Malyina Kazue Ono Leal
Although Brazilian researchers have succeeded in increasing the number of research articles published in indexed papers in recent years, they have struggled to do so. As universities and government agencies pressurise scholars for more publications, there is a need to analyse the conditions for the production of research papers in English in order to understand the difficulties in the process. This study gathered information from 41 researchers from the fields of engineering and applied social sciences through an online survey, as well as interviews with eight participants, all of whom currently engage in writing research articles for international publication. The goal of this study was to learn the importance of EAP instruction to scholars, in addition to how and when they have acquired it, since Brazilian universities offer little in terms of formal instruction. The results of this research indicate that researchers’ EAP learning takes place mostly through individual effort as they attempt to engage in international publication. Sources of instruction include the reading of published articles, writing manuals and brief workshops, among others. Researchers also provide information about their publication practices and their perspectives of the needs that should be met in order to improve the communication of their research results.
