Ryan K. Boettger

Research

Identifying Commonalities and Divergences Between Technical Communication Scholarly and Trade Publications (1996–2017)

Erin Friess, Ryan K. Boettger · January 1, 2021 · Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 35(4)

bibliometricscontent analysistechnical communication

Read the original ↗

Researcher’s note (June 2026). Erin Friess and I built this study to test, at scale, whether the academic and practitioner halves of technical communication are really talking about the same field — so we coded 1,271 articles across five scholarly journals and the trade magazine Intercom and compared what each population actually publishes. The core finding is that the two share a pivot to process-driven content but diverge most sharply on rhetoric, which never once surfaced as a primary topic in the trade magazine. It’s the same operationalizing instinct that drives my current work on AI in writing and assessment — turning fuzzy ideas like “topic” and “audience” into categories a system can apply consistently and tie back to who is actually being served; this is a starting draft.

Abstract

More than 20 years ago, Elizabeth O. Smith published her points of reference that documented the research trajectory of technical communication from 1988 to 1997. Her results indicated a focus on rhetorical analyses, a decrease in collaborative research, and a disproportionate representation of male authors. This study builds on these points with a quantitative content analysis of 1,271 articles that were published in five leading technical communication journals and Intercom, the trade magazine for the Society for Technical Communication, from 1996 to 2017. The results show that both the research journals and Intercom have pivoted to process-driven rather than product-driven content. The results also suggest that the primary topics of communication strategy and collaboration might be the most likely places to foster future industry–academic ties and that the greatest division between the two populations is the primary topic of rhetoric. This study offers an updated baseline for future investigations by offering an evaluation of disparate content foci between the publication types.

Keywords

content analysis, correspondence analysis, research, technical communication, technical writing

Introduction

More than 20 years ago, Smith (2000a) offered the field of technical communication (TC) her foundational “points of reference”—a 10-year overview of TC’s body of knowledge from 1988 to 1997. Smith’s work captured the state of research, authorship, theory, and practice in an emerging academic discipline, identifying “the problems technical communication scholars and practitioners work on and solve” (p. 427). But scholars and practitioners often work on and solve problems differently. In fact, Carliner (1995) suggested that these groups did not understand each other well: “Faculty talk about rhetorical theories, ancient people like Aristotle, and findings from studies conducted with one or two people—usually college freshmen—concerns that seem to have nothing to do with anything useful” (p. 552). And Moore (1996) argued that scholars’ attempts to humanize or augment the creative aspects of technical writing have furthered this divide:

If scholars bring up—or even assume—the importance of nonrhetorical language in technical communication, they are dismissed as positivists or inhumane by some academics. But if a scholar brings up the idea that technical communication is literary or creative writing to a group of professional technical writers, the scholar is regarded as out of touch with reality. (p. 101)

Moore (1996, 1997) attributed the dominance of rhetorical theory as a major contributor to this academe–practitioner divide. He argued that rhetoric was not task-oriented; its immediate focus was abstract, focused on changing an audience’s beliefs rather than persuading them to perform a task: “Rhetoric … was never intended to address the problems that technical communicators face in the marketplace today” (Moore, 1997, p. 172).

Kynell and Tebeaux (2009) also questioned whether our scholarship was affecting the industry and outside disciplines and encouraged scholars to question whether they were talking only to each other and publishing only to fulfill tenure and promotion purposes. Moore (1996) argued that scholars position TC as rhetoric because it makes the field seem “palatable to themselves and to other academic audiences” (p. 102). Moore (1997) later claimed that “it is well known in the academy that one’s chances of publishing anything about technical communication will be increased if a person mentions the importance of rhetoric and argumentation in technical communication” (p. 164).

The discussion about the divide between TC academics and TC practitioners from the standpoint of its scholarship continues today (Albers, 2016; Andersen & Hackos, 2018; Boettger & Friess, 2016; Melonçon & St.Amant, 2018; St.Amant & Melonçon, 2016a, 2016b). Previous studies have examined the content areas of the field (Boettger & Friess, 2016, 2020), the authorship of the field (Boettger & Friess, 2020), perceptions of research in the field (Andersen & Hackos, 2018; St.Amant & Melonçon, 2016a, 2016b), and the questions of the research field (Blakeslee & Spilka, 2004). Collectively, the results have suggested that professionals and academics have fundamental differences in what research the field should focus on, how it should be undertaken, and how and where those results should be disseminated (St.Amant & Melonçon, 2016b, p. 347).

Less commonly discussed within these studies is the content published within trade publications—content that is written primarily for an audience of practitioners. This content helps TC practitioners manage their resources, including finishing a project on time and within budget, selecting the best technology to solve their problem, identifying the best personnel to perform the work, managing and planning projects, and developing communication and product standards (Moore, 1997).

While trade magazines and scholarly journals might share readership populations, the publication forums (as described in their aims and scopes) target different audiences with different editorial aims, and yet both academics and practitioners describe their profession as “technical communication.” Therefore, while the nuance, structure, and takeaways might vary between the content within the trade magazines and that within the research journals, we would expect the topics of the content to be fairly congruous. If they are not, then the modifier of “technical communication” for both populations is problematic and more of a hindrance than an asset in establishing field definition.

Thus, in this article, we aim to extend the points of reference that Smith (2000a) provided some 20 years ago by including in our data set both professional publications written primarily for practitioners and traditional research articles. We pursue this update because documenting the maturation of TC (a common practice in other communication fields, e.g., marketing communication, business communication, and public relations) is necessary for understanding how content preferences have shifted over 22 years. Carliner (2015) observed that a historical vantage offered the best perspective on what these shifts represent—“evolutionary adjustments or revolutionary disruptions” (p. 7). This study enables the field to see which type of shift the TC of today represents compared to the TC of yesteryear.

Knowing where the shifts are located is valuable to the field on two accounts. First, by comparing the authorship patterns and content areas of the TC trade magazine to the content areas of the TC scholarly journals, we can better pinpoint where the well-documented academy–industry divide is most and least divergent. Second, with that knowledge, we can ask what those convergences and divergences in both content and authorship mean for the field’s overall health and future.

Review of Literature

This study is informed by three areas of prior research: trade magazines as an object of study, content areas as a source for understanding the priorities of a field, and authorship as a defining aspect of a field.

Trade Magazines

Trade magazines (also referred to as professional magazines), trade publications, or trade journals, target readers of a specific industry and use terminology specific to that industry. The goal for these publication types is to present information that enables readers to do their work more effectively and efficiently and to contextualize the general state of the industry in light of technological advancements and economic changes (Reeves, 2012). Despite the plethora of trade magazines published worldwide across disciplines, “scant academic attention” has been paid to the content and value these publications bring to their industry. For many fields, this blind spot means that little is known about how scholarly and trade publications approach similar topics (Wilkinson & Merle, 2013, p. 428).

In the field of TC, the primary trade magazine for the last quarter-century has been Intercom, which is distributed to members of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). While other forums have more recently emerged, including TechWhirl, TC World, and UX Magazine, these newer forums have a narrower focus (content management, information management, and user experience [UX], respectively) than that of the more broadly encompassing Intercom, which states that it is published “to provide practical examples and applications of technical communication that will promote its readers’ professional development” (“About Intercom,” 2019). Furthermore, these sources do not currently have an archival system that lends itself to collecting longitudinal data. In other words, while we can see the current issue of these sources, there is no reliable way to access past issues. So without knowing the entirety of the contents, a random sample of the publication data is not possible.

Publications in Intercom are reviewed by the editor with input from the contributing editors and the Editorial Advisory Panel (L. Pohland, personal communication, January 14, 2014). Intercom has been noted as a source for technical writers to learn about emerging tools (Breuch, 2002), workplace topics (Munger, 2006), ways to demonstrate their value to organizations (Paretti et al., 2007), and project management strategies (Lauren & Schreiber, 2018). The only previous study that has attempted to identify Intercom’s content areas found that the trade magazine tended to include articles focusing on TC processes, the profession of TC, and issues related to the professionalization of, technologies used in, and editing and style strategies for TC (Boettger & Friess, 2016).

Content Areas

In many academic areas, including public policy (Bunea & Baumgartner, 2014), political science (Kacmar & Baron, 1999), group communication (Frey, 1994), public administration (Lynn & Wildavsky, 1990), and digital studies (Kirschenbaum & Werner, 2014), assessments of the field’s research and content priorities are relatively common. In TC, the assessment of the field’s research and content is a growing pursuit, albeit one that has primarily focused on the scholarly journals. Recent studies have explored the type and frequency of the research methods as a defining aspect of the field (Boettger & Lam, 2013; Brammer & Galloway, 2007; Melonçon & St.Amant, 2018).

But the topics covered in TC have been less studied and have denied the field opportunities for a “more holistic understanding of where technical communication has been, where the field is now, and where the field could go” (Boettger & Friess, 2020). Some of the first examinations of the scholarly journal content of TC were Smith’s citation analyses (Smith, 2000a, 2000b). These analyses reveal that content areas in the research journals were “broadly identified as professional issues (defining technical communication, pedagogy, and research methods), rhetoric and the rhetorics of communities, document design and technology issues, and workplace communication” (Smith, 2000a, p. 427). Her work documented a shift in what technical communicators were researching. For example, within the later years of her study’s timeframe, rhetorical analyses dwarfed the once-dominant composition theory studies while ethics discussions remained consistent.

The content of the TC field from a nonscholarly journal’s perspective has been less well studied than the content of the field from the research journal’s perspective. Hannah and Lam (2016) found that blog posts written by and for TC practitioners most often related to technology, professionalization, and communication strategies. And in a previous study, we found that Intercom leaned toward a process orientation, that is, an orientation that focuses on the tasks involved in producing and delivering the products created by technical communicators (Boettger & Friess, 2016). We also found that Intercom’s content had a specific focus on professionalization and technology. Our study here builds on these previous studies with additional volumes and modified codebooks.

Authorship Characteristics

In many fields, assessments of authorship characteristics provide pivotal insight into who shapes the knowledge of the field (Gomes et al., 2016; Raptis, 1992; Siddiqui, 1997). In TC, the research journals have been assessed for authorship characteristics. Smith’s (2000a, 2000b) citation studies found that men produced more scholarship than women did and that about a third of the research was produced by more than one author. Lam (2014) found that in four research journals, 66% of the articles were produced by more than one author. Additionally, studies on specific journal authorship patterns have found that about a third of the articles in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (TPC) are collaborative efforts and that about 20% of the articles in Journal of Business and Technical Communication (JBTC) are collaborative efforts (Burnett, 2003). And in a previous study, we found that studies with women as the first author slightly outpaced studies with men as the first author whereas JBTC, Technical Communication (TC), and TPC corresponded with some form of author collaboration (Boettger & Friess, 2020).

But despite these studies on the scholarly journals, no study has explored authorship characteristics within the trade magazine or other practitioner-centric forums for TC. This study aims to learn more about authorship characteristics within the professional publication. Therefore, we ask these research questions:

RQ1: What are the broad content areas covered in Intercom, and how do these areas compare to the coverage in the TC scholarly journals?

RQ2: What are the primary content areas covered in Intercom, and how do these areas compare to the coverage in the TC scholarly journals?

RQ3: What are the authorship characteristics of Intercom authors, and how do these characteristics compare to the authors of TC research?

Method

Our primary method of inquiry was content analysis. We define content analysis as the systematic, objective, and quantitative analysis of message characteristics that adheres to the standards of the scientific method (Boettger & Palmer, 2010; Neuendorf, 2016).

Sample

Our content sample consisted of 1,271 articles that we collected from five scholarly journals and one trade publication. We randomly selected this content from a population of 4,463 articles, which included every major content piece from these publications from 1996 to 2017.

In total, the sample represented 28% of the population, exceeding the recommended threshold of 20%. We identified our sample by assigning every publication in the population a unique numerical identification using the RAND formula (the random number function) in Microsoft Excel and then sorting those publications from the largest to the smallest number. We coded the first 1,271 articles. This random selection both reduced any potential human bias and retained the publication proportion of each publication type.

The journal content came from JBTC, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (JTWC), TC, Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ), and TPC. These publications represent the leading forums for TC scholarship (Boettger & Lam, 2013; Carliner et al., 2011; Lowry et al., 2007; Smith, 2000a, 2000b) and reflect the history of the discipline. The creation of TC in 1953 and TPC in 1957 (via the establishment of the STC and the IEEE Professional Communication Society, respectively) marked the emergence of our profession (Carliner, 2014, 2015). Subsequent journals—JTWC (established in 1971), JBTC (established in 1986), and TCQ (established in 1991, replacing Technical Writing Teacher)—further reflected the general stability of TC as a profession and as an academic discipline. Other journals in the discipline (e.g., Programmatic Perspectives) and journals whose focus extends beyond TC (e.g., the recently renamed Business and Professional Communication Quarterly and Communication Design Quarterly) have also made important contributions; however, their publication history falls outside this study’s scope and our purpose of offering a longitudinal summary of content published in TC journals.

The trade publication content came from Intercom, the official magazine for the STC. We recognize that Intercom is not the only trade publication in TC. Other trade publications, such as User Experience Magazine and TC World, also lend value to our field’s professionals (e.g., Lauren & Schreiber, 2018). In addition, blogging platforms and social media have influenced how our professionals exchange information (Hannah & Lam, 2016). But these forums lack archival capacity; therefore, Intercom remains the most established and centrally focused trade publication in TC. Further, the sample size from Intercom alone (N = 599) is comparable to the sample from all five of the research journals (N = 672). We begin our analysis in 1996 because that is when Intercom magazine is first published. We conclude our timeframe in 2017, which at the time of our coding, provided the latest complete volume of each journal.

Codebook and Coding Process

We manually coded the sample on nine content variables: publication type, year, broad topic, primary topic, authorship, gender, affiliation type, geographic affiliation, and world region (see Table 1). These variables were originally derived from existing studies of TC content and have since been validated and applied in other studies (e.g., Boettger & Friess, 2016, 2020; Boettger & Lam, 2013; Boettger et al., 2014; Carliner et al., 2011; Hannah & Lam, 2016; Lowry et al., 2007).

The codes for the qualitative variables broad topic and primary topic emerged from the data and were refined through 11 rounds of codebook development. Although scholarship cannot always be classified into a single category, the abstraction and isolation of variables is an important step to any scientific method. Therefore, while many publications in the data set addressed more than one code per variable (typically in the broad topic and primary topic assessments), we relied on our codebook to ascertain a single code for each publication to ensure mutual exclusivity, which is needed for statistical verification of reliability. Further, although past versions of the codebook included an “other” category for certain variables, careful refinement of the codebook enabled that category to be unnecessary in the final version of the codebook. In addition, codes from our original codebook, such as the primary topics of gender and intercultural communication, have evolved with the field’s content production in social justice. For this study, then, we collapsed and expanded the gender and intercultural communication codes into the new primary topic code of diversity—which we defined as topics addressing how social variable differences affect communication—in order to account for the growing amount of research related to disparity issues in the field.

Table 1. Variables and Variable Levels Considered in the Study.

VariableVariable level
Publication typeCoded as professional (Intercom) or scholarly (JBTC, JTWC, TC, TCQ, or TPC)
YearYear of publication (e.g., 1996–2017)
Broad topicCoded as education, process, profession, or product
Primary topicCoded as assessment, collaboration, communication strategies, comprehension, design, diversity, editing and style, genre, professionalization, knowledge and information management, pedagogy, research design, rhetoric, technology, or usability and user experience
AuthorshipCoded as the authorship of each publication as single authored, coauthored, or multiauthored
Gender (first author)Coded as female or male based on the pronouns used in the author biography
Affiliation type (first author)Coded as the affiliation of the first author as academic or industry/government
Geographic affiliation (first author)Coded as the geographic affiliation of the first author as U.S.-based or non–U.S.-based
World region (first author)Coded as Africa/Middle East, Asia, Australia, Central and South America, Europe, or North America

Note. JBTC = Journal of Business and Technical Communication; JTWC = Journal of Technical Writing and Communication; TC = Technical Communication; TCQ = Technical Communication Quarterly; TPC = IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

For this particular study, we divided the sample (identified from the random number function in Excel) equally among three worksheets and then gave each worksheet to three TC researchers to code independently. Additionally, each researcher coded 20% of the other researchers’ sample to account for interrater reliability. No codes were shared or compared by the researchers until the coding was completed. Although no single study can account for every nuance of a phenomenon, our results include a consistent application of codes that were developed with attention to validity and reliability. To that end, the sample was independently coded by three researchers in TC. The agreement between the study’s two authors was 84.6% (using Krippendorff’s alpha coefficient), which is within the recommended range (Watt & van den Burg, 1995). Therefore, these codes can confidently be applied to other data samples for comparison, contributing to the growth rather than the stagnation of a particular research conversation.

We analyzed the data using descriptive statistics and contingency table analyses. Contingency table analyses correlate multivariate frequency distributions, allowing researchers to statistically compare distributions of nonnumerical data. We ran a binomial, a type of contingency table analysis that tests the statistical significance of deviations from theoretically expected distributions in two categories. We also ran the χ² test to test two-way table associations.

Results

We discuss our results according to the findings for our three research questions regarding the broad topics, primary topics, and authorship characteristics of these publications.

Broad Topics

Regarding RQ1 (What are the broad content areas covered in Intercom, and how do these areas compare to the coverage in the TC scholarly journals?), we found that the content published in Intercom mostly focused on the broad topics of the process (n = 227) and profession (n = 183).

Content coded as process focused on part or all of the tasks involved in producing and delivering a product. Over the sample’s 22-year period, Intercom published process content related to improving content quality when writing for translation, using a word processor for large-scale HTML conversion, and mentoring a technical writer.

Content coded as profession focused on how technical communicators perceived themselves or their field. Within Intercom, the content related to certification and long-running columns such as “My Job,” in which technical communicators describe their duties within their industry or organization, was coded as profession.

We used a contingency table analysis to determine how evenly distributed the four broad topics in our codebook (process, profession, product, and education) were across Intercom. To establish a foundation for examining content patterns in the field, our null hypothesis assumed that if all topics were evenly distributed, 149.75 articles on each topic would have appeared within the 22-year period (1996–2017). This number was derived by dividing the total number of Intercom articles in the sample by the total number of broad topics (i.e., 599/4). Although we did not anticipate the data set to reveal equally divided topics, a null hypothesis was necessary based on the limited evidence our field has reported in these areas. A statistical model generates data that can be explored through a defined lens, thus establishing a baseline that other scholars can build from in future research.

Table 2 lists the contingency table analysis result for the observed frequencies of the broad topics and the related p values. These p values are bolded and italicized to aid in interpretation. Overall, Intercom published content on process and profession more than expected. In other words, the observed frequencies for both process (227) and profession (183) significantly exceeded the expected value (149.75). Content on product was published as expected, but content on education was published less than expected. These results begin to suggest content trends in Intercom.

Next, we compared these results to the broad topic results in the scholarly journals (see the far-right columns in Table 2). Scholarly content on product and process was published more than expected. Content on education was published as expected whereas content on profession was published less than expected.

Table 2. Contingency Table Analysis Results for Frequencies and p Values of Broad Topics in the Trade and Scholarly Publications (1996–2017).

Broad TopicTrade Frequencyp BinomialScholarly Frequencyp Binomial
Process227.00*194.02*
Profession183.00*51.00*
Product164.19278.00*
Education25.00*149.10
Total599672

Note. *Significant at ≤ 0.05 α level. Significance results are styled in italics for more than expected and bold for less than expected to improve interpretation.

In sum, Intercom published content related to all four broad topics, but articles on process and profession were published in higher than expected frequencies. Scholarly journals also published content on all four broad topics; however, the higher than expected publication of process-related content was the only result that the trade and scholarship publications shared in common.

Primary Topics

Regarding RQ2 (What are the primary content areas covered in Intercom, and how do these areas compare to the coverage in the TC scholarly journals?), we found that the content published in Intercom primarily focused on professionalization (n = 173), technology (n = 99), and genre (n = 52). Our contingency table analysis determined how evenly distributed the primary topics were across Intercom. Our null hypothesis assumed that if all topics were evenly distributed, 42.79 (599/14) articles on each topic would have appeared within the 22-year period (1996–2017). Our codebook included 15 primary topics, but the rhetoric code is excluded here because it was never coded as a primary topic in Intercom. Table 3 lists the contingency table analysis result for the observed frequencies of the primary topics and the related p values. These p values are also bolded and italicized to aid in interpretation. Overall, Intercom published content on professionalization and technology more than expected whereas it published content on diversity, usability/UX (i.e., how users engage and interact with products), design (i.e., use of design elements in products to influence communication), pedagogy, assessment, research design, and comprehension less than expected. The remaining five topics were not significantly distributed and therefore appeared about as expected.

Next, we compared these results to the primary topic results in the scholarly journals. These results included the rhetoric code that was absent from the Intercom data, so the null hypothesis was 44.8 (672/15). Scholarly content primarily classified as rhetoric, pedagogy, genre, and diversity were published more than expected whereas content on usability/UX, comprehension, knowledge and information management, research design, design, and editing and style were published less than expected.

The trade (Intercom) and scholarly publications shared the most alignment in the content that was published as expected (communication strategies and collaboration) or less than expected (usability/UX, design, research design, and comprehension). Each publication type produced content in distinct areas at higher than expected frequencies. Intercom emphasized professionalization and technology whereas the scholarly publications emphasized rhetoric, diversity, and pedagogy. The absence of rhetoric content in Intercom is notable when compared to its significant presence in scholarly publications.

Table 3. Contingency Table Analysis Results for Frequencies and p Values of Primary Topics in the Trade and Scholarly Publications (1996–2017).

Primary TopicTrade Frequencyp BinomialScholarly Frequencyp Binomial
Professionalization173.00*44100
Technology99.00*42.76
Genre52.2590.00*
Communication strategies46.5850396
Collaboration44.8136.19
Knowledge management37.4327.00*
Editing and style37.4313.00*
Diversity28.02*59.04*
Usability/user experience (UX)25.00*30.02*
Design20.00*16.00*
Pedagogy15.00*91.00*
Assessment10.00*33.07
Research design7.00*21.00*
Comprehension6.00*28.01*
Rhetoric0NA92.00*
Total599672

Note. *Significant at ≤ 0.05 α level. Significance results are styled in italics for more than expected and bold for less than expected to improve interpretation.

Authorship Characteristics

Regarding RQ3 (What are the authorship characteristics of Intercom authors, and how do these characteristics compare to the authors of TC research?), we found that the sample size for authorship characteristics slightly decreased because four Intercom articles did not include author bylines. Also, two authors did not include their affiliations; LinkedIn research for their work history could not pinpoint where they worked when their article was published.

Overall, 90.8% (n = 544) of the articles in Intercom were single-authored (see Table 4). Although Intercom’s editorial content is focused on TC practitioners, authors who held academic affiliations were listed as the first author on 19.7% (n = 117) of the Intercom publications (see Table 5). Of the 478 author industry affiliations that could be coded, 54% of the industry authors (n = 256) were independent contractors, and 46% of them (n = 222) worked in an organization.

Table 4. Frequencies of Single-Authored, Coauthored, and Multiauthored Trade and Scholarly Publications (1996–2017). Four Articles in the Sample Did Not Include Authorship Identification.

AuthorshipTrade FrequencyScholarly Frequency
Single authored544399
Coauthored46178
Multiauthored595
Total595672

Table 5. Frequencies of Affiliation Type, Geographic Affiliation, World Region, and Gender of First Authors in Trade and Scholarly Publications (1996–2017). Four Articles in the Sample Did Not Include Authorship Identification.

Affiliation TypeTrade FrequencyScholarly FrequencyTotal
University117649766
Industry47823526
Geographic affiliation
U.S.-based5125571,069
Non–U.S.-based83115198
World region
North America5645831,147
Europe125567
Asia62531
Australia13922
Gender
Male336330666
Female259342601

Of all the first authors in our sample of Intercom authors, 86.1% of them had U.S.-based affiliations (see Table 5). The majority of Intercom first authors in our sample (95%, n = 564) were affiliated with companies or institutions in North America. Authors affiliated with the regions of Australia, Europe, and Asia were also identified; however, these articles were frequently authored by the same person. For example, 12 of the 13 articles affiliated with Australia were written by the same author. Finally, in our sample, 56.5% of the Intercom first authors were coded as male. We coded gender based on the pronouns used in the author-provided biography. If no biography was included (as is often the case in Intercom), we consulted the pronouns used in the author’s professional biography or LinkedIn profile.

Compared to the scholarly publications in our sample (see Table 5), publications in Intercom were typically written by male authors and authors with industry affiliations. Scholarly publications tended to be written by female authors and authors with academic affiliations. But for both publication types, the overall author characteristics were rather homogeneous. Both forums published more single-authored publications than collaboratively authored publications; however, about 30% more of the Intercom articles than the scholarly publications were written by one author. And both publication types were typically produced by authors in the North American region, mainly the United States.

Discussion

In this section, we look more deeply at the comparison between Intercom and the scholarly journals in terms of broad topic, primary topic, and authorship characteristics.

Broad Topic

Our exploration of the broad topics of profession, process, education, and product presents unsurprising yet important findings. The scholarly journals produced more articles on education than did Intercom whereas Intercom produced more articles on the profession than did the scholarly journals. Given the purpose and audience of each forum, it seems appropriate that the professional issues are largely tackled by the trade magazine and that educational issues are largely explored by the educators who publish in the scholarly journals.

But both publication types published more articles than we expected on issues of process, which is a point of commonality. Both Intercom and the scholarly journals find such issues relevant to the identity and growth of the field; thus, more articles are dedicated to process in both forums than what our null hypothesis would suggest. Despite the real divergences between academics and practitioners (which we will discuss in the next subsection), the mutual overemphasis of process in both forums provides a touch point of shared value. Carliner (2014) observed that while production of documents had traditionally been a practical concern for TC, the profession has now become more focused on the processes involved in the design and production of content. He suggested that the focus on processes was in response to those related to computer-assisted translation, single-source publishing, printing on demand, and dynamic publishing, all products of positive growth in TC. Our results support the trend toward process-oriented content. If the field’s practitioners and academics hope to bridge the well-noted differences that have set them on parallel paths and instead share a mutually beneficial future that encourages the sustainability and growth of the field, process might well be the broad topic on which convergence can continue to occur.

Primary Topic

In contrast to the commonality of the broad topic of process in both the scholarly journals and Intercom, our results for the primary topic of rhetoric show the ongoing divergence of academics and practitioners. We identified 15 possible primary topics for the publications: professionalization, technology, genre, communication strategies, collaboration, knowledge management, editing and style, diversity, usability/UX, design, pedagogy, assessment, research design, comprehension, and rhetoric. Rhetoric was the most common primary topic in the scholarly journals whereas it was not a primary topic in any of the articles in our random sample of Intercom.

In many ways, the ongoing and noted dichotomy between academics and practitioners of TC boils down to how each group internalizes and reflects the singular primary topic of rhetoric. TC has long been grounded in rhetoric, but as Albers (2016) noted, “PhD programs are shifting away from technical communication to emphasize the rhetoric surrounding technical topics” (p. 294; i.e., rhetorics of science, health and medicine, diversity, risk communication, and design thinking). Moore (1996) claimed that academics pursue rhetoric not for the betterment of TC but to make such scholarly publications “more palatable to themselves and to other academic audiences” (p. 102). Practitioners, meanwhile, do not necessarily ignore rhetoric, but they do not make it a primary focus of discussion for rather practical reasons. Albers stated that “practitioners want answers to today’s problems” (p. 294), answers that are rarely answered from in-depth rhetorical analyses. Further, Moore (1997) claimed that “rhetorical theory has a limited application in managing projects…because rhetoric was never conceived to solve problems of managing time and money, keeping teams of workers happy, finding the best technology, planning projects, developing standards, and managing other resources” (p. 167).

In 2016, Albers forecasted a potential “great split” between TC practitioners and academics in which each group “would go its own way with minimal interaction with the other” (p. 293). Our data suggest that the forecasted split has already occurred. For academics, rhetoric is an integral component of TC education, pedagogy, and research. For practitioners, rhetoric is, at best, a tertiary concern.

Our codebook identified 15 primary topics, 14 of which appear in both the scholarly journals and Intercom. Only two primary topics appeared in frequencies as expected in both the scholarly journals and Intercom: communication strategies and collaboration. These two primary topics represent the relatively limited area in which the scholarly journals and Intercom seem to reflect similar interests. Thus, communication strategies (i.e., practices that impact internal and external communication) and collaboration (i.e., issues affecting face-to-face or virtual collaboration), both process-oriented endeavors, might be areas in which academics and practitioners can share knowledge.

We found another area of commonality in the primary topics that both academics and practitioners value less, as evidenced by these topics appearing less than expected in both the scholarly journals and Intercom. While it is perhaps not surprising that the primary topic of research design appeared less than expected in both forums, usability/UX, design, and comprehension appearing less than expected is somewhat surprising because they have long been lauded as foundational components of TC, and technical communicators have been encouraged to harness their knowledge of usability and design to increase readers’ comprehension (Schuster, 1989; Redish & Schell, 1989; Redish & Selzer, 1985; Roberts, 1989; Soderston, 1985; Spyridakis & Wenger, 1992). These are topics that in many ways initially defined TC as a field of both study and practice.

In particular, usability/UX has long been considered a hallmark competency (Rainey et al., 2005) and a potentially strong career path for technical communicators (Lauer & Brumberger, 2016). Although many notable usability and UX specialists have roots in TC (Redish & Barnum, 2011), TC forums are not producers of this primary topic. Other forums such as the Journal of Usability Studies and the many human–computer interaction journals have taken up original research in usability and UX in earnest, and societies such as the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) and the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer–Human Interaction (ACM-CHI) have taken up usability and UX in the practitioner realm. Although TC practitioners and researchers might still value usability techniques and UX processes, the expertise of those topics appears to have been ceded to other forums in other fields. Regardless, our data cannot allow us to make the claim that usability/UX, design, or comprehension are expected topics within the field of TC.

If the primary topics that appear less often than expected in both the scholarly and trade journals reveal what the field of TC is not, then the primary topics that appear more often than expected in both the scholarly journals and the trade journals would reveal the field-defining topics for TC academics and practitioners. Unfortunately, no primary topic appears more than expected in both the scholarly journals and Intercom. While it is not surprising that topics such as pedagogy and professionalism are divergent between academics and practitioners, it is surprising that topics such as technology, editing and style, and genre are divergent. Once again, these are topics that have been considered foundational aspects of TC (Allen, 1990; Dobrin, 1983; Farkas, 1985; Jordan, 1986; Kent, 1987; Masse, 1985; Ramsey, 1980), yet even these topics are not represented similarly in both the scholarly journals and Intercom.

With no topic represented more than expected by both practitioners and academics, we return to collaboration and communication strategies, the two primary topics that appear as expected in both the scholarly journals and Intercom. Although these two topics have a history in TC (Rainey et al., 2005; Sides, 1991; Stratton, 1989), are these two topics enough for the field? Do they carry enough uniqueness to establish field definition and prevent the field’s collapse? Collaboration is widely studied by other fields, including business, organizational communication, psychology, communication studies, education, and many others. Communication strategy, however, holds potential for both practitioners and academics of the field in its exploration of agile communication and content strategy. Content strategy holds particular promise, and its presence in TC has increased—though not to the point where we have had to reevaluate our codebook as we did with gender and diversity (Batova, 2018; Clark, 2016; Getto et al., 2019; LaRoche & Traynor, 2013). Yet, as Albers (2016) has pointed out, the clock might be running out on TC and content strategy, and unless the field takes deliberate action, content strategy could be yet another primary topic that once was a part of TC.

Authorship Characteristics

While authorship characteristics of Intercom have not been previously studied, our results fall in line with the authorship characteristics of the scholarly publications; that is, both Intercom and the scholarly journals primarily publish single-authored pieces from authors based in North America who are nearly equally likely to identify themselves as a man as they are a woman. This homogeneous state of authorship in both the scholarly journals and Intercom is somewhat surprising given that diversity is one of the most common primary topics explored within the scholarly journals. Despite the preponderance of diversity research, the actual authorship characteristics in both Intercom and the scholarly journals remain decidedly undiverse.

For Intercom, the North American bias is somewhat expected given that the STC is based in the United States and that all 65 of the STC’s annual conferences have been held in North America. But the scholarly journals of TC also overwhelmingly produce research coming from North American researchers. At one time that geographical bias in research production would be expected given North America’s early adoption of TC principles. That bias, however, is no longer warranted, with Europeans producing much practical, day-to-day best practices in both TC and fields adjacent to it, such as content and information management, through tekom’s annual fair and tcworld conference. To further this observation, Kimball (2017) noted a drop in STC membership from 25,000 members in the early 2000s to about 6,000 members a decade later, whereas tekom has grown its international network to around 9,500 members. Perhaps European technical communicators are publishing in other practitioner-centric forums that are not archived; such forums might be useful places for future research if random sampling can be assured. A future study might also explore how these findings relate to publications that are not written only in English and how the authors’ native language affects the publication venue.

Conclusion

Our goals in this study were to build on Smith’s (2000a, 2000b) 20-year-old citation analyses to learn where the TC academy–industry divide is most and least divergent and what those divisions mean for the overall health of the field of TC. Although some of these divisions could be attributed to differing nomenclature emphases (e.g., perhaps academics emphasize audience analysis whereas practitioners emphasize user and task analysis), we believe that the results of this study, which suggest uneven priorities between practitioners and academics, is a potential harbinger of rockiness in the discipline. We invite readers to consider carefully the implications of these results for the careers of practitioners, academics, and future practitioners trained by academics.

Our findings show that while the authorship characteristics are similar between scholarly and trade publications, the content characteristics are dissimilar. Although academics and practitioners both value process-based publications for broad topics, the more targeted primary topics suggest disparity rather than cohesion.

Overwhelmingly, our data demonstrate divergent primary topics in forums dedicated to TC practitioners and researchers, presenting a fractured picture of TC. In many ways, the content produced by the two populations indicates that TC practitioners and researchers have little in common except for a shared name decided on decades ago. It might well be that the field is content with TC practitioners and academics claiming wholly independent topics.

We are concerned, however, that this fractured existence is not a healthy model and could lead to limited future success for both academics and practitioners. If we want to be a cohesive field in which practitioners and academics are of mutual benefit to each other, then the field as a whole must look closer at its definitional markers. Our data show that academics continue to find rhetoric as the primary focus of the field whereas practitioners focus on more tangible pursuits. If TC academics and practitioners are to find a place of joint value, it will not be in a place dominated by rhetoric. Our data suggest that communication strategies, particularly content strategy, could be such a place where both academics and practitioners find value.

The suggestion that the future of the technical communicator is that of content manager and strategist is not a new one (Giammona, 2004; LaRoche & Traynor, 2013). LaRoche and Traynor have claimed that the field of TC is on life support, but content strategy could be its savior (LaRoche & Traynor, 2013). Albers (2016) has noted that the train for content strategy is loading and preparing to leave the station. Yet research on communication and content strategy is still not a research priority for academics. For the field to be removed from life support, both academics and practitioners must identify whether the future of TC lies with communication strategies or elsewhere.

Finally, the results reported here provide a baseline for future research. Expanding the data set to include more recent volumes is a necessary next step to see how the field has evolved. Our current analysis only begins to investigate the content being produced in TC; many areas merit additional refined, focused analyses. For example, what types of authors choose to collaborate? Are they most often institutional colleagues who are all working toward tenure, or does the field have a clear mentorship model, such as senior and junior faculty or advisor and advisee? Does the native language of authors affect venues of publication? As we revised this manuscript, we recognized that the COVID-19 global pandemic has unknown impacts on how technology will drive future communication practices. These impacts will change how technical communicators do their jobs and the content areas they choose to research. Future content analyses that include more recent volumes will reveal, for example, if the field’s pivot to process-based content continues as the duties and roles of the technical communicator evolve further. In addition, content on education could increase as both professionals and academics reassess or explore the best methods for presenting instructional and educational content. We predict more changes in primary topics, perhaps seeing an increase in collaboration and technology as familiarity with virtual teams and their related technologies increase. As we noted in the Method section, we expanded our previous codebooks to account for a considerable increase in content related to diversity. Along the same line, a new increase in content primarily classified as communication strategy could eventually merit a separate category for risk/crisis management. Recent events are a reminder that TC is a present-oriented field that pivots, evolves, and refines itself to fulfill audience needs and expectations.

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Saul Carliner for his contributions and feedback on previous versions of this research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References

  1. About Intercom. (2019). Intercom. https://www.stc.org/intercom/about-intercom/
  2. Albers, M. J. (2016). Improving research communication. Technical Communication, 63(4), 293–297.
  3. Allen, J. (1990). The case against defining technical writing. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 4(2), 68–77.
  4. Andersen, R., & Hackos, J. (2018, August). Increasing the value and accessibility of academic research: Perspectives from industry [Paper presentation]. Proceedings of the 36th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication, Milwaukee, WI.
  5. Batova, T. (2018). Work motivation in the rhetoric of component content management. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 32(3), 308–346.
  6. Blakeslee, A. M., & Spilka, R. (2004). The state of research in technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 13(1), 73–92.
  7. Boettger, R. K., & Friess, E. (2016). Academics are from Mars, practitioners are from Venus: Analyzing content alignment within technical communication forums. Technical Communication, 63(4), 314–327.
  8. Boettger, R. K., & Friess, E. (2020). Content and authorship patterns in technical communication journals (1996–2017): A quantitative content analysis. Technical Communication, 67(3), 4–24.
  9. Boettger, R. K., Friess, E., & Carliner, S. (2014). Who says what to whom? Assessing the alignment of content and audience between scholarly and professional publications in technical communication (1996–2013) [Paper presentation]. Proceedings of the IEEE 2014 International Professional Communication Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
  10. Boettger, R. K., & Lam, C. (2013). An overview of experimental and quasi-experimental research in technical communication journals (1992–2011). IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 56(4), 272–293.
  11. Boettger, R. K., & Palmer, L. A. (2010). Quantitative content analysis: Its use in technical and professional communication. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 53(4), 346–357.
  12. Brammer, C., & Galloway, R. (2007). IEEE Transactions on professional communication: Looking to the past to discover the present. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 50(4), 275–279.
  13. Breuch, L.-A. K. (2002). Thinking critically about technological literacy: Developing a framework to guide computer pedagogy in technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 11(3), 267–288.
  14. Bunea, A., & Baumgartner, F. R. (2014). The state of the discipline: Authorship, research designs, and citation patterns in studies of EU interest groups and lobbying. Journal of European Public Policy, 21(10), 1412–1434.
  15. Burnett, R. E. (2003). A farewell. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 17(1), 3.
  16. Carliner, S. (1995). Finding a common ground: What STC is, and should be, doing to advance education in information design and development. Technical Communication, 42(4), 546–554.
  17. Carliner, S. (2014). Technical communication. In V. Bhatia & S. Bremner (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and professional communication (pp. 99–111). Routledge.
  18. Carliner, S. (2015). Technical communication at a crossroads. Intercom, 62(10), 6–11.
  19. Carliner, S., Coppola, N., Grady, H., & Hayhoe, G. F. (2011). What does the transactions publish? What do transactions’ readers want to read? IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 54(4), 341–359.
  20. Clark, D. (2016). Content strategy: An integrative literature review. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59(1), 7–23.
  21. Dobrin, D. N. (1983). What’s technical about technical writing. In P. V. Anderson, R. J. Brockman & C. R. Miller (Eds.), New essays in technical and scientific communication: Research, theory, practice (pp. 227–250). Baywood.
  22. Farkas, D. K. (1985). The concept of consistency in writing and editing. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 15(4), 353–364.
  23. Frey, L. R. (1994). The naturalistic paradigm: Studying small groups in the postmodern era. Small Group Research, 25(4), 551–577.
  24. Getto, G., Labriola, J., & Ruszkiewicz, S. (2019). Content strategy in technical communication. Routledge.
  25. Giammona, B. (2004). The future of technical communication: How innovation, technology, information management, and other forces are shaping the future of the profession. Technical Communication, 51(3), 349–366.
  26. Gomes, E., Barnes, B. R., & Mahmood, T. (2016). A 22 year review of strategic alliance research in the leading management journals. International Business Review, 25(1), 15–27.
  27. Hannah, M. A., & Lam, C. (2016). Patterns of dissemination: Examining and documenting practitioner knowledge sharing practices on blogs. Technical Communication, 63(4), 328–345.
  28. Jordan, M. P. (1986). The genre of technical description. Technical Writing Teacher, 13(1), 42–50.
  29. Kacmar, K. M., & Baron, R. A. (1999). Organizational politics: The state of the field, links to related processes, and an agenda for future research. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Research in personnel and human resources management (Vol. 17, pp. 1–39). JAI Press.
  30. Kent, T. (1987). Genre theory in the area of business writing. Technical Writing Teacher, 14(2), 323–342.
  31. Kimball, M. A. (2017). The golden age of technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 47(3), 330–358.
  32. Kirschenbaum, M., & Werner, S. (2014). Digital scholarship and digital studies: The state of the discipline. Book History, 17(1), 406–458.
  33. Kynell, T., & Tebeaux, E. (2009). The association of teachers of technical writing: The emergence of professional identity. Technical Communication Quarterly, 18(2), 107–141.
  34. Lam, C. (2014). Where did we come from and where are we going? Examining authorship characteristics in technical communication research. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 57(4), 266–285.
  35. LaRoche, C., & Traynor, B. (2013, July). Technical communication on life support: Content strategy and UX are the reclamation [Paper presentation]. 2013 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia.
  36. Lauer, C., & Brumberger, E. (2016). Technical communication as user experience in a broadening industry landscape. Technical Communication, 63(3), 248–264.
  37. Lauren, B., & Schreiber, J. (2018). An integrative literature review of project management in technical and professional communication. Technical Communication, 65(1), 85–106.
  38. Lowry, P. B., Humpherys, S. L., Malwitz, J., & Nix, J. (2007). A scientometric study of the perceived quality of business and technical communication journals. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 50(4), 352–378.
  39. Lynn, N. B., & Wildavsky, A. B. (1990). Public administration: The state of the discipline. Chatham House.
  40. Masse, R. E. (1985). Theory and practice of editing processes in technical communication. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 28(1), 34–42.
  41. Melonçon, L., & St.Amant, K. (2018). Empirical research in technical and professional communication: A 5-year examination of research methods and a call for research sustainability. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 49(2), 128–155.
  42. Moore, P. (1996). Instrumental discourse is as humanistic as rhetoric. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 10(1), 100–118.
  43. Moore, P. (1997). Rhetorical vs. instrumental approaches to teaching technical communication. Technical Communication, 44(2), 163–173.
  44. Munger, R. (2006). Participating in a technical communication internship. Technical Communication, 53(3), 326–338.
  45. Neuendorf, K. A. (2016). The content analysis guidebook (2nd ed.). Sage.
  46. Paretti, M. C., McNair, L. D., & Holloway-Attaway, L. (2007). Teaching technical communication in an era of distributed work: A case study of collaboration between US and Swedish students. Technical Communication Quarterly, 16(3), 327–352.
  47. Rainey, K. T., Turner, R. K., & Dayton, D. (2005). Do curricula correspond to managerial expectations? Core competencies for technical communicators. Technical Communication, 52(3), 323–352.
  48. Ramsey, R. D. (1980). Grammatical voice and person in technical writing: Results of a survey. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 10(2), 109–113.
  49. Raptis, P. (1992). Authorship characteristics in five international library science journals. Libri, 42(1), 35–52.
  50. Redish, J. C., & Barnum, C. (2011). Overlap, influence, intertwining: The interplay of UX and technical communication. Journal of Usability Studies, 6(3), 90–101.
  51. Redish, J. C., & Schell, D. A. (1989). Writing and testing instructions for usability. In B. Fearing & W. K. Sparrow (Eds.), Technical writing: Theory and practice (pp. 63–71). Modern Language Association of America.
  52. Redish, J. C., & Selzer, J. (1985). The place of readability formulas in technical communication. Technical Communication, 32(4), 46–52.
  53. Reeves, M. (2012, January 15). The value of trade publications in PR. Platform Magazine. http://platformmagazine.org/2012/01/15/the-value-of-trade-publications-in-pr/
  54. Roberts, D. D. (1989). Readers’ comprehension responses in informative discourse: Toward connecting reading and writing in technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 19(2), 135–148.
  55. Schuster, M. M. (1989). Non-rhetorical elements of layout and design: Theory and practice. In B. Fearing & W. K. Sparrow (Eds.), Technical writing: Theory and practice (pp. 72–85). Modern Language Association of America.
  56. Siddiqui, M. A. (1997). A bibliometric study of authorship characteristics in four international information science journals. International Forum on Information and Documentation, 22(3), 3–11.
  57. Sides, C. H. (1991). Collaboration in a hardware technical writing group: A real-world laboratory. Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication, 54(2), 11–14.
  58. Smith, E. O. (2000a). Points of reference in technical communication scholarship. Technical Communication Quarterly, 9(4), 427–453.
  59. Smith, E. O. (2000b). Strength in the technical communication journals and diversity in the serials cited. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 14(2), 131–184.
  60. Soderston, C. (1985). The usability edit: A new level. Technical Communication, 32(1), 16–18.
  61. Spyridakis, J. H., & Wenger, M. J. (1992). Writing for human performance: Relating reading research to document design. Technical Communication, 39(4), 202–215.
  62. St.Amant, K., & Melonçon, L. (2016a). Addressing the incommensurable: A research-based perspective for considering issues of power and legitimacy in the field. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 46(3), 267–283.
  63. St.Amant, K., & Melonçon, L. (2016b). Reflections on research: Examining practitioner perspectives on the state of research in technical communication. Technical Communication, 63(4), 346–364.
  64. Stratton, C. R. (1989). Collaborative writing in the workplace. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 32(3), 178–182.
  65. Watt, J., & van den Burg, S. (1995). Research methods for communication science. Allyn and Bacon.
  66. Wilkinson, K. T., & Merle, P. F. (2013). The merits and challenges of using business press and trade journal reports in academic research on media industries. Communication, Culture & Critique, 6(3), 415–431.