A detailed update on behalf of the editors of CJSDW/R, Kim Mitchell and Sean Zwagerman, on their work in the first 5 months. See below for updates on new publications, becoming a reviewer, and a new section called “Writing in Practice”.

New Publications 

The editors have been working on revitalizing the editorial board and discussing future directions for the journal. They recently published a short editorial to help introduce ourselves to the Canadian writing community.

The journal has also seen the publication of several exciting contributions over the summer months which can be viewed on our main journal page. CJSDW/R publishes submissions as they are reviewed and processed in a single issue for the calendar year. 

2020 contributions include:

1. Two regular journal article submissions have been published since January 2020
2. Nine articles have thus far been published for the annual section of papers that were accepted to the Candian Writing Centres Assocation (CWCA) conference for 2020 
3. We would also like to alert you to the 5 articles published in the special section “Reflections on Genre as Social Action”. The special section is a call and response section initiated by some familiar and famous names in the area of Genre Studies. Anne Freadman explores the uptake of genre as social action in the literature, with response articles from Carolyn Miller, Janet Giltrow, Charles Bazerman, and Sune Auken.

Reviewer Interest

One of the most challenging roles of being an editor is finding appropriate reviewers for the papers submitted to CJSDW/R.  The editors are interested in building a strong list of reviewers. If you are interested in reviewing for CJSDW/R, please email Kim Mitchell and Sean Zwagerman (kmmitchell@rrc.ca; sean_zwagerman@sfu.ca) and list your areas of interest for papers you’d be willing to review. We are especially in need of reviewers who can review in areas of:

• Indigenous writing
• Professional writing
• Quantitative studies
• Qualitative studies
• Disciplinary writing/discourse

The editors especially want to hear from you if those who have not reviewed for the journal in the past. Also, anyone who have reviewed for CJSDW/R in the past and are interested in reviewing again. Graduate students are strongly encouraged to become reviewers. Francophone reviewers are also in demand.

Writing in Practice — A new CJSDW section seeking submissions 

Writing in Practice submissions will be short articles (2000-3000 words) they describe a strategy for using writing as a pedagogy in higher education. Approaches to these submissions can be broadly applied. Authors will provide a brief description of a writing assignment or a method of teaching writing, with emphasis on how they are using writing to:

• Develop writing voice or disciplinary discourse
• Teach strategies for applying writing processes
• Writing supervision techniques for theses and dissertations
• Teach threshold concepts in any substantive area for any discipline
• Teach about genre or about a particular genre form
• Teach approaches to research writing and presentation of findings  

The articles are intended to be scholarly in nature, but use of alternate voices to the academic voice are strongly encouraged. Citations should be limited to no more than 10 as the intent is to present readers with a description of a writing pedagogy that can be replicated within or modified for another learning context. Authors should reflect upon the learning that transpired for the student writer(s). Any author uncertain of the fit of their teaching approach for this article category is welcome to email the editors.

See the author guidelines and submission requirements for more information.