Published on June 17, 2015

The Second Quarter 2015 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication is now available online, and will be arriving in the mailboxes of members over the next several weeks (packaged with the First Quarter issue).

Highlights of the issue include:

1.    Editorial:  The Basics of Reporting Research by Saul Carliner

Explains the guidelines that have driven the reporting of research in the Transactions since 4Q2011.   

2.    Research Article: Social Media and Multinational Corporations’ Corporate Social Responsibility in China: The Case of ConocoPhillips Oil Spill Incident by Juelin Yin, Jieyun Feng, and Yuyan Wang

Describes how the Chinese public used social media to express concern following a major oil spill and how institutional players responded.   

3.    Research Article: Ecodefense and the Technical Communication of Ecotage by Derek Ross

Looks at the role of plain language in subversive environmental texts and the ethics of doing so.

4.    Research Article: Personas in Heuristic Evaluation: A Classroom-Based Exploratory Study by Erin Friess

Describes a classroom based study on using personas in heuristic evaluations of texts.   

5.    Research Article: Writing for fantasy sports: A comparative analysis of user-generated writing by amateur writers and professional journalists by Ming Cheung and Ryman White

Explores a particular class of user-generated documentation in-depth: fan-provided material for fantasy sports. Although the article explores fantasy sports, there are many implications for professional and technical communicators, who can learn about what types of material users might provide and its quality.   

6.    Teaching Case: Teaching and Learning in Cross-Disciplinary Virtual Teams by Pam Estes Brewer, Alanah Mitchell, Robert Sanders, Paul Wallace, and David D. Wood

A teaching case that explores how two groups of students from three different disciplines worked together, produced projects, and learned from one another.

7.    Book Reviews: 

Review of Sharing Our Intellectual Traces, edited by Tracy Bridgeford, Karla Saari Kitalong, and Bill Williamson. Reviewed by: Karen Wisne

Review of Slide Rules: Design, Build, and Archive Presentations in the Engineering and Technical Fields, by Traci Nathans-Kelly and Christine G. Nicometo. Reviewed by Ronald L Stone, Member IEEE.

To view the issue online, visit http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=47. Note that a subscription is required to see all of the articles except for the editorial.