This article examines how World English speakers negotiate the complex landscape of global Englishes when writing academically from sources, and challenges many assumptions that research and lore suggest about these writers' experiences. The data, culled from interviews with native-speaking Arabic graduate students and scholars from across the disciplines who live and work in the Middle East, suggest that mastery over standardized English is not a prerequisite for advanced academic writing in English. Instead, study participants pointed to the importance of other factors in learning to write effectively from sources: quality mentoring, collaboration with both native and nonnative and expert and non-expert colleagues, interactions with global academic social networks, and previous educational experience with authentic tasks in their disciplines.