Contributions of the open-commentary journal to the documentation profession

Abstract

ACM SIGDOC's Journal of Computer Documentation (JCD) features open peer commentary on all its major articles. This paper compares the role that commentary plays in JCD with its role, actual and proposed, in other professional journals, and contrasts that role with prepublication refereeing. JCD's preference for commentary that is rich in ostensive and comparative features is explained by their benefits for documentation practitioners, just as including literature-awareness commentaries offers practitioners a greater voice on journal pages. And JCD's annual reprint-commentary combinations provide unusual opportunities for continuing professional education.