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SIGDOC Newsletter
September 2008 :: Volume 9, Number 3
Our Members
Notes from the Chair
Dear SIGDOC Members,
I hope that you are checking in on the SIGDOC 2008 Conference Website (http://www.sigdoc2008.net). This year's General Chair, Henrique O'Neill, Program Chair, Carlos Costa, and Local Arrangements Chair, Manuela Aparicio, have been busy organizing the conference site, reviewing and preparing the camera-ready proceedings, and coordinating local arrangements for this year's SIGDOC conference being held from September 22nd to 24th, 2008, in Lisbon, Portugal. The Program Committee for the conference, which reviewed the incoming paper proposals, lists an impressive 37 members -- twenty-three from the USA, nine from Europe, two from the UK, and one from Africa, South America, and Australia. Five of the program committee members are from industry and thirty-two from the academy. Last year's SIGDOC 2007 Conference contained an exciting range of topics, including papers on genre theory and content management, on multimodal interfaces and assistance programs, on pedagogies for communication design, on information design thoery, on cross-cultural communication, and on models of work, documentation, and emerging Web spaces for the design of communication. This year's conference promises to extend that research and to provide communication designers with the latest developments in International research and practice.
For those of you still deciding whether you will be able to attend this year's conference, please see the conference Website's information about the very reasonably-priced accommodations available to you while you are there: http://www.sigdoc2008.net/att.htm. Other information about Lisbon, Portugal, can be found in abundance at Virtual Portugal (http://www.portugalvirtual.pt/_tourism/costadelisboa/index.html), via Wikipedia, for course (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon), and at goLisbon (http://www.golisbon.com/).
Looking forward to seeing you in Portugal!
Brad Mehlenbacher
Associate Professor, Training and Development (ACCE),
Adjunct/Associate Professor, Ergonomics (PSYCH),
and Affiliated Faculty, PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (COM/ENG)
NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801
919.515.6242 (ph)
chair_sigdoc@acm.org (e-mail)
www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m (url)
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SIGDOC Journal Proposal
Proposed Name
SIGDOC is finishing up a proposal to start a new quarterly peer-reviewed journal (or perhaps a restart of the old /Journal of Computer Documentation/). All SIGDOC members will receive a copy as part of their membership. The new journal will be named /ACM Transactions on Design of Information and Communication. / The editor will be Michael Albers with Brian Still and David Clark as assistant editors.
The name change to /ACM Transactions on Design of Information and Communication/ should help it and SIGDOC gain exposure since it that moves into the main ACM line of journals. The proposal is almost completed and ACM approval should take 3-6 months. Then, of course, there will be about 6-8 months of lead time for the first issue.
In support of the interdisciplinary nature of SIGDOC, the journal will strive to publish articles that cross discipline boundaries as they focus on the effective and efficient methods of designing and
communicating information; disciplines will include technical communication, information design, information architecture, interaction design, and human-computer interaction.
Scope of proposed publication
The journal seeks to be the premier archival journal for industry, management, and academia in the multidisciplinary field of the design and communication of information.
In support of the interdisciplinary nature of SIGDOC, the journal will strive to publish articles that cross discipline boundaries as they focus on the effective and efficient methods of designing and communicating information; disciplines will include technical communication, information design, information architecture, interaction design, and human-computer interaction.
A typical issue will consist of 3 or 4 articles with an editorial and introduction to the issue.
The editors will solicit a 1-2 page commentary for at least the lead article from a leading person in that field which will reflect on the significance of the article to the field.
Rationale for new publication
For many practicing and researching information designers, SIGDOC conference proceedings have become a viable and important publishing outlet, in large part due to the widespread availability of ACM’s Digital Library; many report more citations for their conference proceeding publications than for more traditional publication. But the proceedings, by their nature, do not allow or require the kind of depth and scope that would lead to more developed ideas and “journal” status that many academics need for tenure and promotion.
In addition, related journals now are receiving and accepting enough articles that they are developing an inventory (see list of journals below). This shows that the number of researchers is increasing and the article production rate can support another journal. With the multidisciplinary focus of the SIGDOC journal, we should be a primary market for many researchers, many of who do not have an obvious journal home in their fields.
The movement to user-centered design and the realization by companies of the importance of high quality user interaction in their products has greatly increased the number of practitioners in the area. This has resulted in an increased in academic programs. The field is experiencing a rapid growth of academic programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Besides the more established programs, several universities have recently started or have plans for PhD programs in technical communication. A new trend for programs in human-computer interaction with a focus on design and psychology rather than computer science are have also recently started.
Relationship to other ACM publications
The proposed journal covers research focused on user-centered design, communicating information and the usability of documentation, web-based system, and software application. Unlike most ACM publications, it deals with the human-system interaction from the screen to the person and not the algorithms and processing which populate the screen.
Authors
The primary source of articles will be researchers in technical communication or human-computer interaction. We expect most of the authors will be academics. However, we will strive to ensure the articles are accessible to practitioners and have a practical focus.
Subscribers
All SIGDOC members (approximately 400) will receive the journal as part of their membership.
The journal will also be available in the ACM Digital Library.
Potential themed issue topics
- Content management: evaluation and assessment
- Social networking
- Design processes and project management
- Metadata and the semantic web
- Open source documentation
- Playing games online: using/designing games to teach/train
- Designing Online Interactive Training Modules
- Creating effective ambient communication designs
- The possibilities, implications, etc. of DITA on documentation
- Storyboards and prototypes: teaching interaction design
- The usability of interactive animation
- Holographs, Sensecams, and wearable or embedded chips: New information management technologies and their impact on communication design
- Virtual presentations for International settings and audiences
- Writing for Podcasts
- Communication design in medicine
For more information:
Dr. Michael J. Albers
malbers@acm.org
East Carolina University
Department of English
Professional Writing Program
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