Over the last decades, there has been a great interest in possible challenges encountered by researchers while publishing research articles (RAs) in various disciplines for English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Given this, this study aimed to examine how a sampled number of EAP Iranian researchers perceive the competence of academic RA writing, the major reasons for RA rejection, and difficulties the authors face in writing up publishable RAs. Data for this study came from an examination of rejection emails and follow-up interviews with a number of Iranian EAP researchers who had published in highly prestigious journals. Analysis of the data yielded 545 codes, 40 subcategories, and six core categories. The main categories included the potential reasons of RA rejection; the authors’ challenges in RA writing; RA linguistic features; RA stylistic features; essential elements of writing RA sections; and the features of RA citation and referencing. The study bears several implications for the practitioners and researchers.
