Instructional Design issue of Intercom: articles required (NOW!!)

After the Summit last year, we were all fired up to conquer the world and arranged with Liz Pohland to guest edit an issue of Intercom. I mentioned this in our request for volunteers last fall but haven’t been diligent in reminding you, SIG members, that we need articles supplied by you. We need them by February 15 if we are going to make the originally-scheduled March 2016 issue.

These articles can be on any aspect of Instructional Design and Learning. Two questions we were asked at the Summit were: “How does ID differ from regular ‘technical writing’?” and “How do I break into ID?”

This is your honest-to-goodness chance to be PUBLISHED in a magazine that reaches an international audience. Pick one of the ideas above or your own area of expertise and let me know that you will commit to getting an article to me in the next couple of weeks. Be honest with yourself… had you been given 3 months’ notice (and really, you were) you’d still just be sitting down to write this weekend. So it’s not totally crazy to ask you to have something ready so quickly.

Everything you need to know about writing for Intercom is on http://intercom.stc.org/author-guidelines/ and there are no onerous requirements. In fact, you can re-use a previously-published article according to these notes from that page: An article should be accompanied by a note stating whether the article has appeared in another publication and whether you plan to submit it to another publication. At the end of the article, please include a brief biography of the author(s) and email addresses, or other contact information for the reader.

Publishing Rights
Authors retain copyright to their work in Intercom. The Society for Technical Communication requires that author(s) grant STC print rights to articles appearing in Intercom. The Society also requires that author(s) grant STC permission to reproduce the article for an indefinite period of time in any media. We also ask authors to wait six months before re-publishing an Intercom article elsewhere (such as on a personal blog). Once an article has been accepted for publication, authors will be asked to sign a licensing agreement. (this link works on the STC site).

So please leap into action, grab your pens, and save our rep for promising to help out and delivering on that promise.
Mellissa & Robert

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