A Review of Lexical Bundles in Research Articles across Hard Sciences Disciplines Including Medical Sciences

Background & Aims: The importance of "publish or perish" in academic contexts, especially for faculties and graduate students, is an undeniable problem because of its role in determining university achievement around the world. To deal with such problems, academic writers must be fluent in language repertoires (e.g., lexical bundles), which are an essential component of scholarly writing and necessary for creating publishable research articles (RAs).
Material & Methods: Hence, the present study reviews 85 empirical RAs that have been done to extract highly frequent 4-word lexical bundles (LBs) published between 2008 and 2021 in ISI and Scopus-indexed journals across various hard sciences disciplines including medical sciences. Additionally, it offers a list of the general academic four-word LBs in the various sections of hard sciences RAs that can be used as a reference list of general LBs for scholarly writing in hard sciences.
Results: The review revealed that in each discipline, the experts use discipline-specific bundles. The findings also revealed that academic writing structurally relies heavily on phrasal bundles and functionally on referential bundles.
Conclusion: The current study concludes that it is essential to explore disciplinary linguistic features such as LBs in academic writing to enhance academic success and RA literacy. The results may also be useful in developing appropriate educational materials and activities on LBs for academic writing in hard sciences such as medical sciences.