The editorial dwells upon the challenges L2 scientific authors have to rise to. 'Publish or perish' policy pursued globally leads to an increased international market of predatory journals in response to persisting university requirements to academics' publications in international journals. The quality issues of scholarly publications are coming to the fore, with re-focusing on skills and competencies necessary to produce research acceptable to high-tier and well-established journals. Non-Anglophone L2 writers face more barriers to English-language international periodicals than native speakers of English, as they tend to follow distinct cultural patterns of thought. Consequently, rhetorical moves and steps of scholarly texts may substantially differ from those written by Anglophone researchers. The scholarly community has to handle a growing set of problems related to L2 scholarly writing in English to ensure their successful submissions to well-established international journals. © 2020 National Research University Higher School of Economics. All rights reserved.