.pdf_Call for Contributors | Deadline for submissions is 28 February 2013 at 5pmCT.
We are seeking authors with completed or nearly completed projects to contribute chapters of 5,000-10,000 words for an upcoming anthology tentatively titled Communication Practices in Engineering, Manufacturing, and Research for Food, Drug, and Water Safety. This book will be part of a series sponsored by the IEEE Professional Communication Society, entitled “Professional Engineering Communication” and published through Wiley-IEEE Press. Queries concerning content are welcome. http://pcs.ieee.org/pcs-book-series/
This collection is intended to collect and pass along essays about improving food, drug, and water safety, manufacturing, and research through enhanced communication efforts, whether those efforts be in the realm of documentation, social media, strategy development, software applications, process management programs, hardware applications, RFID applications, or other related means.
Technological advancements have enormous capability for improving our lives, but often force us to change current communication methods and policies. Those changes inevitably cause some level of friction, because industries are entrenched in current practices, new developments are expensive to put into practice, and/or they raise societal issues (such as privacy or conflicting international standards) that must be dealt with in addition to promoting the new technology. These types of issues, when added to the new technology itself, create a rhetorical situation that must be addressed through communication.
With an eye towards communication strategies within organizations, research centers, and other entities, chapter contributors are expected to explore a subject in the area of engineering food/drug/water safety, manufacturing, and/or delivery by detailing research, advancements, acts of resistance, current events, or public policy debates. Articles should be well grounded in research, insight, experience, and thoughtfulness.
Examples might include topics such as these:
- How some sectors resist or embrace online communication practices within their organizations
- How social media plays a positive, negative, or other part in organizational communication
- How researchers can conduct ethical studies on organizational online communication
- Challenges that organizations face when implementing new communication channels, practices, or project management strategies
- How rebranding a company or redesigning a website changed communication within an organization
- How RFID integration has assisted or hindered communication between manufacturers, vendors, distributors, etc.
- How technological innovations such as nano-biosensors or other disease monitoring devices can be promoted as improved alternatives for safety and the communication thereof
- How risk analysis, used to improve food/drug/water safety, can be communicated to the public at all levels
- How database information management and real-time communication have changed food, drug, and water safety in societal contexts
- How the impact of archiving, or the lack thereof, of instant messages, text messages, and emails affects an organization (legal ramifications, privacy concerns, and so forth)
- How translation and localization of products are integrated into (or not integrated into ) the bringing of product to market
- How and why new technologies for promoting and communicating aspects of food/drug/water safety have been promoted, accepted, or rejected
- How advancements in food, drug, and water safety have been communicated to the public and to governmental agencies
- How project management software packages affect workflow and team communication
- How to address tension or misunderstandings between two internal sectors (Marketing vs. Engineering, for example)
The goal is for this book to enlighten professionals, researches, and students on the subject area and how communication efforts within that field or activity are being impacted by recent communication tools and developments. Furthermore, the book will emphasize communicating those developments to the public, to industry stakeholders, to government officials, and best practices for promoting their use in both industry and the larger society.
As this subject is about the quirks of research when exploring communication patterns within technical/engineering communication as related to the food and drug realms, some ambiguity or lack of resolution can be acceptable, if framed with intent and insight.
Your chapter’s perspective can be developed from any number of angles: a particular project, a particular research approach, an on-site case, an in-house solution set, an ethical dilemma, or the like. People, project, and company names should be omitted or pseudonyms can be used to protect confidentiality. If you are using data collected from human interaction, the appropriate permissions and/or human subject releases are the responsibility of the author of the chapter.
Chapters should be strongly written, and contributors can expect to work with involved editors to polish the publication. And while writers/contributors will not be paid, they will receive a free copy of the book once published.
We welcome a wide range of stories from engineering professionals, technical communicators, documentation experts, localization professionals, and/or scientists who work within or outside the U.S.
How to Submit Your Proposed Chapter
All chapters should be submitted in Microsoft Word, using 11 point font, and single spaced. Use IEEE citation style.
Please send all submissions or queries by email to:
Department of English and Technical Communication
Missouri University of Science and Technology