Framing an epistemic collaboration between chat GPT’s peripheral instrumentality and the author’s optimal anthropocentrism for enhancing non-native-English-speaking researchers’ scientific writing

Apparently, English is the dominant language for scientific writing. Globally, non-native English-speaking researchers (N-NESRs) often experience being viewed as having deficiencies in the quality of the English language of their scientific papers. Given this, N-NESRs often experience delays, difficulties, and even financial burdens when it comes to publishing their research papers in English-only journals. As a digital means for addressing this challenge, this study examines the praxis of alternative capacity building for N-NESRs by unfolding the potential of GenAI-human author partnership for scientific writing. To this end, qualitative data from the authors’ anecdotal pieces of evidence were collected. Dual methods of digital data mining (DDM) and educational data mining (EDM) were used to analyze the data. The findings reveal that Chat GPT has a unique potential for providing digital instrumentation in an epistemic collaboration with N-NESRs. It can enhance the language quality of N-NESRs’ research papers by aligning them with the tone, voice, and conventions of scientific writing. This instrumentation may result in the publications of N-NESRs’ scientific writing in high-profile English journals. The findings also reveal that the nature of Chat GPT’s participation in the GenAI-mediated scientific writing is peripheral, non-authorial and without ethical violation. Therefore, N-NESRs can retain optimal authorial anthropocentricity in their epistemic productions. Thus, the study embodies the pragmatization of N-NESRs’ problems, the potential of GenAI in scientific writing, and the pursuit of equity, access, and linguistic empowerment of N-NESRs. These findings are significant for N-NESRs, writing pedagogues, policy makers and writing researchers.