How Reputable Indonesian Writers from Cross-Disciplines Construct Their Research Articles During Established-Career Period? A Move Analysis

Abstract

Expert writers are defined as someone that frequently publish their research articles (hereafter RAs) in reputable journals during their established-career period. Publication in highly reputable journals is an essential part of academic life. Therefore, many academicians are competing to produce articles that can be published in international journals. However, the path to achieving this goal is not easy. This study investigates the rhetorical moves in 16 English RAs written by four highly reputable lecturers from soft and hard science throughout their established-career period. The RAs were chosen randomly from highly reputable journals and were analyzed using a framework from Maswana et al. in 2015. The results revealed that there were moves/steps often present in both soft and hard science articles in some sections, i.e., Move a Step 2 Purpose; Move a Step 3 Methods; Move a Step 4 Results; Move a Step 5 Conclusion; Move 1, Step 1 Reference to established knowledge in the field; Move 7, Step 4 Stating specific findings; and Move 9, Step 1 Stating the main results and significance. However, both disciplines also organize their RAs in different ways, specifically in the Methods section. Move 5 Describing experimental procedure was found to be frequently used in hard science articles rather than in soft science. These results can conclude that the cross-disciplines partly project rhetorical moves in RAs. The findings of this study provide a guideline and overview for expert writers in evaluating their writing and for novice writers in increasing their discourse competence.