37.1022, Calls: English for Specific Purposes - "Special Issue: Collaboration, Joint Innovation, and Impact in ESP: Bridging Academic and Professional Worlds" (Jrnl)

Fri Mar 13 11:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1022. Fri Mar 13 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1022, Calls: English for Specific Purposes - "Special Issue: Collaboration, Joint Innovation, and Impact in ESP: Bridging Academic and Professional Worlds" (Jrnl)

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Date: 11-Mar-2026
From: Mian Jia [mianjia at cityu.edu.hk]
Subject: English for Specific Purposes - "Special Issue: Collaboration, Joint Innovation, and Impact in ESP: Bridging Academic and Professional Worlds" (Jrnl)

Journal: English for Specific Purposes
Issue: Collaboration, Joint Innovation, and Impact in ESP: Bridging
Academic and Professional Worlds
Call Deadline: 15-Apr-2026

Guest editors:
Prof. Christoph A. Hafner, City University of Hong Kong, China
(c.hafner at city.edu.hk)
Prof. Mian Jia, City University of Hong Kong, China
Prof. Ge Lan, City University of Hong Kong, China
Prof. Esterina Nervino, City University of Hong Kong, China
Special Issue Information:
Over the years, Languages for Specific Purposes (and English for
specific purposes) has faced a number of challenges relating to
technological and social developments. First, the rapid evolution of
language and discourse practices that has accompanied the adoption of
digital technologies has led to significant changes in practice (see
Hafner, Harrison, Ho & Kwan, 2023; Luzón & Albero-Posac, 2023).
Second, academic research can be seen as operating under a social
contract (Hwang & Coss, 2025), and the recognition of such a social
contract has led to increasing pressure on researchers in universities
to seek social impact, for example, by engaging with professionals in
pursuit of meaningful changes to practice. Third, in specific relation
to ESP (or, more particularly, EAP), Swales (2019) critiqued ESP
research, for example, for being ‘too textual’ and too ‘thin’ in
Geertz's sense. In response to these perceived issues, Swales proposed
that ESP studies should incorporate more contextual information by
involving greater engagement with the specialist community and taking
ethnographic perspectives on specialised communication practices.
In the face of such various and layered challenges, the question of
how we might go about conducting meaningful, relevant, and impactful
research in the field of ESP is now ripe for reconsideration. Such
efforts prioritise ‘practical relevance’, which, according to Candlin
and Sarangi (2004), can be achieved through collaboration that
involves ‘thick participation’, that in turn involves ‘a process of
collaborative discovery, incorporating the expert gaze of
participating actors with their own values, criteria and purposes’ (p.
4). Importantly, this collaborative discovery must take place at every
stage of the research process, through cyclical stages of thinking,
designing, collecting, analysing and disseminating (key stages as
identified by Phakiti et al., 2018). Yet, all too often in ESP
research, the voices of practitioners are absent from one or more of
these stages, especially in the initial ‘thinking’ stage, when
relevant problems are identified. As a consequence, uptake of research
findings can be limited.
To address issues of research relevance and impact, we welcome
contributions that move away from simple engagement with professional
counterparts to their active participation and agency throughout the
entire research process. In particular, when defining the research
problem, practitioners can be viewed as co-investigators rather than
mere ‘informants’; when studying the research problem, they can be
similarly actively involved; and when disseminating research findings,
practitioners can be seen as collaborators amplifying outreach rather
than mere ‘recipients’ of knowledge.
The Special Issue will consider manuscripts in the following research
topics: collaboration, practical relevance, joint innovation, research
impact, professional practice, research methodology. Studies that
employ collaborative, participative research designs in order to
promote joint knowledge construction and impact are particularly
welcome; as are theoretically oriented manuscripts that explore and
critique ESP practices in terms of collaboration, joint innovation,
and impact.
Abstract Submission Information:
Potential contributors should submit a 350-450-word abstract of their
proposed contribution, in line with the scope of the call outlined
above. The abstract should be submitted to the Special Issue Guest
Editors (espsi2027 at gmail.com).
This Special Issue follows the below timeline:
Abstracts due: April 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance: April 30, 2026
Submissions to system by: October 15, 2026
Reviewing: October 16, 2026 - January 15, 2027
Manuscript Submission Information:
Please follow the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscripts.
Authors need to use the journal’s submission portal for the
submission. Please select Article Type “VSI: Collaboration and Impact”
to submit full manuscript for review. This Article Type shall be made
available on April 30 2026.
The final submission deadline for full papers has been set as October
15, 2026.
The full call for papers is available on the journal website here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/331135/collaboration-joint-innovation-and-impact-in-esp-bridging-academic-and-professional-worlds
References:
Candlin, C. N., & Sarangi, S. (2004). Making applied linguistics
matter. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1–8.
Hafner, C. A., Harrison, S., Ho, W. Y. J., & Kwan, B. S. C. (2023).
Digital mediation in ESP genres. English for Specific Purposes, 71,
115–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2023.03.002
Hwang, H.-B., & Coss, M. D. (n.d.). A Proposal to Center Relevance in
Applied Linguistics Research: The Relevance-to-Practice (RTP)
Framework. TESOL Quarterly, n/a(n/a).
https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70044
Luzón, M. J., & Albero-Posac, S. (2023). Digital genres and Open
Science practices. Ibérica, 46, 1–21.
https://doi.org/10.17398/2340-2784.46.1
Phakiti, A., De Costa, P., Plonsky, L., & Starfield, S. (Eds.).
(2018). The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Linguistics Research
Methodology. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59900-1
Swales, J. M. (2019). The futures of EAP genre studies: A personal
viewpoint. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38, 75–82.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.01.003

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Forensic Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics
                     Translation

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