How Do I Cook an Impact Factor Article If You Do Not Show Me What the Ingredients Are?

Abstract

Doctoral studies in the Czech Republic are highly individualized with little coursework outside the supervisor/supervisee dyad, and the PhD students are mandated to publish prior to the dissertation defense. This mandate is troublesome because writing development has been on the fringes of the Czech education culture. In addition, the publications often must be in English, and many doctoral students struggle with English. In this exploratory study, we examined how this mandate translates into practice, how doctoral students learn to meet the requirements and how university administrators/supervisors perceive doctoral writing development. To answer our questions, we interviewed 7 university administrators/dissertation supervisors and 7 doctoral students from various backgrounds and universities, looking for diverse views on the issue. Our analysis confirmed the formal status of supervisors as the key doctoral writing literacy brokers. While the supervisors acknowledged their role, they also tended to view doctoral writing as a matter of self-study and funding, thus indirectly emphasising the publication outcomes. In contrast, doctoral students called for structured support of their writing processes. We propose a systemic approach to introduce writing pedagogies into the Czech discourse. With this study we hope to contribute to research on doctoral writing for publication of EAL (English as an Additional Language) students in Central Europe.

Keywords

• Academic writing
• doctoral studies
• publishing
• supervisors
• writing support