Despite the clear advantages of sharing scientific knowledge globally through a common language, English, it is well established that writing scientific papers in English and getting them published has been an uphill battle for many international scholars. Lillis and Curry (2006, 2010) describe the barriers encountered by scholars in central and southern Europe with historically limited access to English. Other obstacles to publication include various lexical and grammatical characteristics of English-language texts and some scholars' lack of familiarity with accepted structural preferences in writing for publication ( Flowerdew, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2015; Swales, 1990). Obstacles that have received less attention are the ways in which authors present their arguments in writing English for research publication purposes (ERPP) in a cross-cultural context, or cross-cultural rhetorical challenges (Connor, 1996). Flowerdew's (1999) interviewees from Hong Kong had gained some of their education in English and professed to have better facility in writing academic English than in their native Chinese. Nevertheless, they reported difficulty in 'making claims for their research with the appropriate amount of force' (Flowerdew, 1999: 254). The challenge of presenting research findings in a convincing way to 'have superior impact on the recipient' (Ammon, 2007, as cited in Flowerdew, 2015: 2) is in part a result of conflicting discourse conventions that vary from culture to culture and run deeper than how writers present arguments (Connor, 1996).

This chapter describes the obstacles faced by those scientists who, despite some assumptions to the contrary, are faced with hidden challenges – even those who profess to have a good command of English and ample access to resources. We call these hidden challenges as they often go unacknowledged by university officials and even by some of the scientists themselves. This is especially true in the Nordic countries (Hultgren et al., 2014) where English is often not seen as a barrier to scientific publication. Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest that challenges vary according to English proficiency and familiarity with English academic writing norms.