Dear Colleagues:

We editors of publications in technical and professional communication thank you sincerely for your active participation in the two listening sessions we held on anti-racism and inclusion practices in publication editing and academic publishing.

 

The two sessions were held October 15 and 26, 2020, and moderated by Dr. Janine Utell, editor of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945 and secretary of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Our goal was to flip the script of a traditional editors’ roundtable and listen to your concerns, queries, and comments about current publication practices. What we learned started important conversations and offered many ways that we might better serve our profession.

 

Since those sessions, publications involved have begun revising review guidelines, diversifying editorial boards, increasing transparency of guidelines across websites and via social media, updating diversity statements, making changes to staff, developing new mentoring policies, and more. We are committed to making change.

 

We have decided to make the actions we are taking more explicit. Too often, we think, work that helps us think about best practices, showcases differences among publications, and holds us directly accountable becomes invisible. And so we are making this thank you letter the introduction to a shared document where we commit ourselves to making explicit the changes that come out of our conversations—both past and in the future—and that will serve as a single, localized source to help our profession more easily navigate the sometimes bewildering world of submission, publication, and editing.

 

You will find our publications organized below, along with links and notes to our work as it evolves. Please feel free to share this widely. If you do share, please use #InclusiveTPC to help us continue this work.

 

Thank you again. We firmly believe that our work on anti-racism and inclusion practices is just beginning, and look forward to continuing this journey with you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Derek G. Ross, Editor in Chief, Communication Design Quarterly

George F. Hayhoe, Editor in Chief, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 

Charles H. Sides, Executive Editor, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

Lora Arduser, Co-Editor, Programmatic Perspectives

Sam Dragga, Editor-in-Chief (retiring), Technical Communication

Miriam F. Williams, Editor-in-Chief (incoming), Technical Communication

Cheryl E. Ball, Editor, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

Lisa Melonçon, Editor, TPC Series WAC Clearinghouse/University Press of Colorado

Jo Mackiewicz, Editor, Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Steve Parks, Editor, Studies in Writing and Rhetoric

Chad Wickman, Editor, Written Communication

Rebecca Walton, Editor, Technical Communication Quarterly

Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, Co-Editor, Programmatic Perspectives

Tharon W. Howard, Editor, ATTW Book Series in Technical & Professional Communication

 

Table of Contents

Publications

Communication Design Quarterly

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

Programmatic Perspectives

Technical Communication

Technical Communication Quarterly

Written Communication

Lunch with an Editor Mentoring Session Notes

February 15, 2021

Panelists

Questions

How do you know when your book is ready?

How do you choose a press?

But how DO you approach an editor?

Books/proposals

Who gets to be an author?

What is a typical timeline for a book from idea to press?

What happens after the book is done? Where does it get us?

March 15, 2021

Panelists

Notes

Questions

How do you approach methodological pieces?

Tips for authors

Do R&Rs go to the same reviewers?

Two-part question on non-research articles

Reviewer criteria (links):

Concluding Notes

April 13, 2021

Panelists

Introductions

Questions

How DO you train peer reviewers in anti-racist practices?

How does pedagogical work (and/or student-co-authored work) fit into the journals?

——

Communication Design Quarterly

Communication Design Quarterly has revised its Review Guidelines based on our conversations and in discussions with the Editorial Board, which are available on our Contribution Page (https://sigdoc.acm.org/publication/communication-design-quarterly-review/), or directly via this pdf link.

CDQ has also opened discussion on how our Editorial Board is shaped and maintained, and continues to stand by our Statement on Inclusivity and Ethical Data Visualization, available at the bottom of our General Information page.

We will post more information here as more changes are put in place.

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

The IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication has appointed Dr. Josephine Walwema as Associate Editor for Diversity and Inclusion. Our Editorial Staff is examining how we can promote and encourage an inclusive and equitable culture in our profession and in the scholarship we publish. Specifically, we are revising our guidelines for authors, review rubrics, and policies and procedures to reflect this commitment, and expect to complete this task in early 2021.

The Transactions will publish a special issue on enacting social justice in technical and professional communication in March 2022, guest edited by Dr. Godwin Agboka and Dr. Isidore Dorpenyo. The guest editors received an overwhelming response to their call for proposals for the issue, and the IEEE Professional Communication Society’s Board of Governors has committed to funding needed to publish a maximum of 21 articles finally accepted for the special issue. (Issues typically contain 6 articles.)

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Since June 2020, the journal has:

JBTC is committed to inclusivity, including showing respect toward all people through language. Our journal rejects oppressive language, be it racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ablest, ageist, xenophobic, or any other type of language that seeks to belittle and dehumanize people. JBTC’s editorial staff charge themselves, reviewers, and authors to try to recognize oppressive language and to eliminate it at the manuscript stage. Authors must follow the APA’s guidelines (7th edition) for bias-free language.

  • Made its review criteria explicit for Research Articles and Approaches and Practices articles
  • Asks reviewers to evaluate manuscripts for inclusive language

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

Kairos began working more explicitly towards its inclusion practices during Summer 2020, as outlined in this letter from the editors. We began by

We are working over winter break (2020–21) to make permanent spaces on our journal’s site for these materials, as well as other materials that need to be made evident to authors, including:

  • Rewriting our author guidelines to make them more accessible (completed, but needs to be added to the site)
  • Make copyright/CC licensing stuff more explicit & add statement & instructions
  • Add impact factor statement
  • Add Plagiarism policy
  • Add (no!) APC statement
  • Add Open Access statement
  • Make a list of things we need authors to submit (incl. Abstract, keywords, Pronouns, scholarnames entry, etc.)

The TPC Editors’ listening session reinforced that these things are needed, and MORE MENTORING is needed in publishing. Kairos has been remiss in not getting more mentoring opportunities off the ground beyond what we already provide our staff, so we are actively/currently working to create the following mentoring opportunities for scholars, with a particular focus on BIPOC scholars for some of the outreach events. These are all ideas we’ve wanted to do for a long time but just haven’t gotten off our duff to do it. But that changes in 2021. We promise, and we expect people to hold us responsible, and to let us know if they want us to cover a specific topic not listed here:  

  • Lunch with an Editor (monthly - Cheryl set this up with TPW editors, to start Jan 2021)
  • #askaneditor Fridays?
  • Internal RFN type thing for Kairos staff and board, possibly extending outwards
  • Process-based 10-minute author interviews? (old KMTA stuff; like CCDP’s 5 minutes with an author?)
  • Monthly or quarterly KairosCamp open houses where authors can meet with us for 20 minutes to ask questions and/or overview ideas
  • Informal talk-throughs (archived videos on YouTube) of journal processes
  • Kairos’s peer review process
  • Overview
  • Tier 2 specifically
  • Copyediting process
  • Overview of 8 stages
  • Specific one for Stage 2/design-editing?
  • Design criteria review (4 diff ones for each area of focus?)
  • Webinar ideas (recordable, live/publishable on Kairos youtube acct, and open to Q&A):
  • Reviews Section class/webinar: to teach people how to write good reviews and good webtext reviews (grow off of https://cdmandrews.github.io/kairos/)
  • “Making Webtexts: An Introduction” class/webinar: to help new authors get started making webtexts (brainstorming projects, managing workflow, etc.
  • How to propose an edited collection (separate from Kairos but needs to be done)
  • How to propose a guest issue of a journal (Kairos specific)
  • Peer reviewing webtexts
  • How to submit to Kairos
  • How to query an editor
  • How to read a review letter
  • How to conceptualize your webtext from the start? (multi-part? Related to DH questions)
  • Creative Commons licensing
  • What permissions do you need for student work?
  • How permissions work for images/media?
  • Creating multimedia-based reference lists
  • Thinking through webtext organizational structures (i.e., scope and navigation)
  • What else????
  • More technical stuff?? E.g., creating CSS for webtexts?
  • SPARC agreements (not Kairos related)
  • Becoming an editor (panel with other venues)

Programmatic Perspectives

  • Based on suggestions from the Diversity Committee in the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), we are in the process of revising our editorial board membership, and our call for submissions.
  • CPTSC has recently added a research grant devoted to diversity. We invite manuscripts from CPTSC Diversity Grant awardees to encourage publication of their work in Programmatic Perspectives.
  • In October 2020, in lieu of our annual conference, we sponsored an online special event on the topic of crises in technical communication programs, including crises related to social justice as well as to the pandemic of COVID-19. We wish to continue this conversation; Programmatic Perspectives has issued a call for manuscripts for a special issue on this same topic, to be published in 2021.

Technical Communication

Technical Communication has revised its Editorial Policy, Reviewer Guidelines, and Review Criteria, which are available to prospective authors at https://www.stc.org/techcomm/instructions-for-authors/. Additions to the Editorial Advisory Board are forthcoming.

Technical Communication Quarterly

In 2018, we doubled the size of the editorial board, intentionally increasing the diversity of its membership in terms of demographics, university type, rank, and areas of expertise.

In 2019, Technical Communication Quarterly developed a policy against oppressive rhetoric and revised its review criteria to reflect our journal’s commitment to inclusion. We also facilitated a workshop for new scholars on reviewing journal manuscripts.

In 2020, before the listening sessions, we produced more detailed, clearer submission instructions for authors in a standalone page and began working with a coalition of scholars to develop a resource for editors, reviewers, and authors on anti-racist publishing practices.

In response to what we learned in the open listening sessions, we sought additional ways to increase transparency and offer additional mentoring. Since then we have

  • Revised the call for special issues to invite guest editors to propose ways mentor and support submitting authors through the publication process (additional mentoring)
  • Interlinked more of our instructions and policies so that scholars can more readily locate information (increased transparency)
  • Added additional details to the call for special issue proposals (increased transparency)
  • Added additional details to the guest editor instructions (increased transparency and additional mentoring)
  • In consultation with the TCQ editorial board, selected Black TPC as the topic of the 2022 special issue of TCQ, edited by an impressive team of scholars led by Dr. Temptaous Mckoy; proposals are due by April 15, 2021
  • In February 2021, we designed a survey to solicit more information about TCQ editorial board members to help us more intentionally select a diverse group of leaders to shape the journal
  • In April 2021, an anti-racist reviewing heuristic was published. The TCQ editor was one of several contributors who met weekly since summer 2020 to collaboratively produce this heuristic and has endorsed it as an individual scholar and on behalf of TCQ.
  • In March 2022, we published an article on the ATTW blog to describe how TCQ editorial board members are selected in an effort to increase transparency of this process.

We’ll continue seeking ways to pursue justice and inclusion moving forward and will update this record accordingly.

Written Communication

 Written Communication asserts its commitment to the work of anti-racism in our publishing operations, and we make it a priority to enact that work in tangible and sustainable ways. The following items point to work in progress that the journal will continue to engage moving forward:

 

-Expanding the journal’s Editorial Board.

 

-Reviewing and updating submission guidelines to promote inclusive research and publishing practices.

 

-Reviewing and updating editorial guidelines and criteria to promote clarity, consistency, and equity in the process of review and evaluation.

 

-Exploring ways to expand the journal’s editorial structure to increase the number of stakeholders involved in journal operations.

 

-Developing identifiable pathways for inclusion in journal operations (e.g., for reviewing manuscripts, for joining the Editorial Board, for proposing special issues).

 

-Developing processes for working with early career and other prospective authors who are looking to publish their scholarship with the journal.

 

-Developing policies and structures to coordinate action over time and assess whether and the extent to which goals are being met.

Lunch with an Editor Mentoring Session Notes

The Lunch with an Editor series began as a recommendation made by participants in the #InclusiveTPC listening sessions (Fall 2020) as a way to provide better mentoring and outreach efforts for BIPOC scholars towards building a more inclusive publishing landscape. (These events are modeled on others of similar nature in this and other disciplinary fields.) The notes below are from these lunches, which are structured as panels of volunteer editors from technical and professional communication journals and book series who describe their venues’ publishing practices — including any specific anti-racist approaches they use — and answer questions by registrants to these free Zoom events. The sessions are coordinated by Cheryl E. Ball. Please contact her with questions or comments to improve these events or notes.

February 15, 2021

(11-12pm Eastern Zoom panel)

Panelists

  • Lisa Melonçon: Foundations and Innovations in Technical and Professional Communication
  • Tharon Howard: ATTW Book Series in Professional & Technical Communication
  • Steve Parks: Reflections, Studies in Writing and Rhetoric

Questions

These questions arose from participants during the unscripted lunch session. The answers listed in bullet points below each question were the editors’ responses. Names for each editor are only listed when very specific responses were given in relation to a specific publication venue; however, most of the advice is general in nature.

How do you know when your book is ready?

  • Do you have a through thread?
  • Through-line for the whole project, you need more than one article to cover, can you make the whole thing stick together, one link that combines chapters together.
  • Do you have a complicated enough project idea?
  • Do you LIKE your book project?

How do you choose a press?

  • New authors should email the press and see if they get a good response (to see if they want to work with authors)
  • Talk to editors to see how they envision/imagine your project and does it fit with what you see yourself become for the field (as a scholar)
  • Talk with other authors who have published with them, to see how the publisher is to work with.
  • New authors agree quickly to any changes editors suggest, but Steve (and other editors) likes some pushback to learn more.

But how DO you approach an editor?

  • Say “I believe in myself, I believe in my work” — EVERY morning.
  • Talk to editors, tenacity makes a difference
  • Talk to colleagues
  • Talk to your committee
  • Talk to Caucuses and SIGs; they can also make connections
  • Build a network who can help you with reaching out/connecting

Books/proposals

  • Audience is often the most missing element in first drafts
  • “Audience considerations are key. Know the people you want to read your work.”
  • The whole field is NOT your audience
  • Frame the book/proposal around “conversations” — what exists and how do you extend it.
  • “Telling stories to help people see” the whole perspective is important; brings people into the conversation
  • Books that go deeeeep into the existing conversation are important. Not just the most recent 4 articles. A sense of humility is also important and invites people into the critique.
  • Talk to the editor about what’s expected of their proposal. Check out the press’s or series’ proposal guidelines. Follow the guidelines.
  • Have your sample chapter ready; though some presses need the whole book.
  • What’s the best chapter? Sometimes the introduction, but sometimes reviewers need something more meaty.
  • Editor’s job is to help you write that (Tharon), who looks at 2-4 versions.
  • Be humble in saying what you’re doing.
  • Focus on 1-2 key interventions (reviewers want to know you can control the project)
  • Chapters: should all be about the same paragraph size (speaks to having control of the project)
  • A strong narrative from page 1-14; writing in simple language
  • The proposal is NOT the place to do post-Derridian deconstruction, let your chapters do that work
  • Audience: Think through the nuances of the audience you’re trying to reach.
  • Ask editors who they sent it out to (not specifically, but generally)
  • ASk editors how they handle reviewer comments
  • Some editors can work with others’ presses guidelines, but some are restricted due to their press’s needs.
  • First step, talk to the editor. Editors will help you write the proposal prospectus
  • 14k words proposal (Tharon)
  • Common mistakes
  • Authors do not use the right format as mentioned in the guidelines
  • Answer question, fill in slots

Who gets to be an author?

  • Some editors don’t pay attention to the byline/rank/etc. But some DO want to look at that to specifically get at a range of knowledge making

What is a typical timeline for a book from idea to press?

  • The timeline can vary because of the production cycle and the time of peer review.
  • Peer review is gonna be from 2-4 months because of timing and such. We can publish within a few months once we have the complete manuscript ready for production. - Lisa
  • Once it's under contract, we publish in 5 months. - Tharon

What happens after the book is done? Where does it get us?

  • Not everyone has to write a book!
  • Not nearly as many depts as folks think need books for tenure in TPC
  • The production process begins with your book once you hand it over to the editors, which make take 6+ months
  • Book tour, marketing, a new idea for another project…  
  • The first book becomes part of a much larger project and the next project relates to it.
  • ^^ all related to expectations of yourself and your dept. What do you NEED for the next stage of your life, to keep your job or find satisfaction in life.
  • Book sales are NOT an indication of your popularity; your book will circulate in open-access ways, regardless of how the book was published.
  • Who do you want to engage with next? Do you want to now focus on younger scholars? Do an edited collection next? Do a panel at the next conference? How do you build community based on the book’s ideas? (Is this what you WANT to do?)
  • What’s the conversations that need to happen next? Who should be part of those conversations (non-exclusive ways)? What are the platforms that best will make that happen?

March 15, 2021

(1–2pm Eastern Zoom panel)

Panelists

  • Jo Mackiewicz, Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  • Lora Arduser, Programmatic Perspectives
  • Derek G. Ross, Communication Design Quarterly
  • Moderated by Cheryl E. Ball, Kairos & #writing

Notes

  • Using progressive stacking in chat to signal multi-marginalized folx to get questions answered
  • JBTC - Jo M
  • https://journals.sagepub.com/home/jbt
  • Research, writ broadly; qual, quant, some theoretical
  • Approaches and Practices, 7-8K words
  • Comments and responses
  • Book Reviews
  • Jordan Frith is book review editor

  • Lora Anduser
  • https://cptsc.org/journal/
  • Topics related to science and technical program administration
  • Research
  • Program Showcases - narrative structure about issues in programs (best practices, etc)
  • Commentaries
  • Book reviews:

  • Derek Ross
  • https://sigdoc.acm.org/about
  • “As long as it deals with communication design, we’re interested”
  • Research
  • Experience reports
  • Book reviews. Aden Ederfield

Questions

How do you approach methodological pieces?

  • For JBTC: Practices section article instead of research article
  • Beware of article-and-a-half or 3x article length — it’s possible but not recommended.
  • The real reason we’re publishing is to build our field and discover stuff.
  • Could be an “Experience Report” in CDQ
  • Related to ethics work, and see journals on methodology and/or ethics — the ethical implications of using particularly method
  • PP doesn’t publish a whole lot of methodological stuff, just cuz it’s not necessarily part of the scope of the journal
  • “Who’s interested in this?” Who is the actual audience of my methodological approach? It is probably broader than the actual RQ of the article itself.
  • Tip: Pragmatically, it’s wise to “slice your research” to publish in as many as possible and reach as many audiences as possible.

Tips for authors

  • You can query an editor with a short abstract to begin communication with them
  • People work as hard as they can to review papers fast, and then the editor has to synthesize the reviews to write a decision letter.
  • “Accept” is highly unusual! “Revise & Resubmit” is a good response, it means editors want to invest the time in working with you.
  • There’s a review/developmental timeline (this might take a year) and a production (post-acceptance) timeline.

Do R&Rs go to the same reviewers?

  • Most R&Rs go to same reviewers when it’s submitted. Not *always* the case, but try to. The editor asks if reviewers are willing to review again.
  • Problematic when ed sees reviews that seem unfair (bias against methodology, exclusionary citation practices, etc.) The editors are making calls about not asking those reviewers to re-review.
  • Authors are not powerless here. You can read a review and disagree with it, and write the editor back. Carefully.
  • Address how you have made revisions based on what reviewers have asked for.

Two-part question on non-research articles

1) how do editors view non-research articles (e.g. experience reports or approaches and practices) in terms of validity/rigor/all those things T&P committees care about; 2) what role, if any, do or can journal editors have in helping T&P committees understand value of those non-research articles (and this might include collaborative or multimodal pieces that traditional English depts or Colleges might not know how to evaluate); e.g do y’all ever provide explanatory letters?

  • How do editors handle praxis work instead of research work (to make that false divide for a moment…)
  • Editors will tell reviewers what kind of piece it is and to read it with diff criteria, as necessary
  • CDQ (or was it JBTC?) is read with one reviewer and one editor.

Reviewer criteria (links):

Concluding Notes

JBTC is looking for 5-6 editors who can help authors create videos for their articles. You’d be working with authors & they’d be posted to TPC publications channel. Part of the job is organizing the channel. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_IGNhYfsSvykCTgAuyKVoxJgFmdL-OQSxpBlPOhHU6s/edit

April 13, 2021

(1pm Eastern Zoom panel)

Panelists

  • Rebecca Walton, Technical Communication Quarterly
  • George Hayhoe, IEEE

Introductions

  • Making publishing more explicit
  • TCQ changed reviewing guidelines to make practices more inclusive
  • Also welcomes emails when authors have ideas or are stuck
  • IEEE working on welcome/training/mentoring process for new or potential reviewers
  • How do we take any assumed mentoring we had in grad school, etc. and make it a formalized process for new staff, grad students, reviewers, etc.? ← this is the Q #inclusiveTPC editors wrestle with.

Questions

These questions arose from participants during the unscripted lunch session. The answers listed in bullet points below each question were the editors’ responses. Names for each editor are only listed when very specific responses were given in relation to a specific publication venue; however, most of the advice is general in nature.

How DO you train peer reviewers in anti-racist practices?

How does pedagogical work (and/or student-co-authored work) fit into the journals?

  • New possible genres in the journals — how can they reflect the genres people in the field might use or could produce readily?
  • Things I’ve tried & how it worked; praxis-based work that others can build on theoretically
  • Case Studies (e.g., cartographic literacy) - is there a way for others to supplement with the lit review suggestions?
  • Innovations in Teaching (or Methods?)
  • Transactions’ has “Teaching Cases” // Experience Report
  • Follow-on reports from folks who extend the experience report
  • Assignments on How To Reach x kinds of genres in the field
  • JUST publishing the teaching cases alongside
  • Good experiences with journals are based on editorial feedback and HOW it’s delivered (the affect, for sure)
  • Offering access to articles if they need it
  • Providing kind framing for revisions
  • Connect grad students working on the same topics to help with lit reviews, who can then also gain experience from experienced teachers… “Rapid Rhetoric” (a la TTU) — can journals set up “theory-matching” services between potential collaborators?