ABSTRACT
Doctoral students worldwide face increasing pressure to publish research articles in high-ranking English-medium journals as part of their research degrees. This pressure raises questions about how to support doctoral students’ research publishing in English and the role of mentorship in this process. Russian doctoral education often fails to reflect the real-life writing experiences of postgraduates writing in English and to provide adequate support. This chapter investigates the publication experiences of doctoral students at one research-intensive university in Russia, who receive both ESL writing support and support from their research supervisors, called “mentors.” The theoretical framework of academic literacies allows us to explore how mentorship is embedded in the research writing practices of doctoral students. The study draws on semi-structured interviews with ten Russian doctoral students. This chapter contributes to our understanding of knowledge production and publishing by novice writers in global academia by making visible how ways of making meaning and text production are linked to the writer’s agency, existing networks, and power relations in academia.
