An Exploration of the Sub-Register of Chemical Engineering Research Papers Published in English

Myrto-Panagiota Zacharof and Anna Charalambidou
Additional contact information
Myrto-Panagiota Zacharof: Centre for Cytochrome P450 Biodiversity, Institute of Life Science, Swansea University Medical School, Swansea, Wales SA2 8PP, UK
Anna Charalambidou: Media Department, Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, Middlesex University London, The Burroughs, Hendon, London NW4 4BT, UK

Publications, 2018, vol. 6, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: The increased pressures for high-volume, high-impact publications in English language and the high rejection rates of submitted manuscripts for publications present an often unsurpassable obstacle for (early career) researchers. At the same time, register variation of peer-reviewed journals—that can contribute to whether a paper is accepted for publication—has received little attention. This paper redresses this gap, by investigating the register (especially discourse moves and lexical choices) in 60 published, original-research articles on wastewater treatment published in four Chemical Engineering journals, with impact factor (IF) above 2. Our survey shows that chemical engineering research publications tend to comply with a set of requirements: multidisciplinarity, brevity, co-authorship, focus on the description of practical results (rather than methods), and awareness of non-specialised audiences. Lexical choices were analysed through frequency tables, phrase nets and word trees produced by data visualisation software (ManyEyes). It was found that less discipline-specific vocabulary is used in higher IF journals and this is interpreted within the current context of manuscript publication and consumption. This study concludes that data visualisation can provide an efficient and effective tool for prospective authors that wish to gauge telling details of the sub-register of a specific journal.

Keywords: chemical engineering; journal publications; lexical choices; word tree; phrase net; impact factor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/6/3/30/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/6/3/30/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:6:y:2018:i:3:p:30-:d:156781

Access Statistics for this article

Publications is currently edited by Ms. Jennifer Zhang

More articles in Publications from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().