The editorial staff of Engineering Studies is delighted to announce two new categories of publication!
After five years, the journal has achieved a strong reputation as a quality outlet for conventional scholarship in engineering studies. It is fulfilling its first mission, to advance research. It is time to pursue more visibly the second and third missions.
The second is to help build the engineering studies community. The new category ‘Issues in Engineering Studies’ invites conversations among engineering studies’ scholars.
The third is to facilitate critical participation beyond the field. The new category ‘Critical Participation’ is designed to make more visible practices of making and doing that are often hidden, as well as to increase sharing among those involved in such work. Too many practices live and die with their developers.
Detailed descriptions of the three categories of publication follow.
Issues in Engineering Studies
Essays in this category address key issues in engineering studies research and critical participation to help the journal build and serve diverse communities of scholars interested in engineers and engineering. How might engineering studies scholarship better advance understanding of the situated commitments and practices of engineers and engineering? How might it better participate critically in practices of engineering education, labor, policy, research, and representation?
Contributors respond to a prompt from a guest editor, articulating practices, stances, and commitments in 2000–4000 word essays. Potential guest editors should submit brief proposals, including (a) statement of purpose, including a draft prompt; (b) list of potential contributors, with justifications for their participation; and (c) expected audiences both inside and outside of engineering studies. Submitted manuscripts will be peer-reviewed together, single-blind.
Critical participation
Articles in this category encourage engineering studies’ practitioners to reflect on and share scholarly practices that extend beyond conventional research to include making and doing. Authors offer theoretically informed accounts of their own critical participation in practices of engineering education, labor, research, policy, and representation in order to help engineering practitioners reflect on images and practices of engineers and engineering, and perhaps to formulate and scale up alternatives.
Avoiding both uncritical self-promotion and narrowly construed rigor, contributors should consider questions such as:
(1) How does this project contribute knowledge about engineers and engineering and
(2) What does this work reveal about what engineers and engineering are for? Submitted manuscripts will be peer-reviewed, likely single-blind. Length limits and other policies for research manuscripts apply.
Research manuscripts
Research manuscripts advance critical analysis in historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, rhetorical, and organizational studies of engineers and engineering. Research manuscripts should consider the following questions:
(1) How does this paper enhance critical understanding of engineers or engineering?
(2) What are the relationships among the technical and nontechnical dimensions of engineering practices, and how do these relationships change over time and from place to place?
Researchers in technical communication, technical work, and engineering education research should take special note of the journal's emphasis on critical analysis. It does not publish manuscripts that seek only to improve the effectiveness of engineering education and engineering work in existing terms.
About Engineering Studies
Engineering Studies is an interdisciplinary, international journal devoted to the scholarly study of engineers and engineering. Its mission is threefold:
(1) to advance critical analysis in historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, rhetorical, and organizational studies of engineers and engineering;
(2) to help build and serve diverse communities of researchers interested in engineering studies;
(3) to link scholarly work in engineering studies with broader discussions and debates about engineering education, research, practice, policy, and representation.
Engineering Studies is published three times yearly by Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, since 2009. Engineering Studies is the journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies (INES): www.inesweb.org
We look forward to receiving manuscripts in any of the three categories of publication. You can find detailed author guidelines at www.tandfonline.com/test.