Non-native English speaking (NNES) authors are increasingly being pressured to get published in accredited international journals. Despite the important responsibility that editors shoulder in deciding the ultimate fate of academic papers, few studies have systematically explored the effects editing might have on specific writing features, whether linguistically or stylistically. That is what we set out to do in the present research. Twenty research articles in the field of dentistry written by NNES authors were randomly selected, and the original versions were contrasted with their edited versions, trying to establish what shortcomings the papers had in terms of Metadiscourse (MD) elements and how far the editing process had succeeded in compensating for those drawbacks. Hyland’s (1998) account of MD in academic texts was utilized as our basis for comparison. The results revealed that NNES authors had paid scarce attention to proper management of MD elements in their manuscripts for effective communication of the propositional content, and that the editing process seemed to have changed little in this regard. It is believed that the findings of this study have some implications for ESP and EAP teachers, especially in academic paper writing classes, as well as for editors.

中文翻译：

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非英语母语者撰写的牙科研究文章中编辑对元话语的影响

非英语母语 (NNES) 的作者越来越被迫在认可的国际期刊上发表文章。尽管编辑肩负着决定学术论文最终命运的重要责任，但很少有研究系统地探讨编辑可能对特定写作特征产生的影响，无论是语言还是文体。这就是我们在目前的研究中打算做的事情。随机选取 NNES 作者撰写的 20 篇牙科领域研究文章，将原始版本与编辑后的版本进行对比，试图确定这些论文在 Metadiscourse（MD）元素方面存在哪些不足以及编辑过程有多远成功弥补了这些缺陷。Hyland (1998) 在学术文本中对 MD 的描述被用作我们比较的基础。结果表明，NNES 作者很少注意正确管理其手稿中的 MD 元素以有效地传达命题内容，并且编辑过程在这方面似乎几乎没有变化。相信这项研究的结果对 ESP 和 EAP 教师，特别是在学术论文写作课上，以及对编辑有一些启示。