Our Commitments

We are committed to publishing pieces that reflect writers’ lived experiences and we encourage pieces about your lived experience as a writer, research on writers, and/or reflections on writers you know and work with.

Many journals focus on writing, rhetoric, and literacy. However, an online, open access journal dedicated to exploring and representing the lived experiences of writers has yet to emerge. WCC Journal seeks to fill that gap. We, the managing editors, along with our large collaborative editorial team, recognize that the journal’s “vibrancy, relevance, and, most crucially, ethical core depend on a consistent, rigorous, and measurable commitment to addressing [scholarly publication’s] exclusionary history with regard to people of color, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, non-citizens, and those who stand at the intersections of these identities and more” (Calafel). Therefore, we envision the journal as a site for “inclusion activism,” that seeks to “challenge operations that exclude and diminish the experience and knowledge of some while propping up that of others, and to be supportive of those who have not traditionally had access to or representation within field conversations” (Blewett et al. 274-5). For us, that means holding ourselves, authors, reviewers, and board members accountable to the writers and communities with, about, and for whom we publish (Grumbs; Pritchard).  It means making inclusive citation practices part of our review criteria in ways that resist the all too common “rhetorical tokenism that leads to a lack of recognition of the fullness of people’s contributions” (Pritchard). In short, we seek to “enlarge and help to grow our scholarly communities rather than follow well-worn grooves” (Blewett et al. 275).

To build and sustain a journal that “stand[s] for excellence, transformative inclusivity, and true accountability” (Pritchard) we commit to the following editorial practices:

• Publishing new voices and innovative approaches to representing expertise, experience, and research
• Honoring and prioritizing “critical scholarship [as well as creative activity outside educational institutions] in race, gender, and other marginalized identities and topics...in an intentional and conspicuous way” (Calafel)
• Encouraging accessible forms of writing, scholarship, and creative activity that embody and value diverse sources of knowledge
• Actively recruiting for diversity (Blewett et al.) including coordinating community outreach events to seek out and mentor potential contributors
• Providing meaningful feedback on all manuscripts that privileges the writer’s goals
• Building long term mentoring relationships with writers, if desired
• Making members of the editorial and review team available for engaged discourse with readers and writers
• Prioritizing recruitment of people of color and members of other minoritized groups to be editors, reviewers, and board members now and in the future (Blewett et al.; Calafel)
• Tracking how many pieces we publish by writers minoritized, oppressed, or underrepresented in traditional publication venues and documenting these experiences within the journal
• Encouraging authors to review bibliographies highlighting minoritized perspectives and to cite relevant work in a “meaningful and substantive way” (Pritchard). We plan to offer links to relevant bibliographies.
• Using and providing access to inclusive editing style guides (Council of Editors and Learned Journals: celj.org/projects)
• Ensuring journal business is conducted with “maximum transparency” by making visible the process of determining editors, reviewers, accepting articles, etc. as well as providing public access to our data reflecting the extent to which we are upholding our commitments (Calafel)

Blewett, Kelly, LaVecchia, Christina M., Micciche, Laura, R., and Morris, Janine. (2019). Editing as Inclusion Activism. College English, 81(4), 273-296.  

Calafell, Bernadette Marie and undersigned. (2019, June 28) “An Open Letter on Diversity in the Communication Discipline.” Retrieved from http://bernadettemariecalafellphd.com/?page_id=847 

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline.(2019, August 7). “Brilliance Remastered: About.” Brilliance Remastered. Retrieved from http://www.alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered/beginning/

Pritchard, E. D. (2019, July 8). “When You Know Better, Do Better”: Honoring Intellectual and Emotional Labor Through Diligent Accountability Practices. [blog]. Retrieved from http://carmenkynard.org/featured-scholar-eric-darnell-pritchard-when-you-know-better-do-better-honoring-intellectual-and-emotional-labor-through-diligent-accountability-practices/.

Open Access Statement

Writers: Craft & Context provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All content in Writers: Craft & Context is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

Works published in Writers: Craft & Context will be distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC BY-NC). By granting a CC BY-NC license in their work, authors retain copyright ownership of the work, but they give explicit permission for others to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the work, as long as the original source and author(s) are properly cited (i.e. a complete bibliographic citation and link to the JLSC website), and the re-use of the work is not for commercial purposes. No permission is required from the author(s) or the publishers for such use. Exceptions to the application of the CC BY-NC license may be granted at the editors’ discretion if reasonable extenuating circumstances exist. Such exceptions must be granted in writing by the editors of the Journal; in the absence of a written exception, the CC BY-NC license will be applied to all published works.