The Staffing and Operation of a Technical Papers Support Group

The publication of technical papers is a means for achieving several desirable ends: promotion of a product line or a new device, recognition for the engineer-author, promotion of a company´s image, introduction of new information and know-how into the technology to keep it healthy. Companies should go further than just tolerating the writing of papers; they should give active support and subsidization. This support can best be implemented by a chartered organization with management backing and funding. Such organizations should be staffed with engineering editors¿or information specialists¿who will already have been working with engineers on reports and proposals and who will have across-the-board familiarity with the various engineering specialities in a given company. The support group can help create new authors as well as helping all authors in the many complex steps toward appearing in print. This paper elaborates on the aforementioned ideas, and describes how one papers´ support group has successfully helped many engineers into print.