Strength in the Technical Communication Journals and Diversity in the Serials Cited

Abstract

More than 1,600 serials from across the disciplines were identified as sources for technical communication scholars. The 99 most frequently cited serials are described. This citation analysis is distinguished from others by the size of the database (25,000+ citations), the 10-year review of articles published in five technical communication journals between 1988 and 1997, the number of serials cited and reviewed, and the focus on technical communication as a discipline. The analysis yielded two observations. First, five technical communication journals have grown in strength as forums for discussions of technical communication. Second, the serials cited illustrate the diversity of resources referred to from business, education, psychology, science, and technology-related sources. As a discipline, technical communication has developed depth and rigor through building the base of its research and theory while integrating the research and theory gathered from a number of disciplines.

The Impact of Perceptions of Journal Quality on Business and Management Communication Academics

“…The ABC Publications Board believes that we have limited collective knowledge about the impact that external perceptions of journal quality have on our discipline and about our own views, though somewhat related research appeared some time ago (Krapels & Martin, 1998;Reinsch & Lewis, 1993;Reinsch & Reinsch, 1996;Smith, 2000). Meanwhile, a significant change seems to be occurring in assessing journal quality.…”

Identifying Commonalities and Divergences Between Technical Communication Scholarly and Trade Publications (1996–2017)

“…Our goals in this study were to build on Smith's (2000aSmith's ( , 2000b 20-year-old citation analyses to learn where the TC academy-industry divide is most and least divergent and what those divisions mean for the overall health of the field of TC. Although some of these divisions could be attributed to differing nomenclature emphases (e.g., perhaps academics emphasize audience analysis whereas practitioners emphasize user and task analysis), we believe that the results of this study, which suggest uneven priorities between practitioners and academics, is a potential harbinger of rockiness in the discipline.…”

“…But the topics covered in TC have been less studied and have denied the field opportunities for a "more holistic understanding of where technical communication has been, where the field is now, and where the field could go" (Boettger & Friess, 2020). Some of the first examinations of the scholarly journal content of TC were Smith's citation analyses (Smith, 2000a(Smith, , 2000b. These analyses reveal that content areas in the research journals were "broadly identified as professional issues (defining technical communication, pedagogy, and research methods), rhetoric and the rhetorics of communities, document design and technology issues, and workplace communication" (Smith, 2000a, p. 427).…”

“…In TC, the research journals have been assessed for authorship characteristics. Smith's (2000aSmith's ( , 2000b citation studies found that men produced more scholarship than women did and that about a third of the research was produced by more than one author. Lam (2014) found that in four research journals, 66% of the articles were produced by more than one author.…”

“…The journal content came from JBTC, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (JTWC), TC, Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ), and TPC. These publications represent the leading forums for TC scholarship (Boettger & Lam, 2013;Carliner et al, 2011;Lowry et al, 2007;Smith, 2000aSmith, , 2000b and reflect the history of the discipline. The creation of TC in 1953 and TPC in 1957 (via the establishment of the STC and the IEEE Professional Communication Society, respectively) marked the emergence of our profession (Carliner, 2014(Carliner, , 2015.…”