Update to who says what to whom? Assessing the alignment of content and audience between scholarly and professional publications in technical communication (1996–2013)

Abstract

Academe-industry relations are an ongoing topic in the conversation on technical communication. Key issues in the conversation include alignment between academic curricula and industry needs, the effectiveness of the preparation provided by academic programs, and the alignment of interests between the two groups. However, no study has attempted to empirically assess the extent of the academic and industry alignment empirically. This paper provides updated results from our ongoing exploration of this issue. It is guided by the following questions: (1) What content areas are covered by both peer-reviewed and trade publications?, (2) What content areas are unique to each type of publication?, and (3) Who is the intended audience of the content? To assess this alignment, we coded for three major content areas in a random sample of 986 articles published between

Communicative strategies of Ukrainian trade journals

“…The fundamental difference between scholarly and industry technical communication journals is the audience composition of the publications: while scientific publications create content mostly for academics, the subject of the branch was aimed at several specialists in technical communication and even contained articles for students. The most common topics for scientific journal articles were education and product analysis, while industry periodicals wrote more about professional aspects and the writing process (Boettger et al, 2015).…”