Research in Editing and Publishing

Feedback is essential to personal and professional growth, yet many of us fear the process due to past feedback experiences that were poorly or even destructively framed. We fear receiving negative feedback that causes self-doubt or leaves us confused or frustrated; we also fear giving feedback that could have these impacts on others. Learning to give feedback effectively is a skill that, when modeled with clear guidance, all students can learn. Its use in the classroom allows students to engage more meaningfully with the material as well as providing a framework for feedback experiences in their lives outside the classroom. By understanding the intention or objective of a work and combining inquiry with reflection, feedback can be crafted to underscore a work’s potential and its opportunities for growth and expansion. This turns revision into an enjoyable creative act rather than one that can feel punishing or sapped of enjoyment. In this workshop, we will examine my framework for feedback in the book editing classroom, which I call the ACE method (actionable, constructive, encouraging). I will use examples of assignments I have developed that center student feedback experiences, and I will present ideas for criteria and guidance for various types of feedback activities. By integrating more peer feedback sessions on drafts of graded assignments into the classroom, instructors can receive student work that is more polished and deeply developed, leading to better and more meaningful assessment experiences. Participants will learn my ACE method and practice it themselves to more effectively model feedback to their students in their teaching and assessments. They will then use assignments from their own classrooms to create related feedback activities. Workshop participants will leave with a model for showing students how to share and implement feedback more effectively, along with ideas for activities they can integrate into their classrooms and pedagogy. This workshop will be helpful to any educators who want to integrate more student feedback experiences in their teaching, including those facilitating writing or other creative workshops that center peer feedback. It will also help anyone wanting a clear framework for reinvigorating the work of revision–either for themselves or for their clients–or who wants ideas for ways to further engage students in hands-on, interactive classroom activities.

For many students, technical editing courses may be one of the most intellectually demanding courses they take in their undergraduate writing education. The focus on grammatical correctness, as well as the requirements that editors understand good writing and be able to identify issues and solve them successfully, means that technical editing courses both cover a lot of ground and require a broad skillset from students for them to be successful. At my institution, this course is anecdotally known as one of the hardest courses in our program—but also the course students cite as where they learn deeply applicable skills. Because of the challenges these courses present to students, they may also create barriers to student success. For instance, over the past ten years of teaching technical editing at a public university (both in-person and online), I have observed students falling into the perfectionist trap, where they stop engaging when they meet failure or roadblocks; they also sometimes bring in limiting mindsets (“I’m not good at grammar”) that impede their success. Other barriers may be more structural, such as the requirement that students practice and submit regular deliverables by specific deadlines. The purpose of this workshop is to consider how we can use inclusive pedagogical strategies to reduce structural barriers, help students overcome failure, and increase student engagement and success through curriculum design and course delivery. By the end of this workshop, participants will

• Identify the range of barriers that inhibit student success in their local context
• Explore inclusive strategies—such as labor-based contract grading, flexible policies, and incorporating Universal Design for Learning principles—that can work effectively in an editing course
• Apply inclusive strategies to course design and delivery
• Create a plan to assess impact of strategies to reflect and iterate in the future

The workshop will proceed in three phases: first, the types of barriers students may encounter, with opportunities for participants to work together to identify these barriers and how they affect students. The second part of the workshop will introduce a range of inclusive strategies that call on current scholarship in inclusive pedagogies with examples of how they might look or work in an editing context. This part of the workshop, which will take up most of the time, will provide space for participants to identify the specific strategies they want to apply and begin working to revise or create materials for their own courses. The final part of the workshop will invite participants to take a scholarship of teaching & learning approach to curriculum design and create an assessment plan to determine impacts of strategies and space for them to reflect and revise the course for the future. The workshop will provide materials and activities to use beyond the workshop when they return to their local contexts.

Robert Connors’ landmark essay, “The Rise of Technical Writing Instruction in America,” in 1981made note of the first journal in the subdiscipline of technical writing. By then the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication was a decade old. More recently, several articles have traced the arc of the subdiscipline, establishing key issues that have persisted throughout its history. Recently, for example, Tham (2024) analyzed CCCC outstanding dissertation award winners in TPC for trends in research topics and methods employed and Melonçon and Amant (2019) examined the most commonly used methods in journal articles. In 2013 Boettger and Lam (2013) examined several specific TPC journals and the topics they covered. Analyzing journals provides insight into the emergence and founding of disciplines, the values it holds and the challenges its editors have encountered (Daly Goggin, 2000). In this paper we analyze the first 10 years of the discipline’s first journal, The Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, to track the emergence of the first journal devoted to TPC. We provide a comprehensive view of the journal’s emergence showing the exigencies that were present at the formation of the subdiscipline and tracing how the journal sustained itself as it developed. Who wrote, about what, and for what purposes? Several approaches were used to examine the journal’s formation. We interviewed the longstanding current editor to better understand the motivations for establishing the journal and the editorial and publishing processes that guided the initial years of its existence. We also correlated authors and their affiliations to demonstrate the role of academic and non-academic authors in shaping the issues and their contributions to the profession. This involved thematic coding of each published article over the journal’s first decade to provide a detailed qualitative analysis of the journal, as well as descriptive statistics to analyze differences between academic and non-academic interests and exigencies. The journal’s early practices, contents, and contributors provide insight into the formation of what has become a critical component of the technical writing publishing world.

Resumes are an integral part of acquiring a job as job-seekers, using bullet-point format, “must showcase their talents, experiences, and skills on a single sheet of paper” (Madhuri, 2025). Editing these resumes can be lucrative for freelance editors who can charge hundreds of dollars for editing these one-page documents (Fiverr, 2025). There is a general consensus of the common information to include in one’s resume: objective, work experience, education, and references (Ross & Young, 2005), with the work experience being considered one of the most important (Indeed, 2025). However, despite this consensus about categories, there is little guidance for editors to know how to structure and organize the content within them. The goal of this research is to determine common practices for organizing and structuring the content within the bullet points listed in the work experience section of resumes. The researchers sampled 69 example resumes provided through higher education institutions. Using content analysis (Geisler & Swarts, 2019), the researchers then analyzed the bullet points within the work experience sections of these resumes. Four content categories emerged:

• Action leading to result: Starts with a specific action then is followed by a result or intention
• Result achieved by action: Starts with a result that is followed by a specific action used to achieve the result
• Mixed: Includes both “Action leading to result” and “Result achieved by action”
• Action without results: States an action or responsibility without results

Preliminary results indicate that most bullet points fell into the “action without results” category, upending common advice that resumes should emphasize results in addition to actions (Indeed, 2025). This presentation will discuss these findings in more detail and will provide recommendations for freelance editors who take on projects in resume editing.

Students in technical communication programs often want to pursue careers in publishing rather than traditional technical communication roles. As Director of the Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) program at the University of Arizona, I have observed this recurring interest and reflected on how programs can better support students pursuing publishing pathways. This paper proposes a framework for technical communication programs in curriculum design and professional development that highlights connections between technical communication and publishing. Drawing on research into skills sought by the publishing industry, I demonstrate how course offerings, course assignments, portfolio artifacts, and capstone projects can be tailored to prepare students for publishing careers. This framework also broadens students’ understanding of publishing by including technical publications, industry journals, and other nonfiction genres. Because most universities do not offer degrees in publishing, technical communication programs serve a critical site for students to develop transferable skills in technical editing, project management, UX research, content strategy, document design, and industry-standard tools. In doing so, programs can also strengthen recruitment while aligning best practices with publishing industry expectations for our students. Ultimately, this paper provides an approach for programs to support students at the intersection of technical communication and publishing.

As Faculty Advisor for Spectrum Literary Magazine, an undergraduate-run literary journal that has been published out of the College of Creative Studies at UCSB since 1957, I recently conducted an extensive research project with students enrolled in the Literary Publishing course sequence. I will share insights from this project in light of effective pedagogical practices related to DEI measures in publishing, and will also discuss effective means of collaboration with students as co-editors and creators of a long-standing literary magazine.

In this presentation, I describe convergences among maker cultures, small press publishing, and little magazines that have manifested in my own publishing practice and the emergent publishing practices of my students. I argue that by “making literature happen” students enhance their own self-efficacy. My primary methods are descriptive bibliographic analysis of products of such publishing spaces, and some bio-bibliography that engages with how makers imagine their contributions to bibliodiversity and participatory parity through their use of the CSUN Book Arts Lab, a bookmaking space I founded to support Northridge Review, CSUN’s longest running student little magazine.

Across many English departments, editing and publishing activities are viewed as service activities completed in addition to the “real work” of publishing one’s own writing and teaching. In this paper, I expand upon the “writer-teacher” model of the creative writing professorship articulated by Katherine Haake in What Our Speech Disrupts to argue for a writer-teacher-editor model that acknowledges the creative, intellectual, and professional contributions of editing and publishing. The writer-teacher-editor model will recognize the literary and artistic knowledges required for editing and publishing work, elevate the status of “service” work, and highlight the professional possibility of editing and publishing for student writer-editors.

As Faculty Advisor for literary publications within the Los Angeles Community Colleges, colleagues have asked why not just make it a website, blog, app? This paper explores how college literary publishing can respond to today’s visual sensory overload by emphasizing creation as “primary experiences” or hands-on activities. I apply Katherine Haake’s idea from What Our Speech Disrupts that students must be retrained out of “writing backwards” to the context of college literary publishing, advocating for retraining students out of “creating backwards.” By framing curriculum as burrowing and open for play students can develop a process-based approach that not only improves a publication, but also their engagement with publishing beyond the classroom.

Teaching publishing offers unique opportunities to fuse theory and practice in the classroom. Working with students at Kennesaw State, I’ve designed course content and assignments that result in publications for our literary magazine, The Headlight Review. Connecting students with industry professionals, such as writers, editors, and booksellers, enriches their understanding of the theory we study and allows them to develop publishing experiences of their own. This presentation will consider the challenges and benefits of putting community-engaged publishing theory into practice in the classroom and share effective pedagogical and publishing strategies.

Students in editing courses express anxiety around the rise of generative A.I. To encourage critical engagement with these platforms, my course examines the architecture of Large Language Models to emphasize what human editors bring to interactions with clients that A.I. does not—a mental model of the world, operationalized as a personalized philosophy of writing that’s beautiful, convincing, true. This presentation contrasts these strengths I invite students to embody with the probabilistic approach to editing inherent to machine learning. The process equips learners to differentiate themselves in a time of professional precarity and prepares them to engage our invited guest speakers from the editing and writing professions.

Working with a Minnesota nonprofit and high-school-aged immigrants, student editors published essay collections articulating stories of resettlement in the US. Course structures emphasized High Impact Practices, including collaboration, community-based learning, global/diversity learning, and worked-based learning/professionalization. The assignments gave students opportunities to apply their skills as editors, learn about the publishing process, and explore unique experiences of others. Focused on helping students navigate the complexities of editors working with writers, this presentation will provide an overview of course structures and assignments, as well as the results of a value and impact study of participants will be shared.

Though research has been conducted on literature-focused digital communities (Foasberg; Jerasa), a specific type of online community created by book publishers for readers of young adult literature (YAL) has yet to be explored. These communities do not exist outside of YAL and are not imprints of their parent companies, as they do not publish books themselves. Before the past 2-3 years, these websites and their social media profiles promoted their parent companies’ YAL titles while using recreational content, such as videos and blog posts, to create online communities around the genre. However, these spaces have become more sales-focused than community-centered. These digital spaces’ unique origins, their previously stark differences from online presences of their parent publishing companies, and their movement away from community building and toward direct sales tactics raise important questions about their existence and the loss of defined virtual communities within YAL publishing. Through a comparative website and social media analysis of the four largest publishing companies in the US (Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster) and their YAL-focused online brands (Underlined, NOVL, EpicReads, and Riveted by Simon Teen), this presentation will answer foundational questions about the definition, purpose, and impact of the digital spaces which I have named “online reader communities” (ORCs). I define an ORC as an interactive online community within a dedicated virtual space consisting of readers who share an interest in a particular literary genre or category. In the case of the ORCs included in this proposal, the readers share an interest in YAL. This definition originated from my 2022 graduate thesis; this presentation will examine whether ORCs fitting this definition still exist and, if not, whether similar virtual communities (e.g., “Bookstagram” and “BookTok”) can fulfill ORCs’ original purpose for YAL publishers and readers.

When I began teaching an editing and publishing course in 2009, it was with the earnest intentions of offering book-loving English students a glimpse into the “book business” and helping them prepare for possible careers in what upstate New Yorkers call “The City.” We looked at the careers of exemplary editors like Max Perkins, Jackie Onassis, or Toni Morrison. Now, as Scott Norton has argued, “the Editor, too, is dead” (ix), and student cynicism about corporate America and trade publishers goes hand-in-hand with increasingly satirical depictions of the publishing industry. The Devil Wears Prada depicts the magazine editor as tyrant, The Other Black Girl, Erasure and American Fiction mock the industry as superficial and racially clueless, and Yellowface explores the impact of cancel culture for publishing. In this talk, I explore some of the pleasures and challenges of assigning and discussing this emerging subgenre, arguing that while these satires may help engage students and offer them realistic cautions, they also risk erasing more serious histories of publishing and pushing students to self-publish prematurely.

As editing and publishing (E&P) research grows, questions persist about where the discipline’s boundaries lie particularly when emerging publishing models disrupt inherited professional norms. Hybrid publishing occupies one such contested space. Frequently dismissed as “vanity publishing,” hybrid models nevertheless combine author-subsidized funding with professional editorial, design, and distribution practices, complicating traditional distinctions among self-, traditional, and open-access publishing. This paper examines hybrid publishing through the lens of editorial labor and author–editor collaboration, with particular attention to how control over the manuscript is negotiated in di@erent publishing models. In traditional publishing arrangements, editors often act as institutional gatekeepers, balancing authorial voice with market expectations, brand identity, and production constraints sometimes leading to significant manuscript intervention that authors may resist or only partially influence. Hybrid publishing, by contrast, positions authors as active partners throughout the editorial process, granting them greater agency in decision-making around revisions, design, and production timelines. While this collaborative proximity can empower authors and support more inclusive forms of knowledge production, it also raises persistent concerns about legitimacy: does increased author control risk devaluing editorial rigor, or does it merely challenge inherited assumptions about authority and quality? By analyzing these tensions, this paper interrogates whether hybrid publishing meaningfully reconfigures editorial practice or whether it remains vulnerable to being framed as vanity publishing within a polarized publishing landscape.

Student journals exist across the country. They shape and give experience to students, forming their editing identities. Each has their own unique way of getting articles to publication, necessitating training for student editors. These editors are in the position to determine the fate of manuscripts, as they mentor authors, facilitate scholarly discussion, and allow for ideas to be exchanged (Sparks, 2012). But several studies mention that student editors have little to no formal training in editing (Galipeau et al. 2013) and with a majority of these editors primarily responsible for the editorial process without direct faculty member supervision (Mariani et al., 2013) there is a need to examine whether or not training exists and how it is implemented. For this study, we seek to understand if and what kind of training is given at 5-10 student journals at a private university and how senior staff of those journals feel that that training could evolve. Our study will concentrate on the findings of a survey that will be sent out to the senior staff members. It will be analyzed for patterns in editing training and the perspectives of the journal members. The findings of this study will assist student journals with effective plans for training, support faculty members in their advisement, and enhance the experience of student editors.

While scholarly journals emphasize editorial rigor, many struggle with discoverability, practitioner engagement, and sustained audience development. Student-run, editor-supervised marketing committees can bridge publishing pedagogy and professional practice. Experiential learning links authentic work and reflection to skill transfer and professional identity (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Kolb, 1984). Situated learning and communities-of-practice theories likewise argue that competence develops through legitimate participation in real journal workflows, roles, and shared artifacts (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). This individual paper presents a governance model for integrating student-run marketing committees into scholarly journal operations, grounded in journal practice and framed as a transferable implementation blueprint. The model specifies (a) committee structure (i.e., student roles, faculty/editor mentors, editorial-board liaison), (b) decision-rights boundaries that protect editorial independence, and (c) quality-control checkpoints for public-facing communications. It standardizes repeatable outputs (i.e., lay summaries, issue-launch toolkits, and an analytics dashboard) and treats student ownership and accountability as essential design features (Haley, Ritsch, & Smith, 2016). Assessment is embedded through constructive alignment so learning outcomes map directly to deliverables and rubric criteria (Biggs, 1996). Aligned with REAP’s emphasis on rigorous editing and publishing (E&P) scholarship, the following propositions (P1-P3) specify expected outcomes for journals, students, and editorial independence. • P1: Journals adopting the model will increase the consistency and reach of issue-level promotion through standardized outputs and workflow cadence (Haley et al., 2016; Wenger, 1998). • P2: Student participants will demonstrate stronger competence in scholarly communication than peers in classroom-only instruction (Kolb, 1984). • P3: Decision-rights boundaries and review checkpoints will protect editorial independence while enabling legitimate student participation and identity formation (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Future implementations can evaluate impact using pre/post engagement indicators (e.g., issuepage views, downloads, and email click-through rates) and student learning gains via rubric-scored portfolios and structured reflective memos (Boud et al., 1985). 2

The Transdisciplinary Academic Conference for Emerging Scholars 2025 is an undergraduate conference held on 28.06.2025 at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) by a group of HKU undergraduates (Transdisciplinary Initiative for Talents and Innovators, 2025). As the editor-in-chief and vice editor-in-chief, we would like to share our organising, editing, reviewing, and publishing experiences in Hong Kong, addressing the following questions in this experience report: 1) How is transdisciplinarity mobilised to foster undergraduate academia? 2) How does the student initiative navigate academic credibility and integrity? Transdisciplinarity is adopted as the central theme of the conference because of its academic rigour, inclusiveness and accessibility (see HKU Common Core, 2024, 2025). The notion of transdisciplinarity is conceptually informed by Latour’s (2014) critical zones, taking human and non-human elements into consideration for a nuanced understanding. We substantiate the term “transdisciplinarity” into a concept more approachable yet not restrained, diverging into three themes—discourse and humanity, saga and statecraft, and mind and innovation. To build rapport among peers as trustworthy organisers, the initiative invites professors across Hong Kong to serve as honorary advisors, seeking recognition from the Millennium Fellowship 2025. The open-access book of abstracts and conference proceedings (Tse & Ng, 2025a, 2025b) are edited, self-published, and catalogued; they are deposited at institutional archives to preserve the edited volumes. Each abstract and full manuscript undergoes a single-blind peer review process to ensure relevant, plagiarism-free, and substantively sound submissions. In particular, this report addresses the dilemma between promoting emerging scholarship and maintaining academic standards, as well as the business model for running a non-profit academic conference. This report seeks to make a case for how student-initiated conferences serve as a legitimate pathway to nurture research experiences for the undergraduate community—engaging with editorial and publishing workflows—beyond offering a presentation trial.

The recent call for undergraduate research often stops short of discussing ways to incorporate publishing experiences into the curriculum. Modelling this fundamental academic activity helps prepare undergraduate students for graduate and professional school expectations by providing authentic practice and signature experiences. This presentation profiles a course (re)design focused on student research and publishing, including grounding in current undergraduate research and dissemination scholarship; a multi-layered response and revision system; experience in submitting work for publication; and sample assignment sheets.

Faced with traditional argumentative essays, students often miss real-world connections. In a 2024 study, I tested an op-ed/open letter assignment in first-year composition to bridge theory and practice, pushing them to more effectively edit and ultimately, publicly circulate their works. Cooperative in-class research tasks helped them develop transferable abilities and refine their voices, moving from unformed opinions to researched, polished arguments. This presentation reviews the assignment design, challenges, and adaptations, showing how real stakes increase student buy-in through authentic revision, social composition, and rhetorical application. I conclude with study findings and potential broader applications.

While undergraduates are seasoned digital creators, with many publishing daily through social media, they often lack formal rhetorical training for digital spaces. By applying digital archival methodologies, this presentation positions undergraduate digital publishing as a vital site for teaching rhetorical awareness. Further, I argue that this shift to digital-first publishing necessitates a pedagogical realignment beyond text-centric models toward multimodal composition. This study outlines how a focus on rhetorical practice allows students to translate their informal digital habits into professional editorial competencies, providing a framework that equips students to navigate the complexities of modern publishing with both technical proficiency and rhetorical intent.

Every utterance, wrote Bakhtin (1996), “is entangled, shot through with shared thoughts, points of view, alien judgments and accents” (p. 276). Such intertextuality reveals itself especially in quotations, where authors entwine their words with the words of others. Intertextuality becomes particularly complex when it takes the form of scare quotes (SQs), those metadiscoursal markers that call upon the message recipient to collaborate in creating an implicit meaning. Take, for example, the SQs in a manual for a DeWalt angle grinder: Hold the power tool by insulated gripping surfaces only, when performing an operation where the cutting accessory may contact hidden wiring. Cutting accessory contacting a "live" wire may make exposed metal parts of the power tool "live" and could give the operator an electric shock. The manual writer’s use of SQs seems intended to convey that the term live is colloquial, as opposed to technical. Editors have grappled with such SQs for decades, yet style guide advice about them remains cursory. The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, says only that “scare quotes lose their force and may irritate readers if overused.” And it seems that people are using SQs more and more often. Back in 2013, Merrill Perlman observed that SQs have “exploded in recent years,” especially in writing about politics. Given the important role that SQs play in shaping the metadiscourse of texts, we identified the most frequent one-word SQs in the written-language data of the Sketch Engine corpus and then categorized those one-word SQs into themes, such as politics, finance, machines, relationships, art, clothing, time, and physical states (e.g., “live” wire). Our goal was to reveal how writers use SQs—what content types generate their use—and thus to help editors consider whether and when SQs are appropriate for a given context.

Verbal hedges and hedging structures such as “perhaps,” “you might want to…,” or “there may be…,” are sometimes lumped together with “weasel words” or criticized for making a writer sound unsure or less confident, and advice to writers and editors may suggest removing them completely. However, hedges often serve important pragmatic, social, and cultural functions and can contribute to politeness, soften a directive, enhance a sense of collaboration, and help writers feel that they have control of their text. Since the use of hedging can vary across cultures, genders, and languages, what do editors need to know to use hedges successfully in their comments and queries, particularly when editing non-anglophone writers of English? This paper looks at hedging across cultures and suggests strategies that editors can consider when using hedging to make their comments effective and culturally appropriate. It begins with a discussion of the literature comparing hedging across languages, disciplines, and cultures, and then offers examples of hedging in editorial comments taken from nineteen papers written by Anglophone and non-Anglophone writers. Although hedging can be a useful tool, it can also create confusion for the author, and an awareness of successful strategies can help editors serve their clients more effectively.

For the publishing industry to flourish, there is need for a broad policy framework. The policy framework needs to cover rules, guidelines and regulations that can promote common standards, including orthography practices and vocabulary use. One of the issues to be dealt with will be the relationship between indigenous vocabulary and loanwords from English and other foreign languages in locally pieces of creative writings in Zambia. To address these and related issues, the study examines a corpus of Icibemba written texts published by a public publishing house. It identifies how graphemes have been used in different historical periods (colonial, postcolonial) by different authors and in different texts from the same author. Data will be based on an on-going research project entitled ‘Corpus driven bilingual Icibemba-English Dictionary/ Icitabo ca Mashiwi Icingeleshi-Icibemba = 794p (longest text =163p, shortest text =41p)’.

Over the past several decades, researchers have taken a particular interest in the professional identity development of students in higher education. The fields of medicine (Findyartini et al., 2022) and teacher education (Beijaard et al., 2004; Shwartz & Dori, 2020) have been at the forefront providing a wealth of insight. Specifically, research has shown that experiential learning and reflection lead to significant development of a professional identity (Beck et al., 2015; Jackson, 2016), and it is generally acknowledged that a stronger professional identity at graduation leads to a more seamless transition into the profession post-graduation (Baharum et al., 2023; Blokker et al., 2023). The purpose of this research is to identify the curricular, pedagogical, social, and environmental components of a university-level copyediting course that are most strongly associated with professional identity development in students. This is a qualitative study using questionnaires throughout a semester and selected interviews at the end to gather data on the participants’ lived experiences. Data analysis will follow standard practice with thematic analysis. Because data collection is currently underway, there are no results to offer at this time. However, it is expected that the data will provide some insight into specific factors that promote professional identity development in copyediting students. Nevertheless, this presentation will equip attendees with insights that they can use to make informed classroom decisions that foster editing students’ professional identity development before graduation.

In the field of English for research publication purposes, an emerging strand of research has presented welcoming efforts to support graduate students in navigating scholarly knowledge production and dissemination. Even so, very few studies have explored graduate students’ experiences in becoming and being editors, though flagship journals (e.g., Journal of Second Language Writing) in our field have launched the Student Editorial Board Member Initiatives. The scholarly underrepresentation of graduate students as editors is surprising and warrants further research attention. For one, graduate students are the next generation of editors, and they are in a constant and gradual process of becoming and shifting from multiple identities between authors, reviewers, and editors. For another, gatekeeping knowledge or expertise, as Habibie and Hultgren (2022b) noted, is mostly acquired through “the sink or swim model” or “personal initiative of individual academics” (p. 16). In this study, I, from a less-touched becoming perspective (Habibie, 2022) and drawing on theoretical insights from legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the communication theory of identity (Hecht, 1993; Hecht et al., 2003), adopt an autoethnographically-oriented approach to trace my lived experiences in becoming, growing as, and thriving as a graduate editor of Applied Linguistics Forum, the official newsletter of TESOL’s Applied Linguistics Interest Section. Specifically, this study presents the struggles, successes, and setbacks behind the socialization of a peripheral scholar, considers being agentive as a means of “opening the door” in scholarly publication and engagement, and concludes with sustainable editorial literacies and practices to become a graduate editor. By doing so, my autoethnographic narrative intends to offer graduate students the insights and support that they might find inspiring and helpful in understanding what it means to work as graduate editors and how to enter and embark on the often occluded but deeply significant work of editors.

In my presentation, I discuss the case study of the journal I edit, MELUS: Multiethnic Literature of the United States, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), and my approach to mentoring graduate student assistant editors at UNLV in the work of the journal. At UNLV, graduate students (whether MA, MFA, or PhD) are provided with graduate assistantships to work on MELUS: a full assistantship (20 hours/week) for a managing editor and a partial assistantship (10 hours/week) for a works cited/fact-checker/proofreader. I also employ a professional copyeditor outside of my university, but OUP pays their salary. For the graduate assistant editors with whom I work, I provide initial and ongoing mentoring in editorial principles, and, for the managing editor, even more hands-on training and ongoing conversations about issues such as choosing peer reviewers, preparing manuscripts for peer review, corresponding with authors and guest editors, desk rejection versus peer review, and peer review ethics. While the works cited/fact-checker/proofread position is more involved in the actual editing of the accepted submissions, both members of the graduate student editorial team are involved in final proofreading of the typeset issues (four per year). Beyond the mechanics of peer review and understanding the editing process and workflow, graduate student editors on MELUS also acquire firsthand exposure to cutting-edge scholarship in the field and become familiar with the qualities and conventions of publishable scholarship in ethnic literary studies. In this way, the mentoring impact of these students’ work on MELUS extends beyond the editing profession to their work as potential scholars themselves. Finally, as my graduate assistant editors approach graduation, I discuss with them career options in editing—such as positions advertised by the Association of University Presses—for which they are well-prepared. In this way, students working with me on MELUS, especially PhD students, also gain experience for alternate academic opportunities in the humanities beyond tenure-track faculty positions.

Academic research and publishing, which are inherently social activities, can be affected by power dynamics among a range of parties involved, such as co-researchers, universities, and funding organizations. To date, there has been a substantial amount of research on the power relations between the context where global scholars work and the Western countries that currently have the most power to set ground rules for the “game” of international publishing. However, power dynamics involved in knowledge production processes exist not only at the macro (global) level but also at the meso (intranational) and micro (national) level, the situation of which is relatively less studied. Hence, in this study, I explored the effects of different entities that play a mediating role in the choice-making of local and foreign scholars working in Greater China, which is well known for the complex political dynamics and interrelationships within the region and has been productive in research production in the last decade. To examine the types of power that these entities exercise, I conducted a text history study that was preceded by a qualitative survey. Using a Modified Grounded Theory, I identified three types of power that have important effects on participating scholars’ choices in research and publishing: sovereign power, disciplinary power, and governmentality (Foucault, 2008). Also, the choices these scholars make have been shaped by three main types of entities involved in their research and publishing: national and local governments; research funding organizations; and academic journals. Holding different powers and authority in their different contexts, these entities have combined effects on scholars’ choices. Additionally, the power of these entities affects participating scholars in different ways and to varying degrees, depending on scholars’ nationality, work contexts, and job responsibilities. These findings may inform future policymaking regarding evaluation on scholars and provision of support for researchers.

This paper presents a case study of I*POW (International Portfolio of Writers), a grassroots digital publishing initiative launched in mid-2024 via Telegram. Conceived as a collaborative platform for emerging writers from Uganda and beyond—including Botswana, India, and Pakistan—I*POW addresses the need for accessible, globally visible publication outside traditional frameworks. Built through informal networks like WhatsApp, the project shows how editing and publishing (E&P) practices can emerge organically across borders and resource constraints. As editor-in-chief, I curated submissions, designed cover art, produced audio content, and distributed works digitally. I*POW’s ethos emphasizes mentorship, professional presentation, and creative autonomy—offering young writers a portfolio-driven model for literary visibility. My novel, ROCK ‘N’ DRAW (2025) (see: https://bit.ly/rockndraw), was published through I*POW as both a creative work and a motivational anchor for the community. However, the project’s trajectory also reveals structural challenges: sustaining voluntary participation, recruiting new contributors, and navigating the absence of financial or institutional support. This paper reflects on these tensions and proposes I*POW as a microcosm of the broader disciplinary questions facing E&P: How can we cultivate editorial infrastructures that are inclusive, interdisciplinary, and resilient? What models of authorship, editorship, and publishing emerge when traditional boundaries are bypassed? By situating I*POW within the conference’s call to grow and define the E&P discipline, this paper invites dialogue on the role of digital grassroots publishing in shaping the future of editorial practice—especially in underrepresented regions and transnational creative communities.

This paper examines the role of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as a structuring mechanism in the development of editing and publishing (E&P) as a coherent scholarly and professional discipline, with particular reference to the Algerian academic publishing landscape. While DOIs are often framed as a purely technical layer of scholarly communication, this study argues that they also perform crucial editorial, epistemic, and institutional functions that directly shape publishing practices, visibility, and credibility. Drawing on my dual position as an academic researcher and Crossref Ambassador in Algeria, the paper combines policy analysis, editorial case studies, and field observations from national journals and publishing platforms. It explores how uneven DOI adoption reflects deeper challenges in editorial training, metadata literacy, governance, and sustainability within emerging publishing ecosystems. In contexts where journals operate with limited resources and fragmented editorial infrastructures, the absence or misuse of DOIs contributes to reduced discoverability, weak citation networks, and marginalisation from global scholarly exchanges. The paper situates DOI implementation within broader editorial workflows, highlighting its implications for peer review transparency, metadata quality, authorship attribution, and long-term preservation. It further discusses the pedagogical gap in editing and publishing programmes, where persistent identifiers and metadata management remain under-taught despite their centrality to contemporary publishing standards. By foregrounding the Algerian case, this contribution advances a global and comparative perspective on E&P, demonstrating how infrastructural tools such as DOIs can serve as entry points for strengthening editorial professionalism, fostering ethical publishing practices, and consolidating E&P as a discipline in its own right. The paper concludes by proposing capacity-building strategies that bridge scholarship and practice, positioning DOI literacy as a core component of future editing and publishing education.

Jacket copy, according to HarperCollins Publishers, is “text that appears on the back cover of a book” and aims to “entice readers to pick up the book and learn more about it” (Carpenter, para. 1). One component of jacket copy is called the “book description” (The University of Chicago 2024, 1.79), a “short text (generally between a half page and a full page) describing, by means of summary or in some other way, and most often in a value-enhancing manner, the work to which it refers” (Genette 1997, 104). Research finds that book descriptions influence readers’ decisions to purchase books—more than book discounts, the title of the books, and the books’ cover art (Leitão et al. 2018). Because book descriptions function as metadata (King 2021) and contain SEO keywords (Edwards 2022), customers can find book descriptions on online bookstores (Kindle Direct Publishing n.d.) and book-review sites (Goodreads 2025). Publishers even use book descriptions for social media posts (Demir 2022). Research also finds that when book covers align with readers’ genre expectations, the readers report greater preference for the books (Piters and Stokmans 2000). But research on jacket copy and genre has focused on a single genre (Basturkmen 2009; Gesuato 2007; Godis 2017) or on the entire back-cover copy from general genre categories (Cacchiani 2007; Gea-Valor and Ros 2009; Önder 2013). Our study augments this research by comparing 200 book descriptions from two specific genres: “contemporary romance” and “mystery and thriller.” Using content analysis and binary logistic regression, we found that characterization content significantly predicts book descriptions from the “contemporary romance” genre when compared to the “mystery and thriller” genre. In both genres, the plot, characterization, hook, and book-evaluation content were conventional. This increased understanding can aid editors, authors, and book publishers who write book descriptions for these genres.

The first page of a book is perhaps the most important part. Its purpose is to connect with the reader right away and give them reasons to keep reading (Selgin, 2019). And the first reader a book needs to connect with may be the most difficult to connect with: an editor or literary agent, whose job it is to look for poor writing (Lukeman 2010). But even when a book successfully draws in enough professionals to get published, it still may not sell well (Piersanti, 2023). This begs the question: what makes a successful first page at this moment in the publishing industry? This study will analyze 20–30 successful YA fantasy books (as this is one of the most popular genres at the moment) written by debut authors and published by the Big Five (HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and Penguin) in 2025. Successful in this study is defined as spending at least two weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List. The first pages of these books will be analyzed looking at the various literary moves used like discoursal structure, context of the scene, POV, tone, and more. This data will then be analyzed with qualitative coding methods. Through this study, agents will know which books may sell better based on the first page, editors will know ways to help authors strengthen their first pages, and authors will know what first page strategies may help their books be successful.

Point of view (POV) is an authorial choice, managed later by editors, that affects how readers engage with a story. Second person is the least‑used POV in fiction, which makes it both attention‑grabbing (Mildorf, 2012) and potentially disorienting (DelConte, 2003). Prior work shows that pronouns and perspective influence processing and reader experience. For example, an eye‑tracking study found that, early in a passage, processing you is easier than he or she (Child, Oakhill, & Garnham, 2020). What is still missing is a direct, content‑controlled comparison of second vs. third person using self‑reported engagement; evidence authors can use when deciding whether second person helps or hinders readers. Research question: How does second‑person narration affect reader engagement compared to third‑person narration when narrative content is held constant? Methods: I will administer an online survey using two short narrative paragraphs (A and B). Each will be written in second‑person (“you”) and third‑person (“he/she”) forms. Participants will be randomly assigned to: • Condition 1: A in second person + B in third person • Condition 2: A in third person + B in second person This counterbalanced design isolates pronoun effects while minimizing order and fatigue. After each paragraph, readers will rate initial attention, immersion, and reader–character distance, plus an optional open‑ended response. I will target general readers with no specific demographic requirements, aiming for ≥50 participants (with a minimum of 30 for meaningful analysis). Brief demographics (age, gender, education) will support exploratory analyses. Appeal: Clear, practical guidance for authors and editors on when second person may help, or hinder, engagement, plus a direct, empirical comparison of second vs. third person on identical texts. Takeaway: By isolating pronoun perspective and measuring multiple facets of engagement, this study provides a controlled test of second‑person narration’s impact and practical guidance on when to use it.

Most institutions offer editing courses to help develop students’ communication skills (Melonçon, 2019). Typically covering topics ranging from grammar and mechanics to the latest tools and technologies, the courses have evolved along with academic and workplace practices. Yet, despite a growing body of editing and publishing (E&P) literature, conversations between instructors of editing courses often center on a simple question: “How do you teach editing?” The E&P literature outlines many facets of teaching editing. For instance, researchers have defi ned editing (e.g., Eaton, 2023; Schreiber, 2024); surveyed working editors (e.g., Kreth & Bowen, 2017); analyzed workplace practices, competencies, and industry demands (e.g., Lang & Palmer, 2017; Schrank, 2023); and identifi ed skill gaps and implications of emerging technologies (e.g., Mallette, 2024). Other researchers have studied E&P core curricula (e.g., Baker et al., 2024; Li, 2023; Melonçon, 2019); argued for editing pedagogy models that incorporate accessibility (e.g., Benjamin & Schreiber, 2021), anti-racism (e.g., Richards, 2024), or social justice (e.g., Clem, 2023); and refl ected on institutional contexts that shape editing course design (Charlton, 2013). With a focus on pedagogical approaches, this interactive, 60-minute workshop will continue the conversation on editing course design, emphasizing the nuts and bolts of syllabus development and grading practices for a variety of teaching modalities. Led by fi ve faculty from three different universities, the workshop will benefi t early-career instructors who are teaching editing for the fi rst time as well as experienced instructors who are redesigning or updating an existing editing course. The workshop will • demonstrate several approaches to editing course design and grading • invite participants to engage and share their own best practices in designing editing courses • provide hands-on course design activities through breakout sessions where participants can workshop syllabi, brainstorm assignments, and discuss grading approaches Takeaways By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to • describe several approaches to teaching editing • draft elements of their editing pedagogy (e.g., syllabus, sample assignments/activities, rubrics) • explain their individual editing pedagogy

Stories are often described as character-driven or plot-driven. But I believe stories are driven by emotion, and that character, plot, prose, dialogue—anything that can happen in a story—can be categorized by how it makes readers feel. Building on the semiotics of Charles Peirce (1839–1914), I’ve discovered a pattern of ten neurochemical shifts (in dopamine, adrenaline, cortisol, etc.) that fire in order when we experience a well-designed story—from attention and interest in the beginning, to catharsis and resolution at the end. This pattern is fractal and nesting in nature, and is the hidden heart beneath Freytag’s pyramid, Campbell’s monomyth, and modern act structure. How do we grab attention? How do we make it interesting? How do we generate curiosity? How do we create tension, suspense, desperation? These are the emotions that readers crave, and great stories deliver. I’ve connected these story emotions to concrete, teachable writing techniques. During editing, we can “thin-slice” a story emotionally, to pinpoint what’s working, what’s boring, and what’s missing. In this workshop, I’ll present the model, thin-slice a few stories, and provide participants with a one-page handout of 80 emotional techniques.

What makes an internship in editing successful? Is it when students take on challenging yet valuable duties that extend their learning beyond basic tasks? How about when students find themselves in an environment where they can ask questions, take initiative, and seek out new hands-on experience? This paper addresses how editing and publishing programs can offer high quality internships that equip students with transferable skills for professional success. A case study of Southeast Review (SER), a nationally renowned literary magazine housed in the English department at Florida State University, demonstrates how educators can integrate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework to emphasize learner-centered engagement, representation, and expression for an effective internship in editing. To foster engagement, SER’s internship taps into students’ interests to sustain motivation. Interns select the literary genre they will review along with the social media platforms they will create content for on behalf of the magazine. Their choices lead them to establish collaborative groups in which they will gain skills in teamwork, effective communication, organization, and time management. In terms of representation, SER provides information in various formats to promote a deeper understanding of the field. The internship includes but is not limited to guest speakers who are industry specialists, personal essays written by editors and editorial assistants, news articles, and podcasts. As for expression, interns engage with career development workshops, genre table readings, and a field trip to an independent bookstore. The implementation of UDL enables everybody to succeed. In 2024, the Modern Language Association’s Association of Departments of English featured FSU’s English Department as an exemplary case study in the Report on English Majors’ Career Preparation and Outcomes. In order to continue growing the editing and publishing discipline, this paper will allow the audience to incorporate practical strategies for teaching successful internship experiences.

At the heart of the editing classroom is the impetus to teach students practical, editing-focused competencies that they can carry with them into industry (Baker et al., 2024; Craig, 2018). As described by Baker and Weech (forthcoming), one of these core competencies is creating professional and effective communication between the editor and the author in ways that position editors, not as judges or arbiters of good writing, but as collaborators with editorial expertise who assist the author in the creation of a text. This professional, supportive relationship is difficult to teach (Johanson, 2006), particularly in a mock-editorial environment where author roles are only imaginary. In this presentation, I will describe how the undergraduate classroom can serve as a real-world training ground, preparing student editors to work with real, professional authors on live manuscripts by integrating authors into the structure of the course. The study focuses on an upper-level substantive editing course taught over a period of two years (four semesters), in which a total of 70 students were paired with more than 70 authors of full-length manuscripts. I describe my recruitment efforts to engage a community of live authors and connect them with editing students. I share the results of a survey of said authors designed to determine the efficacy of student editors’ feedback, which was presented in the form of editorial letters, conversation, substantive marginal comments, and copyedits. Finally, I discuss how editing instructors can build community among instructors, students, and authors, both within the classroom and beyond.

Despite their eagerness to work editorially with authors and their manuscripts, developmental editing students share anxieties about their abilities—namely how to provide feedback constructively and whether they can identify issues for revision. Editing students must learn to hone and trust their editorial intuition, as well as understand how to convey feedback aligned with authorial vision. An editing instructor must provide editorial processes and methods that offer a secure yet flexible scaffold on which students can build and expand their skills to develop their editorial confidence. This paper uses my classroom experiences to provide insights into how to teach the often nebulous yet important craft of developmental editing. By detailing the use of live manuscripts in the classroom, I share how to effectively structure and teach editing. I specifically highlight a collaboration between the Emerson College Publishing and Writing MA and Popular Fiction MFA programs. This collaboration invites selected MFA authors into several editing classes, allowing student authors and student editors to share classroom experiences such as acquisitions exercises, project pitches, and industry guest speakers. These activities prepare both editors and authors for the professional publishing world. I explore the collaboration to help other publishing programs ideate and implement the use of live manuscripts into their own publishing and editing coursework, further strengthening their programs with experiential learning opportunities. I additionally provide an overview of texts and exercises that help provide students with important context and hands-on practice for their own editorial work.

The ability to edit should be inclusive of all levels of accessibility, and generative artificial intelligence (genAI) has shown to—in some capacity—provide additional levels of accessibility unique to the needs of the individual. However, existing frameworks for surrounding this topic often only use two of the three key components; editing, genAI, and accessibility. This leaves a gap where frameworks only focus on two of the three in their function, requiring a synthesized framework that incorporates all three into one framework that can be applied to provide accessibility to editing tasks in multimodal editing using genAI. In this presentation, I aim to synthesize existing studies on accessibility and genAI to create an accessible AI editing framework preliminarily called “Accessible genAI Editing” (AGE) framework, that editors can use to positively augment the editing process with accessibility in mind. Those who would benefit from this framework include editors who have visual impairments, dyslexia, dysgraphia, developmental/learning disorders, physical and mobility impairments, and have English as a second language, among others. I begin by assessing current findings on genAI usage in editing, focusing on how it can be used for accessibility. My aim is to connect the three fields while still acknowledging the existing impact genAI can cause to individuals and the environment. This connection will be created into the AGE framework based off existing frameworks (ex. Clem & Cheek, 2022 and Getto et al., 2025) that provides a tool for educators and practitioners to experiment with in their classrooms and projects. This framework would provide prompting guidelines for AI tools to augment or perform certain edits, making editing more accessible. The framework I introduce in this presentation could be integrated into editing processes in professional and classroom settings to make the field and practice of editing more accessible and supportive to all.

Children’s publishing can utilize text formatting and layout design, including aspects such as font size, line spacing, and layout simplicity, to support readers with cognitive and visual disabilities such as dyslexia. This research discusses accessible text formatting and layout design for children’s publishing, with lessons and examples of accessible title text formatting and layout simplicity for accessible children’s book design.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 28.7% of adults living in the United States report having a physical, mental, and/or invisible disability (CDC). Over one in four adults is a sizable fraction of the public, and it logically follows that American readers fall into a similar ratio of disabled and non-disabled individuals. It begs the question: How does the book publishing industry connect its services to readers with disabilities, and do those services meet—or fail to meet—demands for a quarter of the population? By looking at the current state of accessibility considerations in product formatting, the availability of disabled narratives in published text, and the treatment of disabled professionals in the work force, I identify strategies that publishing houses can use to improve their standings with the disabled public.

The entries in usage guides make claims about which forms are preferred, based on a number of criteria, including grammar, status, clarity, correctness, and so on. This presentation provides a method for classifying and evaluating usage guide claims.

This presentation considers the types of claims make in UGs and proposes that most of these claims can be supported/ challenged by empirical evidence. We then discuss methodologies that are used across the social sciences, especially linguistics, which are used for gathering evidence to support linguistic claims. Different types of methodologies are described and explored in terms of how they gather evidence and what types of claims they can be useful for addressing. These methodologies include surveys, interviews, think-alouds, eye-tracking, self-paced reading, grammaticality judgments, lexical decisions, readability formulas, reading comprehension assessments, and multiple-based corpus methods (e.g., variationist approaches, register-functional analysis).

Using the typology created by Don Chapman and the methodologies explored by Brett Hashimoto, this presentation includes an in-depth case study of usage guidance. This presentation will explore the various types of claims made about grammatical constructions and show how scientific, empirical investigation can provide a different way to give usage guide advice.

This presentation shares preliminary research from an analysis of three editing resource texts (The Copyeditor’s Handbook, The Subversive Copy Editor, and Developmental Editing) and the variations of terminology and definitions present. As Mark J.H. Fretz argues, “however precise editors may be when copy-editing the language of a manuscript … the terminology they use to categorize the type and level of editing required by a manuscript and their definition of those terms are equally imprecise” (p. 243). This imprecision is notable across the three textbooks. After tracking the frequency of the terms ‘copy-editing,’ ‘proofreading,’ and ‘developmental editing’ in each textbook, I compared the definitions, described practices, and examples of each to locate any variation or inconsistencies. I argue that the presence of variation and inconsistencies across these resource texts in terms of definitions, described practices, and examples illuminate a set of pedagogical challenges and opportunities. Specifically, I suggest that students may be bewildered or unsure of the distinctions between types and levels of editing, especially if we use multiple resource texts for a given class. At the same time, this variation points to the complexity of editing across different contexts and the localization of editing knowledge and norms. I conclude this presentation with a list of ideas for addressing variations of editing terminology with students and sample activities.

This paper will examine how writers and editors “style shift” across different interfaces and genres, drawing on examples from social media, online article writing, and academic writing. By using ideas of rhetorical editing, we can begin to see how writers and editors shift their writing and editing style based on the interface they’re engaging with. Additionally, this paper will use the famed “Kuzco’s Poison” meme from The Emperor’s New Groove as a metaphor for understanding these style shifts. The meme, intended to convey someone repeating the same information in multiple ways, had become synonymous with students editing papers to meet a page or word count. However, if we reinterpret this meme across writing genres, we can see how writing styles may shift. Certain interfaces and genres may prefer something simple and concise (“the poison” or “Kuzo’s poison), while others may prefer a writing style that’s a bit longer, or meant to help reach a word count (“the poison for Kuzco” or “the poison chosen specifically to kill Kuzco”). This paper will combine personal experiences with student examples across three writing and editing genres—social media, blog posts/short responses, and academic writing and editing. The overall goal of this paper is to highlight how the audience is a critical aspect of both writing and editing, and deeply affects how one approaches a writing or editing scenario. It will discuss when different writing and editing styles are appropriate and what effects it has on the implied audience.

While scholarly journals emphasize editorial rigor, many struggle with discoverability, practitioner readership and use, and sustained audience growth – problems often treated as “marketing” rather than a core editing-and-publishing (E&P) workflow. This individual paper introduces the Discoverability-to-Audience Development Workflow (DADW) Framework, reframing visibility as editorial infrastructure designed and governed like any other journal process. DADW specifies four linked stages: (1) identity and metadata production (persistent identifiers, licenses, keywords); (2) discovery-surface optimization (indexing readiness and academic search engine optimization checkpoints embedded in copyediting/production); (3) planned audience activation routines (author toolkits, issue-launch assets, scheduled dissemination cadence); and (4) a metrics-and-learning loop that converts usage/referral data into process improvements. Discovery is treated as a socio-technical function of platforms and metadata practices, where metadata awareness is uneven and poor metadata degrades discovery systems (Achenbach et al., 2022; Bascones & Staniforth, 2018; Kaiser et al., 2021) and access/promotion signals relate to readership and downstream impact (Eysenbach, 2011; Piwowar et al., 2018; Widmer et al., 2019). Aligned with the DADW framework’s workflow logic, the following propositions specify expected measurable effects on journal discoverability and short-horizon audience development outcomes:

• P1: Journals implementing DADW metadata/identity standards will increase search/referral traffic and full-text usage versus baseline (Piwowar et al., 2018; Schilhan et al., 2021).
• P2: Adding academic search engine optimization (ASEO) checkpoints at copyedit/production will improve search impressions and click-through for targeted query clusters within one publication cycle (Schilhan et al., 2021).
• P3: Planned activation routines will increase 30–60-day downloads and attention signals, and may increase medium-run citations, relative to ad hoc promotion (Eysenbach, 2011; Kudlow et al., 2020; Widmer et al., 2019).

The paper concludes with an implementation guide for editors and a testing plan that compares results before and after rollout (and against similar issues), using referral traffic, downloads, and any increase in citations tied to promotion.

Drawing from my experiences as the Editor-in-Chief of a student-run academic journal, this presentation offers personal observations of how editorial contributions from student staff have enhanced capacities to engage in and understand collaborative academic dialogues. I extend Adrian K. Ho and Mark J. Caprio’s research to student editors as well as authors. As my co-presenters and I focus on distinct elements of the editorial process, my work hones in on how the evaluatory work of selecting journal submissions, by placing students within the framework of community and dialogical knowledge bases, helps students enhance critical discursive skills.

By examining the position of student editors and leaders in the sphere of Undergraduate Literary Publishing, I will draw on personal experience to explore the importance of student-to-student peer editing. I will explain the importance behind the idea that peer mentorship is a large part of our Journal’s success as it deconstructs the power imbalance between a typical author/editor relationship by allowing students a softer, growth-focused avenue into the world of editing via collaboration. By focusing on bettering each other’s creative works, we exercise a practical application of workshop-style sessions that may happen in classrooms, in a real-world setting.

I will discuss how I have seen the journal provide a flexible opportunity for busy students to gain real-world skills as they prepare an issue for publication. Through group collaboration and mentorship, students will gain the confidence needed to communicate, edit, and submit their own work both creatively and professionally. Additionally, I will explain how this opportunity facilitates the key experiences and skills needed to prepare students for jobs in the literary publishing field upon graduation.

Artificial intelligence has become the invisible editor of the twenty-first century—a machinic coauthor shaping what counts as clarity, credibility, and creativity. As the global AI-in-publishing market accelerates from $2.8 billion in 2023 to a projected $41.2 billion by 2033 (Market.us, 2024), editorial work enters an era of algorithmic entanglement. No longer confined to grammar correction or metadata tagging, AI now influences manuscript acquisition, peer review, and even rhetorical tone (Cohen, 2023). Yet, the question remains: who edits the editor when the editor is a machine? Recent studies show that over half of publishers integrate AI into workflows (PwC, 2024), citing efficiency gains of 30% or more. Elsevier and Taylor & Francis, for instance, use algorithmic triage to streamline peer review, while services like Scholarcy and Proofig automate editorial evaluation (Johnson, 2024). However, such automation risks amplifying epistemic inequities—what Noble (2018) calls “algorithmic oppression”—by reproducing biases embedded in non-diverse datasets. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, 2023) underscores this tension: while AI expedites publication, it destabilizes long-held notions of authorship, accountability, and editorial ethics. Hybrid editing—where human judgment intersects with machine precision—has emerged as the most sustainable model (Benjamin, 2019). Nearly half of surveyed editors favor this symbiotic paradigm, envisioning AI not as a threat but as a collaborator in meaning-making. Ultimately, the future of publishing depends on cultivating editorial metis—a strategic intelligence that harnesses automation without surrendering human discernment, empathy, and ethical reflexivity.

New technologies, including large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), have necessitated a reexamination of traditional concepts of authorship, rhetoric, and editorial practice. This paper examines the implications of AI authorship for the field of technical editing, interrogating whether established criteria for clarity, coherence, and rhetorical integrity change when the author is nonhuman. Editing text created by GenAI and LLMs still require the mechanical tasks of editing, including ensuring accuracy, succinctness, and consistency, but editorial judgment shifts when intention and human agency are absent (Hyland and Jiang, 2019; Getto, Kelly, and Vance, 2025). Because AI-generated texts emulate rhetorical patterns through probabilistic modeling rather than deliberative reasoning, an editor’s role in assessing ethos, pathos, and logos are significantly complicated (Lanham, 2007; Spinuzzi, 2013). Through qualitative analysis of AI-produced technical and informational documents, this paper explains that editing texts produced by GenAI and LLMs requires an editor to approach examination from two distinct angles: (1) fidelity to the rhetorical canons and (2) algorithmic accountability (Chun, 2016). This duality requires an editor to evaluate not only linguistic accuracy but also the provenance and transparency of machine-generated knowledge. This conceptual framework repositions editing as a socio-technical practice that mediates between machine outputs and human interpretive communities (Winsor, 1996). In GenAI- and LLM-generated texts, the classical canons of rhetoric endure, but they are now redefined with linkages to dataset composition and algorithmic structuring. In essence the technical editor’s role evolves from steward of textual fidelity to curator of epistemic and ethical integrity in human–AI communication.

Readers and authors expect a book’s index to accurately reflect the book’s contents. An index that fails to do so is unethical: it misrepresents the author's intellectual property to readers and can fail to guide readers to the information they seek, breaking the trust between the reader and the book. For an index to reflect the book’s contents, it must be at minimum complete (providing access to all indexable information in the book), navigable (guiding the reader to subtopics and related topics via cross-references), and accurate (containing no false or invented information and reflecting the author’s perspective and terminology). In our original research, we asked large language models (LLMs) to index out-of-copyright books and found they failed to meet these criteria. Despite their failures, LLM-generated “indexes” can nonetheless look plausibly index-like and may deceive some authors and editors into publishing them. Attendees will learn about necessary criteria for an adequate index and will learn where LLMs fall short in attempting to meet those criteria.

This paper reports on the development of a Program in Editing Studies, conceived in response to a decades-old critique of the humanities as a division of knowledge that remains sequestered in academia, with little application to the professional world—a critique that continues to grow more formidable with the soaring costs of college tuition and subsequent doubts over the return on an investment in the humanities, which may have become too expensive for the marketplace. However, submitting Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” to what Gerald Graff calls the “pedagogical turn” has resulted in the creation of Editing Studies at Quinnipiac University. This program exposes students to theories and practices of textual editing, transferable across academic, personal, and professional contexts. Students become both practitioners and critics of editing, enabling them to produce and innovate in varied and changing ecologies of writing. Individual courses in the program support students in their academic and extracurricular writing and empower them to take literary criticism, rhetoric, phenomenology, and cultural studies, which may otherwise be sequestered in academic work, and de-sequester this knowledge as a praxis for careers in editing, publishing, teaching, law, communications, and other fields. Students who complete the program requirements for a Certificate in Editing Studies are credentialed for a profession where, according to Recruiter.com, “demand for Editors is expected to go up” (https://tinyurl.com/r4rdaz67), with, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “about 11,600 openings for editors . . . projected each year, on average, over the decade” (https://tinyurl.com/5uz77cf4).

This proposed submission* argues for conceiving the introductory editing and publishing class not as a “service” class (like the introductory technical writing class) but rather as an interdisciplinary bridge course that connects creative and professional writers, as well as students seeking to publish in the visual arts or in the music industry. In 2009, I developed an editing and publishing class under a linguistics designation at a regional comprehensive university in upstate New York. Although the course was initially intended for English and English Education majors, I discovered that students in Communication, the arts, and the social sciences (especially History and Psychology), were also registering for the class. It also became a foundational course for our professional writing minor and our academic publishing micro-credential. In this talk, I draw on theories of editing as increasingly a job function (rather than a career in itself) to discuss strategies for teaching an editing class to an interdisciplinary audience. In particular, I will focus on the role of applied learning/ community service projects in the class. These have included copy editing for colleagues, developmental editing for alumni, community members, and a health humanities journal, as well as the production of a peer-reviewed class journal.

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) becomes more intertwined with editing practices and professions, it is necessary to monitor its presence and question its applications. The purpose of this study is to examine the ethical implications of artificial intelligence use in editing and to analyze how editors-in-training decide whether and how to use GenAI. This analysis will help us determine a framework for training new editors about the use of GenAI in editing. Most research discussing the specific applications of artificial intelligence in editing affirms that GenAI produces greater output in shorter timeframes. According to Talbot (2025), GenAI’s usage poses the reduction of time and labor required to draft, edit, and publish a text. This observation is reinforced by Sytnyk et al. (2025), which examines the differences between various texts edited separately by humans and GenAI. Sytnyk et al. found that changes made by GenAI are generally received positively, but when compared to changes made by humans, differences in quality were apparent, with human edits often being higher in quality. Additionally, as discussed by Malette (2024), GenAI may be able to provide support to writers and editors, but certain editorial skills, such as ethical advocacy and style, cannot be replaced by GenAI entirely. Ponce and Hodges (2025) discuss how GenAI does not have the ability to be culturally aware; its substantive edits and copyedits produce responses that erase cultural writing conventions and diverse forms of communication. Many scholars view this as an ethical shortcoming, which might be overlooked by novice editors if they rely too heavily on GenAI. To develop the framework proposed by this study, we will analyze previous editing students’ written work and conduct interviews focused on their decision-making regarding GenAI. This will help us understand their perception of and experience using GenAI throughout the writing process. Our proposed framework will help technical editors and teachers of technical editing improve their processes and pedagogies as GenAI becomes more prevalent and expected throughout the workplace.

Open access publishing is quickly gaining popularity as a transformative force in applied linguistics and education, reshaping how knowledge is disseminated, accessed, and utilized (Liu & Marsden, 2024). This presentation offers a case study grounded in my experiences as founding editor of 21-year-old open-access journal focused on Southeast Asian American education; co-editor of a traditional applied linguistics journal focused on the intersections of language, identity, and education; editor of a major book series on bilingual education; and author of both traditional and open-access books and research articles. Drawing on these multifaceted editorial and authorial perspectives, I will present a case study to critically examine the prospects and challenges of open access publishing in the academic fields of Applied Linguistics and Education. I will highlight field-wide open-access initiatives, including the development of a database offering free research summaries of published academic articles behind publisher paywalls, and the slow emergence of U.S. university support for open-access publication. These initiatives provide evidence of the positive prospects of not only democratizing access to research but also of driving greater engagement among practitioners, policymakers, and scholars globally. Analyses of data from my journals and my own publications will be used to demonstrate that open access publications in applied linguistics and education consistently reach broader audiences and achieve higher citation rates compared to those behind paywalls. This case study will illuminate both the opportunities and obstacles encountered in open access publishing, including editorial workload, sustainability, quality assurance, and funding models (Plonsky, 2024). By comparing open access and traditional publishing mechanisms, I will provide practical insights into editorial decision-making, and strategies for fostering equitable access to scholarship. The session aims to engage academic editors and conference attendees in a dialogue about best practices and the future trajectory of open access publishing.

The last decade has seen profound transformations in academic publishing, particularly within linguistics, as journals adapt to open science principles and evolving authorship norms. This presentation examines how editorial and publishing practices in Brazilian and South American linguistics journals are responding to these shifts, with particular emphasis on the expansion of preprint platforms – most notably the SciELO Preprints ecosystem – and their implications for peer review, editorial authority, publishing ethics, and scholarly communication. This study is based on comparative analysis of linguistics journals across different South American countries and a few major references around the globe. Analyses expose how editors and publishers negotiate tensions between traditional models of gatekeeping and emerging practices of transparency and open evaluation. Attention is given to early dissemination tools and how preprints challenge established editorial workflows: reshape of timelines of publication, reconfiguration of notions of versioning, legitimacy, and academic credit within the discipline. The presentation further situates these developments within broader cultural shifts in authorship by examining multi-authorship (Crystal, 2011) and collaborative production practices (Herring, 2008) common in digital genres such as webcomics, instapoetry, and other platform-based creative environments. In the last few years, these domains foreground distributed authorship and blurred boundaries between author, editor, and publisher through iterative revision and audience interaction. By bringing collaborative practices from digital genres into dialogue with scientific publishing, results demonstrate that linguistics journals in the Global South are slowly but steadily operating within a shared ecology of collaborative knowledge production; in doing so, it bridges editorial theory and publishing practice to contribute to ongoing debates on ethics, authorship, transparency, and sustainability in editing and publishing, positioning linguistics as a productive case for understanding how E&P practices are evolving globally and how the discipline can theorize its own transformation in an open science landscape.

Technical editors experience ethical dilemmas when assigned projects promoting content in contrast with their personal convictions or containing content that potentially violates legal boundaries, such as misinformation. This paper explores the tension between professional impartiality and moral obligation in publishing, questioning whether editors must prioritize textual fidelity over ethical judgment or legal risk. Traditional codes of conduct emphasize objectivity, but they intersect with broader responsibilities to “protect” public discourse and mitigate publisher liability (D’Haeze, 2011). Among the most controversial dilemmas involve obligation to corporate profitability. Using the research data published by Purdue Pharma as a case study of a scientific text bordering on misinformation, this paper reveals how editors face challenges stemming from an imbalance of maintaining core editing principles like clarity and accuracy without compromising authorial voice and corporate demands (Dragga, 1996). Legal violations require heightened scrutiny, as editors must flag libelous claims, inaccurate data, and misleading phrases, creating a conflict between contractual obligations and statutory duties. Professional standards such as those established by the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors urge documentation of flagged issues, consultation with legal counsel and technical experts, and, if necessary, withdrawal from projects to preserve integrity. However, as in the case of Purdue Pharma, corporate leadership mandated the omission of data that would likely harm corporate reputation and ultimately, stock value. This paper discusses how editors must develop a decision-making framework integrating virtue ethics and contractual duties so that, when confronted with conflicts, they do not become complicit in the proliferation of misinformation that can lead to potential harm for themselves, the audience of their publications, and the corporations for whom they work. The framework that helps maintain this balance shows that ethical editing supersedes the review and correction of text, which ultimately positions editors as stewards of discourse.