Online Workshop on Writing Integrative Literature Reviews in Professional and Technical Communication

Background: To introduce the community of authors for the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication to the nature and methods for creating integrative literature reviews, we are holding a second introductory workshop.  

The first one, was a success, but many people who wanted to participate could not, because of scheduling conflicts and asked for a second session.

About the Workshop:  The goal of the workshop is to not only teach participants how to prepare an integrative literature review, but to help them start one and receive feedback on the work-in-progress (with the hope that the finished review will be submitted to the Transactions).  Some reading before the first four class sessions; research occurs in the gap between the fourth and fifth session and participants prepare an early draft before the sixth session. 

The workshop leader is Saul Carliner, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Director of the Education Doctoral Program and Associate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal, and a past recipient of back-to-back Frank R. Smith Awards for Best Article in the peer-reviewed journal, Technical Communication. 

Who Should Attend:  Faculty, Researchers, PhD students, and advanced master’s students (who have completed a research methodology class) in Technical and Professional Communication or a Related Field.  

Schedule:  The next 6-session workshop is scheduled:

Thursday, April 26  11 AM – 12:15 pm Eastern

Thursday, May 3, 11 AM – 12:15 pm Eastern

Thursday, May 10, 11 AM – 12:15 pm Eastern

Thursday, May 17, 11 AM – 12:15 pm Eastern

Thursday, June 7, 11 AM – 12:15 pm Eastern 

Thursday, June 28, 11 AM – 12:15 pm Eastern

Location:  Webinar using Adobe Connect.  

You’ll need a computer with a live internet connection at the time of the class.  (Sessions are not recorded.)

Fee:  No cost, but a commitment to (a) preparing a draft of a literature review during the course of the workshop and (b) submitting a completed integrative literature review to the Transactions for consideration within 9 months of the completion of the seminar.   

To enroll or receive more information:  Contact David Price, Editorial Assistant, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication: tpc.editorial@gmail.com.

First Quarter 2012 Issue of the Transactions on Professional Communication Now Available

The first quarter 2012 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication is now available for reading online.

Below are the abstracts of the articles.  

Note:  As was mentioned earlier to the membership of the IEEE Professional Communication Society, although we will publish new issues of the Transactions, each quarter as we always have, starting in 2012, we only print those issues semi-annually.   

So the March issue will be printed with the June issue.  The shipment in June is a double issue.  Similarly, the September issue will be printed with the December issue and that issue, too, is a double issue.  

So the March issue is available online now through the IEEExplore.  The March and June issues will be printed and shipped in June.   

To see the complete article, visit http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=47.  (Note: Only free to members of the IEEE Professional Communication Society (get your login from IEEE) and to those entering through university libraries with a subscription to IEEExplore.)

Volume 55, Issue 1

Research Article:  Exploring Think-Alouds in Usability Testing: An International Survey

by Sharon McDonald, Helen M. Edwards and Zingting Zhao.

Research Article: An Examination of Deception in Virtual Teams: Effects of Deception on Task Performance, Mutuality, and Trust

by Christie M. Fuller, Kent Marrett and Douglas P. Twitchell

Research Article: A Tale of Four Functions in a Multifunctional Device: Extending Implementation Intention Theory

by Julian Lin, Hock Chuan Chan, Lingling Xu

Research Article: Too Early, Too Bad: Uncovering and Understanding the Initial Participation Paradox in Technology-Mediated Learning Teams

by Elizabeth Koh and John Lim

Research Article: Assessing the Impact of Student Peer Review in Writing Instruction by Using the Normalized Compression Distance

by Sayuri Yoshizawa, Takao Terano, and Atsushi Yoshikawa 

Book Reviews

• Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse (Part of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication), (3rd edition) by Ann M. Penrose and Steven B. Katz. Reviewed by JoLynne Berrett 
• Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators, Second Edition Book Review by Charles Kostelnick and David D. 
  Roberts.  Reviewed by Garth Clayton.
• User-Centered Design for Personalization by Lex van Velsen.  Reviewed by Charity C. Tran. 

What does the Transactions Publish? What do Transactions’ Readers want to read?

Check out What does the Transactions Publish? What do Transactions’ Readers Want to Read?,, which I co-wrote with Nancy Coppola, George Hayhoe, and Helen Grady and was recently published in the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

In the process of exploring what readers want, this article also characterizes the state of the material published in the peer-reviewed literature on technical communication.

As the abstract of the article notes:  

Research Problem: The change in editorship of the Transactions on Professional Communication provides an opportunity for investigate the match between the content published by the journal and the content sought by its readers and to assess the uniqueness of the niche that it fills among peer-reviewed journals on professional and technical communication.
Research Questions: What content does the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication publish? How does that compare to the content published by other journals in the field? And what content do readers of the Transactions want to read?
Literature Review: Researchers in most fields occasionally analyze the entire body of literature within their disciplines as a result of a particular request or a research initiative.  The general purpose of these analyses is to assess the current state of the literature, although each analysis usually has a more specific focus that affects the entire field it covers.  Such reviews have had goals like identifying the leading works in a field, assessing the state of the literature of the field, providing a basis for changing the direction of a journal or body of literature, and assessing the alignment among different parts of  a body of literature. This study is rooted in a particular study intended to prepare for a transition among editors of a journal. 
Methodology: To identify what the Transactions publishes and its unique niche among peer-reviewed journals in the field, researchers identified all peer-reviewed articles published by four major journals in professional and technical communication between January 2006 and December 2010: the Transactions, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Technical Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly. Using the STC Body of Knowledge schema, two researchers coded the subjects of articles and adapting a schema by Klein (1999), they categorized the type of research underlying the articles.  To identify reader preferences, the other two researchers surveyed members of the IEEE Professional Communication Society (publisher of the Transactions) about their preferences for content and types of research (using the same schema).
Results and Discussion: The studies provide insights into the extent of alignment between  the material published by the Transactions on Professional Communication and the preferences of its readers on the types of topics covered and the methods used to generate them.  

To see the complete article, visit http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=47.  (Note: Only free to members of the IEEE Professional Communication Society and to those entering through university libraries with a subscription to IEEExplore.)

Announcing Associate Editors for IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

I am pleased to announce that the following people will serve as Associate Editors of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.  

Joining as Associate Editor-in-Chief, a new position, is Constance Kampf, an associate professor with the Aarhus School of Business at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark.  Kampf will oversee the ongoing sections of the journal as well as special issues.  

Returning as Associate Editor for Teaching Cases and Tutorials is Nicole Amare, an associate professor at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama, USA. 

Returning as Associate Editor for Book Reviews is consultant, Tiffany Craft Portewig, from Texas, USA.

And serving as Associate Editor for Special Projects is Jo Mackiewicz, an associate professor at Auburn  University in Auburn, Alabama, USA, and the outgoing editor-in-chief of the Transactions. 

I expect to name two more Associate Editors by mid-year, so stay tuned for announcements. 

Starting Term as Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

Effective January 1, I have started my term as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

I'm excited about working with this journal, which in its half century of publication, has earned its place as one of the leading journals in the field of professional and technical communication.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Transactions, it publishes original, empirical research (that is, research that collects data first-hand, and reports that research in a way that others can replicate the studies).

The Transactions is still focused on research typically addresses one of these contexts:

·         The communication practices of technical professionals, such as engineers and scientists

·         The practices of professional communicators who work in technical or business environments

·         Research-based methods for teaching and practicing professional communication

The Transactions is specifically looking for articles presenting research on these topics:

·         Communications technologies and their impact on the workplace, such as the impacts of content management systems, social media, electronic books, intelligent agents and similar technologies

·         Design, techniques and readability of communication materials in various media, such as the design of web-based materials, online help, printed and electronic books, user interfaces, and live presentations

·         Design, techniques, and impact of communications materials in various genres, such as technical reports, user assistance, proposals, public relations materials, slide decks for presentations, and engineering specifications 

·         Management of groups that produce professional and technical communication materials

·         Social impact of communications and related technology to engineering efforts

·         Reports on the effectiveness and limitations of research methodologies used to study these issues

The Transactions will continue to publish teaching cases, tutorials, and book reviews. 

The research submitted for consideration might have been conducted using:

·         Quantitative methodologies, including experimental and survey-based studies

·         Qualitative methodologies, including action research, design research, ethnographies, case studies, interview-based studies, and usability test results

·         Critical methodologies, including discourse analysis and integrative literature reviews.

Primary readers include:

·         Professional and technical communicators, including corporate communicators, editors, linguists, technical writers, translation specialists, and visual communicators (graphic designers and illustrators)

·         Engineers, scientists and other technical professionals who communicate as part of their job, such as consulting engineers, technical authors, and technology-transfer specialists

·         University instructors who include professional communication as part or all of their courses

If you're interested in learning more or want to discuss an idea for an article, please contact me.