Discussions and Research Notes ESP in the Big World of Reprint Requests

The background to this research note is quickly told. In 1985 I published an article in Scientometrics, ajournal devoted to quantitative studies in the sociol-ogy and history of science (Swales, 1985). The article reviewed current evidence regarding the proportion of research papers published by non-native speakers, proposed a text-scrutiny procedure for ascertaining the NS/NNS status of au-thors, and applied the procedure to a trial selection of papers. The paper, in my considered view, was rather ordinary; its limited virtues were that it offered an alternative methodology to Baldauf and Jemudd (1983) and produced a little more evidence about he dished visibility of NNS researchers in the research world. Although the paper was ordinary, one form of response was, in my experience, quite exceptional. As a fairly regular contributor to journals in ESP and allied fields, I have received occasional reprint requests (perhaps an average of one per paper). In the case of the Scientometrics paper I have to date received 35- a phenomenon sufliciently outside my previous experience to seem wort