Iranian doctoral students' shared experience of English-medium publication: the case of humanities and social sciences

The present study was an attempt to explore international English-medium publication in humanities and social sciences in Iran. In so doing, 50 PhD students from 8 humanities and social sciences disciplines, who had already published or attempted to publish in English-medium journals, were requested to write reflection guide accounts and to take part in follow-up semi-structured interviews. The reflection guide and interview data were analyzed based on the principles of grounded theory research yielding the four major themes of motivations, hurdles, strategies, and call for support. The results indicated that the Iranian PhD students in the fields of humanities and social sciences are strongly motivated to publish in English-medium journals though they face considerable discursive and non-discursive challenges too. Moreover, although they pursue some strategies to rise to these challenges, they could not fight them off on their own and claim support by other more competent academics and officials. The authors also call for a firm action plan to improve the status of English-medium publication in humanities and social sciences. The action plan could count on support from more experienced doctoral students, professors and other university level officials, editors, reviewers, and high-level national policymakers.