Introduction -- Citation practices of expert French writers of English: Issues of attribution and stance -- A comparison of author reference in the Spanish context of biomedical RAs publication -- Positive self-evaluation and negative other-evaluation in NSs’ and NNSs’ scientific discourse -- A context-based approach to the identification of hedging devices and features of writer-reader relationship in academic publications -- Prospects of Indonesian Research Articles (RAs) Being Considered for Publication in ‘Center’ Journals: A Comparative Study of Rhetorical Patterns of RAs in Selected Humanities and Hard Science Disciplines -- Approaches to acculturating novice writers into academic literacy -- Are they discussing in the same way?: interactional metadiscourse in Turkish writers’ texts.

This book presents a collection of thematically focused articles addressing culture-specific features of academic communication, with a particular focus on communication conducted in English as an Additional Language and directed at multicultural audiences. It comprises papers arranged in four sections: Expert writers, Novice writers and readers, Conference participants, and Non-research academic genres. The book explicitly addresses and is centred upon the concept of a research niche understood as a space to be captured and populated, as a temporary location to move or grow out of in the course of individual professional development from novice to expert, and as a space to consciously reach beyond, delimited by one’s linguistic, cultural, educational, and geopolitical background. Here the niche is approached as a frame of reference for discussion of what is culture-bound, culture-sensitive, and culture-free in the academic community and its practices.