major limitations relate to the fact that we focused on the feedback provided by one supervisor. For one thing, the supervisor under study was skilled at English writing, which might distinguish him from many non-native-speaking supervisors. His strong research writing ability and his confidence in it might enable him to provide rich comments on various aspects of the manuscript, perhaps more than many other non-native-speaking supervisors would. A related major limitation is that, with only one supervisor under study, it is unclear whether some of the findings are discipline-specific. The number of comments provided on the whole and in each feedback focus category could vary from discipline to discipline. It was found that math/computer science supervisors provided considerably more feedback comments on students’ theses and dissertations than did supervisors working in management/marketing and arts/humanities [
13]. Future research could explore supervisors from different disciplines to obtain a more comprehensive picture of supervisory feedback. Thirdly, students’ perspectives were not taken into consideration in the current study. It would be interesting to examine students’ engagement with the feedback in future studies to see whether they responded to all the comments the supervisor provided and how they negotiated with the supervisor. Additionally, for the purpose of triangulation, semi-structured interviews could be undertaken with both the supervisees and the supervisor.
These study findings have several implications. First, they may inform language teachers, especially ERPP course instructors, of the feedback that supervisors value in research paper writing. ERPP presents challenges to language teachers since they have to go beyond teaching grammatical accuracy [
36]. These findings suggest that providing feedback focused on ideas and content, such as the preference for clear and concise statements over equations and the need for a clear and logical flow of ideas, is not completely beyond the reach of language professionals. Well-informed language professionals can provide feedback that better caters to the needs of students in research writing for publication purposes. Second, supervisors’ ERPP competence plays a vital role in providing detailed and manageable guidance to supervisees. Supervisors are expected to present responsible and credible feedback since their supervisees tend to treat them as role models and learn much from them [
21]. Third, efforts are needed to promote collaborative pedagogies between language teachers and supervisors [
36,
37]. These may facilitate the provision of detailed, comprehensive, and manageable feedback, assisting students in transitioning from “test-oriented English learning and short-composition writing to processing and producing longer research articles in English for international publications” ([
38], p. 73). While LLMs can be beneficial for grammar-checking, proofreading, and editing, they are no substitute for human language teachers and supervisors. Since these models are not error-free and may lack a complete contextual understanding, they should be used in tandem with, rather than as a substitute for, human expertise and judgement [
28].