ATTW Bulletin

The editors for special issues in Technical Communication Quarterly invite you to propose a special issue for the journal. Each year, TCQ publishes two special issues on important topics that are shaping technical communication.

Proposing and editing a special issue is a great way to generate articles in research areas that are important to you and important to the field.

Ken Baake from Texas Tech has joined Richard Johnson-Sheehan as co-editor, and they are looking forward to hearing from people who might want to take advantage of this opportunity.

You can find a list of past and upcoming special issues at http://cms.english.ttu.edu/attw/tcq Instructions for proposing are included below.

If you have questions, or would like to float an idea past the editors, e-mail Ken Baake ken.baake@ttu.edu and Richard Johnson-Sheehan rjohnso@purdue.edu who are willing to help you prepare a proposal and provide feedback on it.

Preparing a Proposal for a TCQ Special Issue

The Special Issue proposal package should include three items:

Proposal —a 2-3 page explanation of the proposed Special Issue that defines its subject, states its purpose, and offers a brief literature review (with bibliography) that highlights the need for the issue and connections to prior work, especially previous special issues on related topics.

Call for Papers —a draft of the CFP as it might appear in TCQ and other places. The best preparation for writing a call is to look at ones that have previously appeared in the journal.

Vitas —the vita(s) of the editor(s) who will manage the issue.

It's a good idea to begin your CFP with a brief, direct statement of the theme of the issue and the importance of this theme. Later, the CFP should include a list of possible topics that includes all of ATTW's constituencies. These constituencies include readers with an interest in the following areas, to name a few:

Applied research
Pedagogy informed by research and/or theory
New trends and direction in practice
Emerging technologies
Qualitative and quantitative research
Theory

Gauge the length of your call by the length of the samples you study and your topic.

E-mail submissions are preferred.

When your proposal package is completed, TCQ's Editors for Special Issues will usually make suggestions for revisions. When these revisions are completed, the package will be forwarded to the ATTW's Executive Committee for approval.

If your proposal is accepted, the due dates for manuscripts are then worked out with the journal's editorial assistant. Generally speaking, the call should go out 9 to 12 months before the issue is published. The finished manuscript for the issue needs to go to the editorial assistant around 3 months before it is published, so the deadline for the receipt of papers is set 6 to 8 months after the call is released.

This schedule is tentative, because much depends on the amount of revision that needs to occur before the manuscript for the issue is submitted to the editorial assistant.