Call for Papers: Community Organizing

Posted by on April 21, 2014

Hi COMM-ORG and others,

Are you writing about community organizing or one of its related fields?  If so, I invite you to submit your writing for Volume 20, 2014 of the COMM-ORG papers collection.

All you have to do is send me a word processed version of the paper (no pdfs please) to me, Randy Stoecker, at [email protected]. There is no deadline, but to be part of the 2014 volume I would need your paper by early November.  All papers are announced on the COMM-ORG list-serv, reaching over 1,000 people directly, and an unknown number of people indirectly.

The COMM-ORG papers process is author-centered.  That means I check the papers for  general fit with the broad theme of community organizing, basic accuracy, readability, and basic journalistic or research ethics (where relevant) but do not otherwise demand alterations in papers.  I then negotiate copy-editing with authors and put the papers into a basic design template to post on the web (there is no specified referencing format).  “Peer review”–where people comment on the paper from any perspective–may occur after the paper is posted.  I encourage readers to send comments to authors, who are then free to revise their papers based on reader reactions even after I post them.  Papers are living, breathing things on COMM-ORG and authors retain copyright.  Some academic authors have revised and published their papers in academic journals.

Consequently, some of the papers are scholarly, some are political, some are training manuals, and some are good organizing stories. Papers are written by practitioners, academics, students, and others.  Some papers are very short and there are even a couple book-length manuscripts.  The collection is purposefully diverse.

How do you decide if your writing is right for COMM-ORG?  You can view the papers collection at http://comm-org.wisc.edu/co/?q=node/4 to see the variety of topics and styles.

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing your writing.  Please feel welcomed to contact me with any questions.

Randy Stoecker
moderator/editor, COMM-ORG
[email protected]
http://comm-org.wisc.edu