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About the Journal
What is Kairos?
Kairos is a refereed open-access online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. The journal reaches a wide audience—currently 45,000 readers per month—hailing from Ascension Island to Zimbabwe (and from every top-level domain country code in between); our international readership typically runs about 4,000 readers per month. Kairos publishes bi-annually, in August and January, with occassion special issues in May. Our current acceptance rate for published articles is approximately 10%.
Since its first issue in January of 1996, the mission of Kairos has been to publish scholarship that examines digital and multimodal composing practices, promoting work that enacts its scholarly argument through rhetorical and innovative uses of new media. Now in its 12th year of continuous publication, Kairos is one of the leading peer-reviewed journals in English Studies, made so by its dedication to academic quality through the journal’s extensive peer-review and editorial production processes.
We publish "webtexts," which are texts authored specifically for publication on the World Wide Web. Webtexts are scholarly examinations of topics related to technology in English Studies fields (e.g., rhetoric, composition, technical and professional communication, education, creative writing, language and literature) and related fields such as media studies, informatics, arts technology, and others. Besides scholarly webtexts, Kairos publishes teaching-with-technology narratives, reviews of print and digital media, extended interviews with leading scholars, interactive exchanges, "letters" to the editors, and news and announcements of interest.
Because questions of copyright, intellectual property, and fair use often arise for scholars who wish to create digital publications, we have developed a statement of copyright that encourages authors to carefully consider their rights and responsibilities while advocating for a strengthening of fair use. Our copyright statement also provides authors with the opportunity to build upon and republish their work because we are committed to the continuing development of intellectual work and believe that authors should retain the rights to scholarly production.
We invite you to share your views about Kairos, and we hope you'll consider submitting your work for our editorial review.
A Brief History of Kairos
Originally called Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments, the first issue was released in January of 1996 and has continually published between one and four issues per year. Although Kairos is not the first peer-reviewed online journal in the humanities (or in composition/rhetoric), it is one of the oldest continually-published venues and the first to focus on the development of work that drew upon the new media of electronic networks as key elements of digital scholarship.
Founding editor Mick Doherty explained the impetus for the creation of the journal and the decision to name it Kairos in an early essay called Kairos - Layers of Meaning:
This new journal has a great deal to do with kairos, particularly in terms of its appropriateness and timeliness in our field at this time. As we are discovering the value of hypertextual and other online writing, it is not only important to have a forum for exploring this growing type of composition, but it is essential that we have a webbed forum within which to hold those conversations. With this journal, the Kairos staff and authors intend to push many envelopes--of theory and pedagogy, of technology, of composition, and of professional scholarship--at a time when these efforts are vital to continued growth of our field. In essense, we've tried to make this the most kairotic journal we could.
Kairos now boasts over 45,000 readers per month (which is a respectable circulation for an academic journal in a fairly specialized field); these readers come to the site from every country in the world, and there are now over 2,500 specific links to the journal and the webtexts that have been published in it over the past 12 years.
Sections
Topoi
The Topoi section features extended scholarly analyses of large-scale issues relating to rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. Submissions are accepted continuously, and authors are encouraged to contact the editorial staff early in their project's development.
Praxis
Praxis publishes scholarly investigations into the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy discovered through teaching and other professional practices. Praxis webtexts include case studies, pedagogic theory and technology, and studies of networked/new media composing practices. Praxis asks scholars to consider the challenges of timely action and ethical practice for writing pedagogies in the context of emerging technologies.
Praxis encourages authors to consider the appropriate, scholarly use of video, audio, image, and design possibilities in composing webtexts, but the Editors will also consider conventional linear submissions. Praxis webtexts are accepted on an ongoing basis and follow the Kairos three-tier review process, and the Praxis Editors and Assistant Editors provide support for authors in this process. Please contact Praxis Editors Andréa Davis and Alex Reid at kpraxis@technorhetoric.net with any questions.
PraxisWiki
PraxisWiki is a repository of useful and provocative information and ideas for scholars and teachers at the intersections of rhetoric and technology. It invites synopses and discussions of published materials, definitions of important concepts, sketches of major figures and their works, sample syllabi and assignments along with their rationales, teaching narratives and classroom activities, and preliminary discussions of research and projects.
Contributors must submit a text of at least 500 words or provide a substantial revision of an existing PraxisWiki page for review. Upon acceptance, contributors will be given open access to editing and adding content in PraxisWiki, and pages will be monitored and adjusted as necessary by the Praxis team. Submissions are welcome on an ongoing and should include a minimum of five keywords. Please contact Praxis Editors Andréa Davis and Alex Reid at kpraxis@technorhetoric.net with any questions.
Inventio
Inventio focuses on the decisions, contexts, and contributions that have constituted a particular webtext. Inventio authors include, alongside or integrated with their finished webtexts, materials that help them articulate how and why their work came into being.
Interviews
Each year, Kairos publishes several extended interviews with scholars doing interesting work relating to rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy.
Reviews
Reviews include individual or collaborative reviews of books, media, and other texts of interest to scholars of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy. See our Call for Reviews for specific details about texts and other media we're interested in having reviewed.
Disputatio
Disputatio: A Reader's Forum presents webtext versions of "letters to the editor" -- this venue is designed to let our readers argue their ideas in relation to published webtexts, featured themes, or ideas in the field in general.