CFP: Special issue “Embracing and Reframing Research Failures” for Technical Communication and Social Justice (proposal due March 31)

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Hi everyone,

Emma Rose, Dorcas Anabire, and I are editing a special issue for Technical Communication and Social Justice titled Embracing and Reframing Research Failures: Toward More Socially Just Practices.

You can see the full CFP here and attached PDF.

Here’s a brief overview and proposal guidelines:

For this special issue, we invite stories of research failure that challenge dominant notions of “research success” and redefine and reframe “failure” productively toward more socially just goals of what academic research can mean and what research should be valued, especially in technical and professional communication. Thus, in this special issue, we reframe “failure” productively to highlight how systems and structures foreclose possibility and sustain injustice. Failure is often a feature of attempting to change durable, unjust structures. Sharing failures can be a way to share strategies and approaches for how we navigate these unjust systems and for validating other ways of knowledge making, including failure.

Specifically, articles in this issue may address the following questions:

  • How do we respond to challenges during the research process (the unexpected shifts and changes)? What are ways to pivot?

  • When research must necessarily “fail” because ethics requires it so (Dadas, 2024)? When and how do we decide to step away from research due to ethical challenges, positionality, identity, and concerns for marginalized audiences or the communities we are working alongside? How can this turn into a meaningful experience?

  • How can we challenge dominant notions of “success”? Who benefits from our research? Who’s harmed by our research?

  • How can we embrace failure? How do we reduce harm around failure?

  • How do we think about the trajectories of our research lives? How do experiences of “failure” shape our research and professional identities?

  • What cunning ways can we use to frame our research when faced with social and political challenges?

  • How does research failure inform the teaching of research methods?

We invite submissions of empirical research, case studies, integrative literature reviews, workplace studies, and narratives that explore the concept of failure in technical communication.

Proposals should be 300-500 words (not including citations). They should align with the focus of the journal; submissions should approach the topic of “research failure” through (1) exploring the systems and structures that legitimize and sustain injustice and/or (2) redressing injustice and/or enacting social justice in spheres of technical communication work.

Please include

  • Author name(s), affiliation(s), email(s),

  • The working title for the article, article type, key terms, specific topics, methods (if applicable)

  • Reader takeaways

Please send proposals or questions to the special issue editors:

  • Chen Chen, Utah State University, chen.chen

  • Emma J. Rose, University of Washington Tacoma, ejrose

  • Dorcas A. Anabire, Utah State University, dorcas.anabire

Special issue timeline

  • Proposals due March 31, 2026

  • Decisions on proposals – April 30, 2026

  • Full drafts due – July 15, 2026

  • Decisions to Authors – August 31, 2026

  • Revisions – October 15, 2026

  • Anticipated Publication – Winter/Spring 2027

Chen

Chen Chen
Assistant Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric
Utah State University
She/her/hers

FailureCFP_TCSJ_.pdf