New: Research Practice in Technical and Professional Communication

We are pleased to share the news that Research Practice in Technical and Professional Communication, a new open-access book is available through the WAC Clearinghouse (https://wacclearinghouse.org). The book appears in the book series, Foundations and Innovations in Technical and Professional Communication, which is edited by Lisa Melonçon.

The stories we tell about what happens in the course of our research require more attention. The complications, decision points, pivots, and challenges we navigate as we establish research questions, determine methods, and carry out research are rarely visible in published research. Yet it is those stories that are often most instructive to others. This collection brings together stories from researchers at all levels of experience—graduate students, early career scholars, and experienced researchers—to emphasize the importance of sharing the knowledge-making that happens in the moment as we decide, struggle, fail, and regroup throughout the normal course of conducting research. The researchers who share their stories in this collection describe how they arrived at their research questions, determined methods, recruited participants, made decisions or shifted focus during the course of their research, and made use of data that wasn’t what they expected or hoped to find. This focus on the how of research helps us to make these conversations about process more visible in the field of technical and professional communication, allowing them to serve effectively as teaching tools as we mentor students and colleagues, as we strengthen our own research practices, and as we encounter similar complications in our own work.

You can find the book at https://wacclearinghouse.org/books/tpc/research-practice/. The book will also be available in a print edition from the University Press of Colorado in the coming months. Thanks to Michelle, Valerie, and Lisa for their decision to share it with us as an open-access publication. Thanks as well to the anonymous peer reviewers who contributed to its development.

On behalf of the entire Clearinghouse team,

Michele Zugnoni

Associate Publisher for Communication

Edited by Michelle McMullin, Valerie Smith, and Lisa Melonçon