Resilience of health systems in Africa to infectious disease shocks: A qualitative evidence synthesis.

Academic discourse is a social communication act involving both writers and readers [–]. Against the backdrop of global scientific integration, publishing research findings in English has become a universal requirement for academic recognition and knowledge dissemination across all disciplines. It has become an essential practice for graduate students and researchers to publish academic papers written in English in many countries, especially in China where science and technology have advanced rapidly in the past two decades. Great institutional demands, high expectations from the academic community and writing conventions all make academic writing in English increasingly challenging and publishing research findings more competitive [,]. This is especially true for nonnative novice researchers, who face great challenges deriving from their limited English proficiency [,], their native language interference [], as well as their unfamiliarity with the rhetorical conventions of academic discourse [,]. Specifically, nonnative writers often struggle to follow international academic norms due to cultural and linguistic differences and the lack of proficiency in using genre-specific linguistic markers [,]. Among these genre-specific skills, the appropriate use of stance-taking devices has been identified as one of the most challenging barriers for nonnative researchers, as it requires not only linguistic competence but also deep understanding of disciplinary and cultural rhetorical norms. As a primary platform for academic communication, a research article abstract functions as a highly condensed summary of the academic work of the researchers and an important bridge for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange. The quality of an abstract crucially determines the readability and acceptability of an academic article, and thus shapes the visibility and impact of the article. Abstracts perform perhaps the most important function among all sections of a research article because they summarize the whole paper, help researchers obtain information, and attract readers to continue reading []. Its role has become increasingly prominent with rapid knowledge accumulation and growing interdisciplinary cooperation in modern society.