The article discusses the cases of usage of personal pronoun ‘I’ in academic writing as an indicator of expressing author’s position in scientific writing. Academic writing is characterized by objectivity, abstractness, regularity, accuracy, clarity and impersonality. In recent years the western scientific community considers the impersonality of scientific writing as an unnecessary formalism and advises to use personal pronoun ‘I’ unrestrainedly in scientific writing as a means of expressing one’s position.