Apprenticeship in Scholarly Publishing: A Student Perspective on Doctoral Supervisors’ Roles

Although a large body of literature has suggested that doctoral supervisors play an important role in their students’ attempts at scholarly publishing, few studies have focused specifically on what roles they play. This study sought to address this gap by zooming in on the various roles a group of Chinese doctoral students found their supervisors playing in their scholarly publishing endeavors. Our analysis revealed four important roles played by the supervisors: ‘prey’ searchers, managers, manuscript correctors and masters. The results showed that the supervisors not only facilitated the doctoral students’ publishing output, but also fostered their apprenticeship in scholarly publishing and the academic community. However, the results also unveiled a general unavailability of sorely-needed detailed and specific guidance on students’ early publishing attempts and some supervisors’ limited ability to correct students’ English manuscripts. These findings underscore the important contributions doctoral supervisors can make to their students’ academic socialization. They also suggest a need for external editorial assistance with doctoral students’ English manuscripts and ample opportunities for their scaffolded initiation into the tacit conventions and practices of scholarly publishing.