Analysing authorial identity construction in the review article genre in Applied Linguistics

Authorial identity construction is one of many professional rhetorical strategies employed by authors in academic review genres. Authors usually create a persona to represent themselves, their seniority in the field, and the community to which they belong. The author’s visibility is made possible through several rhetorical devices. Perhaps the most remarkable way of such authorial identity construction in the review article genre is self-mentions. The aims of this research are (1) to find out what types of self-mention are frequently used in review articles, (2) to determine the frequency of use and distribution of self-mentions in the review articles, and (3) to investigate the rhetorical function of self-mentions in the different analytical sections of the review articles. The data, drawn from a randomly selected corpus of thirty-two review articles, were analysed using WordSmith Tools Version 6. The findings indicated that first-person plural pronouns were more frequently used than singular pronouns in the whole corpus except in the two review texts. It was also observed that the frequency of occurrence for the exclusive and inclusive pronouns was very close to each other. Most importantly, the inclusive pronouns were used not only as a politeness strategy to appreciate the readers and keep the writers’ claims balanced but also as a persuasive tool to seek the readers’ agreement in the evaluation of research developments. This study revealed that authors construct various professional personas as a rhetorical strategy to carve their authorial identity and credibility in the review article genre. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications in the field of academic writing in applied linguistics as well as other disciplines.

The role of collegiality in academic review, promotion, and tenure

Review, promotion, and tenure (RPT) processes at universities typically assess candidates along three dimensions: research, teaching, and service. In recent years, some have argued for the inclusion of a controversial fourth criterion: collegiality. While collegiality plays a role in the morale and effectiveness of academic departments, it is amorphic and difficult to assess, and could be misused to stifle dissent or enforce homogeneity. Despite this, some institutions have opted to include this additional element in their RPT documents and processes, but it is unknown the extent of this practice and how it varies across institution type and disciplinary units. This study is based on two sets of data: survey data collected as part of a project that explored the publishing decisions of faculty and how these related to perceived importance in RPT processes, and 864 RPT documents collected from 129 universities from the United States and Canada. We analysed these RPT documents to determine the degree to which collegiality and related terms are mentioned, if they are defined, and if and how they may be assessed during the RPT process. Results show that when collegiality and related terms appear in these documents they are most often just briefly mentioned. It is less common for collegiality and related terms to be defined or assessed in RPT documents. Although the terms are mentioned across all types of institutions, there is a statistically significant difference in how prevalent they are at each. Collegiality is more commonly mentioned in the documents of doctoral research-focused universities (60%), than of master's universities and colleges (31%) or baccalaureate colleges (15%). Results from the accompanying survey of faculty also support this finding: individuals from R-Types were more likely to perceive collegiality to be a factor in their RPT processes. We conclude that collegiality likely plays an important role in RPT processes, whether it is explicitly acknowledged in policies and guidelines or not, and point to several strategies in how it might be best incorporated in the assessment of academic careers.

An academic review on the performance of the Sidrap wind turbine, Sulawesi – Indonesia

To secure the energy availability in Indonesia, the Government of Indonesia has tried to find new contributions from the renewable energy resources, one of them is the wind energy. In 2018, a new wind farm in Sidrap, Sulawesi, started to operate and was expected to generate 75 MW electricity from 30 wind turbines in the farm. However, the performance of this wind farm has been criticized by some popular figures in Indonesia, including the Minister of Finance of Indonesia who mentioned its performance as under expectation. On the other side, the Indonesian National Electricity Company (PLN) has reported some data on mass media indicating that this wind farm is producing as expected. To understand the critics, an academic review based on the standard knowledge in wind energy theory has been done. The study includes the review of wind speed in Sidrap, the maximum expected power from the wind turbines, and some other evaluations. It is expected that the critics can be understood in a fair way and be a lesson learned for the future wind farm development in Indonesia.

Editorial Introduction

The 13th Annual Graduate Research Showcase was held by the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education Graduate Students’ Associations on May 1, 2021. As our first virtual research showcase, graduate student presenters and participants gathered in virtual spaces to celebrate and share our research, and engage in conversation with colleagues. We appreciate and are grateful for the opportunity provided by the Alberta Academic Review to publish a special issue to present the conference proceedings.

COVID-19: main challenges during construction stage

PurposeThis paper reviews the current literature on the major challenges faced by building contractors in the UK due to COVID-19 to create an evaluation framework.Design/methodology/approachA PRISMA scoping review systematically maps the information published and establishes the potential challenges, as a precursor to a literature review that synthesises the data available to establish an initial COVID-19 evaluation framework to build a rationale for a future series of studies.FindingsThe research identified these seven challenges: health and safety on-site, economic cost, possible legal exposures, manpower availability, instability of the supply chain and subcontractors, and the uncertainty related to the constant and unpredictable evolution of the pandemic. The magnitude of each challenge was also found to differ depending on the size of the contractor, the rigor of local regulations and the sector where the contractor works.Research limitations/implicationsThis research contributes to increasing understanding on the subject and provides an initial assessment framework, based on these seven parameters, so that contractors can analyse their weaknesses and plan specific priorities so that their companies can remain competitive, minimising the impact of COVID-19 and possible future waves.Originality/valueThis research is timely and relevant as it produces the first academic review on how COVID-19 has affected contractors and the construction stage. This document gives a holistic view of the new scenario created by COVID-19 and creates a self-assessment system for contractors to test their resistance to COVID-19.

An Article Review on Islamic Derivatives: Theory and Practice, Global Islamic Finance Report (GIFR) 2010

The purpose of the study is to provide a systematically structured article review on a report chapter entitled Islamic Derivatives: Theory and Practice. There is a global trend on the demand of Islamic Capital Market advancement from theoretical paradigm to practical innovative shariah compliant diversification products, therefore, a brief academic review shall be one of the triggering variables to promote more enhanced development of derivatives products which are in accordance with principles of modern practices without excluding the cornerstone of shariah requirements. The review is based on key findings discussion that programmed to envision the general and the specific (significant) terms found in the article. This includes scholarly opinions, fatwas, standards, and guidelines as well as opinion on the subject matters. The study has shown that there is a call for further study to collect global experiences as well as perspectives on Islamic derivatives development.

Creative Destruction: The Structural Consequences of Scientific Curation

Communication of scientific findings is fundamental to scholarly discourse. In this article, we show that academic review articles, a quintessential form of interpretive scholarly output, perform curatorial work that substantially transforms the research communities they aim to summarize. Using a corpus of millions of journal articles, we analyze the consequences of review articles for the publications they cite, focusing on citation and co-citation as indicators of scholarly attention. Our analysis shows that, on the one hand, papers cited by formal review articles generally experience a dramatic loss in future citations. Typically, the review gets cited instead of the specific articles mentioned in the review. On the other hand, reviews curate, synthesize, and simplify the literature concerning a research topic. Most reviews identify distinct clusters of work and highlight exemplary bridges that integrate the topic as a whole. These bridging works, in addition to the review, become a shorthand characterization of the topic going forward and receive disproportionate attention. In this manner, formal reviews perform creative destruction so as to render increasingly expansive and redundant bodies of knowledge distinct and comprehensible.