Étiquette : scholarly writing

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FR

Trouver sa voix en anglais académique : apport et limites d’un assistant d’écriture basé sur l’IA

Autrices : Jennifer Lucas, Irina Otmanine

Cet article présente un retour d’expérience sur l’intégration d’un assistant conversationnel fondé sur l’IA générative – le GPT Writing Coach – dans un cours d’écriture académique et professionnelle en anglais. Inscrite dans une démarche de Scholarship of Teaching and Learning et s’appuyant sur la théorie de l’auto-efficacité de Bandura, l’étude interroge la manière dont l’IA peut soutenir l’engagement, la créativité et le développement d’une voix personnelle en langue étrangère.

La méthodologie mixte retenue combine l’usage du questionnaire SAWSES au début et à la fin du semestre et l’analyse qualitative de verbatims recueillis via une plateforme d’autoévaluation. Les premiers résultats suggèrent des évolutions intéressantes concernant la perception de l’écriture académique et le rôle attribué au feedback généré par l’IA, tout en révélant plusieurs questions pédagogiques et éthiques. Ces éléments invitent à une réflexion approfondie sur la place de l’IA dans l’apprentissage des langues.

URL : http://journals.openedition.org/dms/12818

Catégories
EN

AI And the Editors’ Ghost: Who Is the Writer Now?

Authors : David Clark, David Nicholas, Abdullah Abrizah, John Akeroyd, Jorge Revez, Blanca Rodríguez-Bravo, Marzena Swigon, Tatyana Polezhaeva, Anne Gere, Eti Herman

This an exploration of the use of AI in research and writing. It builds upon the ‘Harbingers’ project, an international and longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) and scholarly communication.

In the fourth phase of the project, we returned to the theme of AI, in particular AI as ‘ghostwriter’. Our sources are transcripts of conversational, open-form interviews with over 60 ECRs from Britain, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Russia, and other countries.

For an initial analysis of the transcripts, we used Google NotebookLM. An overarching and thematic summary of the data was produced in minutes, that would otherwise have occupied our research team for weeks. The unprompted text, immediately plausible and coherent, was regarded by all national interviewers as impressive.

Here, using a relatively small, convenience sample, we compare the AI generated summaries both against our original data and those first impressions. We reflect upon our own experience of using AI and that of our interviewees.

This paper is about how we used AI as an experiment, our reaction to it, how that chimes, resonates, echoes the experiences of the ECRs. It is a calibration for our future data analysis.

URL : Learned Publishing – 2026 – Clark – AI And the Editors Ghost Who Is the Writer Now

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.2051

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“We find that…” changing patterns of epistemic positioning in research writing

Authors : Yanfang Yang, Xuan Guo

Introduction: Epistemic positioning refers to the writer’s commitment to the truth of a proposition and assessment of its potential impact on readers. Despite its importance, little attention has been paid to how writers make epistemic judgments across disciplines over time.

Methods: Drawing on Hyland and Zou’s taxonomies of hedges and boosters, we analyzed 240 research articles from education, history, mechanical engineering, and physics, covering three periods (1960, 1990, and 2020).

Results: Our findings show that epistemic positioning has significantly decreased across all four disciplines over time, with writers increasingly preferring less use of epistemic markers in pursuit of an objective, data-based, and scientific style.

Discussion: These results suggest a disciplinary shift in research writing practices and have important implications for raising students’ and novice academic writers’ awareness of evolving knowledge discourses shaped by changing societies.

URL : “We find that…” changing patterns of epistemic positioning in research writing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1634848

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EN

The Science of Literature Reviews: Searching, Identifying, Selecting, and Synthesising

Authors : Uchendu Eugene Chigbu, Sulaiman Olusegun Atiku, Cherley C. Du Plessis

The ability to conduct an explicit and robust literature review by students, scholars or scientists is critical in producing excellent journal articles, academic theses, academic dissertations or working papers.

A literature review is an evaluation of existing research works on a specific academic topic, theme or subject to identify gaps and propose future research agenda. Many postgraduate students in higher education institutions lack the necessary skills and understanding to conduct in-depth literature reviews.

This may lead to the presentation of incorrect, false or biased inferences in their theses or dissertations. This study offers scientific knowledge on how literature reviews in different fields of study could be conducted to mitigate against biased inferences such as unscientific analogies and baseless recommendations.

The literature review is presented as a process that involves several activities including searching, identifying, reading, summarising, compiling, analysing, interpreting and referencing.

We hope this article serves as reference material to improve the academic rigour in the literature review chapters of postgraduate students’ theses or dissertations. This article prompts established scholars to explore more innovative ways through which scientific literature reviews can be conducted to identify gaps (empirical, knowledge, theoretical, methodological, application and population gap) and propose a future research agenda.

URL : The Science of Literature Reviews: Searching, Identifying, Selecting, and Synthesising

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11010002

Catégories
FR

Des voix plurielles dans l’écriture de la recherche : Pour une réflexivité incarnée

Auteur/Author : Philippe Hert

L’approche qui est développée ici se situe entre les sciences de l’information et de la communication et les études de sciences. Elle met en dialogue une réflexion sur l’écriture d’un terrain que j’ai mené pendant plusieurs années sur le clown, avec la manière dont le terrain peut « prendre la parole » dans l’écriture.

Cet article est constitué de plusieurs voix : celle de la théorie, du chercheur, celle sur l’écriture qui est réflexive, celle du terrain et de l’expérience vécue. Ces trois voix sont apparues au fil de la rédaction de cet article. J’étais habitué à la première, une analyse à partir de lectures et d’expériences de terrain. La deuxième est apparue rapidement à partir du moment où je me suis demandé comment écrire sur l’écriture sans tomber dans un abyme de réflexivité. C’est la troisième qui a été plus surprenante : le terrain dont j’avais décidé de parler, le clown, faisait des apparitions soudaines, en venant défaire ce que j’essayais péniblement d’écrire.

Comme ce terrain n’est pas qu’un objet extérieur, mais que j’en fais partie, en tant qu’apprenti clown, j’ai bien dû lui laisser la parole. C’est de cette parole dont j’aimerais rendre compte, car elle porte selon moi la marque du désir.

La question que je pose est la suivante : comment articuler l’écriture scientifique avec le désir qui s’y manifeste. En effet, l’écriture scientifique est une pratique qui peut être angoissante, crispante, et qui n’est pas source de plaisir, alors même qu’elle est également alimentée par un désir d’écrire (avant de commencer…) et se nourrit de terrains de recherche qui sont souvent très engageants, passionnants et qui donnent envie d’en transmettre quelque chose par l’écriture.

Comment expliquer cette tension, et comment réintroduire du désir dans l’écriture des sciences. Ma contribution sera d’explorer ici, théoriquement et en pratique, la question de la réflexivité, ce qu’elle engage et ce qu’elle révèle du désir du chercheur, pour essayer de dégager quelques leçons pratiques.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/communication.16445

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EN

Structure of Research Article Abstracts in Political Science: A Genre-Based Study

Author : Hesham Suleiman Alyousef

The research article (RA) abstract is the first section researchers read to determine its relevance to their interests. Researchers need to possess an implicit knowledge of the rhetorical move structure and organization of this section. Unlike most scientific disciplines, political science RA abstracts are unstructured, that is, with no headings (or moves), which makes it more challenging.

To the best of our knowledge, the rhetorical move structure in high readership political science RA abstracts has not been researched. This study investigated (a) the rhetorical move structure in 120 political science RA abstracts from six high-impact journals, (b) the most common move patterns, and (c) the move(s) occupying most textual space. The findings indicated the lack of obligatory moves. A move structure model for writing a political science RA abstract is proposed, comprising four conventional moves (Introduction [I]–Purpose [P]–Methods [M]–Results [R]) and two optional step/move, namely, Research Gap step and Discussion [D] move. The results also showed that the first most frequent move pattern is I-P-M-R-D, followed by I-P-M-R and the I-P-R-D.

The fact that an RA abstract summarizes the whole RA results in move embedding, particularly in the four moves, I-P-M-R. The findings revealed the importance of the Results move as it occupied nearly one third of text space. The results may contribute to the fields of discourse and genre studies.

They may provide invaluable insights for novice political science researchers attempting to publish their work in high-ranking journals. The proposed move structure model can act as a guide for English for Academic Purposes (EAP)/English for Specific Purposes (ESP) tutors and political science authors.

URL : Structure of Research Article Abstracts in Political Science: A Genre-Based Study

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177%2F21582440211040797

Catégories
EN

Over-promotion and caution in abstracts of preprints during the COVID-19 crisis

Authors : Frederique Bordignon, Liana Ermakova, Marianne Noel

The abstract is known to be a promotional genre where researchers tend to exaggerate the benefit of their research and use a promotional discourse to catch the reader’s attention. The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted intensive research and has changed traditional publishing with the massive adoption of preprints by researchers.

Our aim is to investigate whether the crisis and the ensuing scientific and economic competition have changed the lexical content of abstracts. We propose a comparative study of abstracts associated with preprints issued in response to the pandemic relative to abstracts produced during the closest pre-pandemic period.

We show that with the increase (on average and in percentage) of positive words (especially effective) and the slight decrease of negative words, there is a strong increase in hedge words (the most frequent of which are the modal verbs can and may).

Hedge words counterbalance the excessive use of positive words and thus invite the readers, who go probably beyond the ‘usual’ audience, to be cautious with the obtained results.

The abstracts of preprints urgently produced in response to the COVID-19 crisis stand between uncertainty and over-promotion, illustrating the balance that authors have to achieve between promoting their results and appealing for caution.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1411