On October 15, as part of the academic events to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the School of Foreign Languages and Literatures (SFLL), Professor Lawrence Jun ZHANG from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, delivered an academic lecture titled “Academic Publishing for Professional Growth: Strategies for Manuscript Submission, Responding to Reviewer Comments, and Navigating Editorial Decisions” The lecture was attended both online and in person by over 100 faculty and students from within and outside the university. Ding Xuhui, Vice Dean of SFLL attended the lecture, which was chaired by Professor Luo Na, Director of the Institute of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.

The lecture centered on a range of topics, including research quality assurance, academic integrity, critical thinking, and translating teaching experience into research outcomes. Drawing on his experience as an editor, reviewer, and author, Professor Zhang systematically reviewed the current landscape and development trends of international academic publishing, and elaborated on key strategies for manuscript submission, responding to reviewer comments, and navigating editorial decisions. He compared open-access and subscription-based journals, noting that journal quality cannot be judged solely by access model, and highlighted the advantages of open-access journals in increasing citations, downloads, and copyright ownership.

Professor Zhang explained the core criteria of peer review, emphasizing that originality is the primary condition for acceptance, that research design should be problem-oriented with a clear framework, and that conclusions must be grounded in data. Regarding the current boom in AI-assisted writing, he stated that AI should only be used for language polishing, that generating full texts directly must be strictly avoided, and that authors bear full academic responsibility for their papers. He also introduced manuscript preparation, various review systems, and formatting requirements for figures, tables, and word limits; explained empirical methods such as mixed methods research and thematic analysis; and advised researchers to draw topics from teaching practice and to select a target journal at the outset of their research.

During the Q&A session, Professor Zhang answered questions from the audience, with detailed responses on topics such as the public disclosure of raw data in open-access journals and the suitability of journals for metadiscourse research.