Collaboration, Joint Innovation, and Impact in ESP: Bridging Academic and Professional Worlds

CALL FOR PAPERS

Collaboration, Joint Innovation, and Impact in ESP: Bridging Academic and Professional Worlds

Journal: English for Specific Purposes

Publisher: Elsevier

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 15 October 2026

Introduction

Over the years, Languages for Specific Purposes — and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) — has faced a number of challenges relating to technological and social developments. The rapid evolution of language and discourse practices accompanying the adoption of digital technologies has led to significant changes in practice. Academic research operates under a social contract — and recognition of this has led to increasing pressure on university researchers to seek social impact by engaging with professionals in pursuit of meaningful changes to practice. ESP research has also been critiqued for being "too textual" and too "thin" — calling for greater engagement with specialist communities and ethnographic perspectives on specialised communication practices.

In the face of these layered challenges, the question of how to conduct meaningful, relevant, and impactful research in ESP is now ripe for reconsideration. Such efforts prioritize "practical relevance" — achievable through collaboration involving "thick participation" — a process of collaborative discovery incorporating the expert gaze of participating actors with their own values, criteria, and purposes.

Yet all too often in ESP research, the voices of practitioners are absent from one or more stages of the research process — especially the initial "thinking" stage when relevant problems are identified. As a consequence, uptake of research findings can be limited.

Scope & Significance

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that move away from simple engagement with professional counterparts toward their active participation and agency throughout the entire research process:

• When defining the research problem — practitioners as co-investigators rather than mere informants

• When studying the research problem — practitioners actively involved in data collection and analysis

• When disseminating research findings — practitioners as collaborators amplifying outreach rather than mere recipients of knowledge

Studies employing collaborative and participative research designs 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.

List of Topic Areas

Manuscripts are invited on themes including, but not limited to:

1. Collaboration between ESP researchers and professional communities

2. Practical relevance and research impact in ESP and EAP studies

3. Joint innovation — co-construction of knowledge between academics and practitioners

4. Professional practice and ethnographic perspectives on specialised communication

5. Research methodology in ESP — collaborative and participative research designs

6. Digital mediation and evolving language practices in ESP genres

7. Social contract of academic research and accountability to professional communities

8. Cyclical research processes — thinking, designing, collecting, analysing, and disseminating

9. Practitioner agency in defining and addressing research problems

10. Dissemination strategies for amplifying research outreach beyond academia

11. Theoretical critiques of ESP collaboration, innovation, and impact

12. EAP research — moving beyond textual analysis toward contextual depth

Guest Editors

Prof. Christoph A. Hafner (Lead Guest Editor) City University of Hong Kong, China 📧 c.hafner@city.edu.hk 📧 espsi2027@gmail.com (for abstract submissions)

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

Key Timeline

Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 April 2026 (350–450 words — submit to espsi2027@gmail.com)

Notification of Acceptance: 30 April 2026

Full Paper Submission Deadline: 15 October 2026

Review Period: 16 October 2026 – 15 January 2027

Submission Guidelines

This Special Issue follows a two-step submission process:

Step 1 — Abstract Submission Authors must first submit a 350–450 word abstract to the Guest Editors at: 📧 espsi2027@gmail.com Deadline: 15 April 2026

Step 2 — Full Paper Submission Authors notified of acceptance should submit full manuscripts through the journal's official submission portal. Select Article Type: "VSI: Collaboration and Impact" (This Article Type will be available from 30 April 2026)

All submissions must be original and must not be under review elsewhere at the time of submission.

For author guidelines, visit the official English for Specific Purposes journal page on the Elsevier ScienceDirect website.

About the Journal

English for Specific Purposes, published by Elsevier, is a leading international peer-reviewed journal with a CiteScore of 6.8 and Impact Factor of 2.7. It supports open access publishing and is dedicated to advancing research on language use in professional, academic, and occupational contexts — providing a global platform for scholars and practitioners exploring discourse analysis, genre studies, language teaching, and communication across diverse specialised domains.

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