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Scholarly discourse: the growth of English for Research Publication Purposes

  • Ken Hyland

    Ken Hyland is an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia. He has published 290 articles and 29 books on writing and academic discourse with 89,000 citations on Google Scholar. According to the Stanford/Elsevier analysis of the Scopus database, he is the most influential scholar in language and linguistics (2022 and 2023). A collection of his work was published as the Essential Hyland (Bloomsbury, 2018) and a 4th edition of his Teaching and Researching Writing was published in 2022 with Routledge. He was founding co-editor of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes and was co-editor of Applied Linguistics.

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    and Feng (Kevin) Jiang
Published/Copyright: March 24, 2025
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Abstract

English for Research and Publication Purposes (ERPP) has rapidly emerged as a productive area of second language writing research as the number of academics, journals and articles has exploded across the world. In this paper we use bibliometric methods to track changes in published work in ERPP over the last 40 years. Based on all 4,354 articles on the topic in Web of Science indexed journals between 1982 and 2022, we show what research themes have been most popular and which authors, publications and source countries have been most influential. The results indicate a shift away from a focus on pedagogical issues and classroom practices towards emerging academic publishing contexts such as open access, knowledge production and collaborative learning. This maturation of the field is also revealed in the growing concern with diverse research methods, with practitioner development, and with issues in higher education. Swales, Hyland, Halliday, Flowerdew and Biber are prominent in both author and publication lists, with a greater number of specialists in academic writing after 2008. The results also show a widening researcher base and the growing importance of Asian countries, particularly China. These findings may be of interest to writing professionals working in Higher Education.


Corresponding author: Ken Hyland, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, 6106 University of East Anglia , Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK, E-mail:

About the author

Ken Hyland

Ken Hyland is an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia. He has published 290 articles and 29 books on writing and academic discourse with 89,000 citations on Google Scholar. According to the Stanford/Elsevier analysis of the Scopus database, he is the most influential scholar in language and linguistics (2022 and 2023). A collection of his work was published as the Essential Hyland (Bloomsbury, 2018) and a 4th edition of his Teaching and Researching Writing was published in 2022 with Routledge. He was founding co-editor of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes and was co-editor of Applied Linguistics.

  1. Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest and received no funding for this project.

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Received: 2023-11-07
Accepted: 2025-01-12
Published Online: 2025-03-24
Published in Print: 2025-09-25

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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