The WAC Clearinghouse publishes open-access journals, books, and other resources for teachers who use writing in their courses. Writing-across-the-curriculum or "WAC" refers to a formal programmatic approach within contemporary secondary and higher education composition studies that promotes the importance of writing in classes outside of composition. Working in partnership with the International Network of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs (INWAC), the WAC Clearinghouse operates as a publishing collaborative, drawing on contributions from more than 100 individuals serving on the editorial boards of academic journals supported by the Clearinghouse, as editors or reviewers of its book series, as editors of resource pages on its website, and as members of the overall Clearinghouse editorial board. The open-access character of the scholarship available through the clearinghouse book series provides students and teachers with an alternative to costly textbooks. The clearinghouse also collaborates with Computers and Composition Digital Press, another open-access publisher of innovative, multimodal digital writing and other projects, using traditional academic peer reviewed processes. The WAC Clearinghouse incorporates disciplinary areas within writing and composition such as second-language writing, writing in the STEM disciplines, and others.
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History
Established in 1997, the Clearinghouse is among the most successful open-access publishing projects in the humanities. It supports seven academic journals, including: The WAC Journal, focused on WAC theory and ideas; Across the Disciplines, devoted to language, learning and academic writing; Double Helix, an international journal on writing, critical thinking, pedagoical theory and classroom practice; and RhetNet, an online journal of rhetoric and composition that explores what "net" publishing may be in its natural form, and several others. The Clearinghouse also has published 70 books and provides access to peer-reviewed resources for teachers who wish to use writing in courses across the disciplines, including a bibliography (published in collaboration with CompPile.org), resource pages on writing fellows programs and second-language learners, conference proceedings, WAC program descriptions, a list of scholarly journals, and the 2014 Statement on WAC Principles and Practices, among others.
Sustainable Publishing Initiative
In May 2012, to mark its fifteenth year of operation, the WAC Clearinghouse launched the 25 Collective, a demonstration project for sustainable publishing. The goal of the project is to publish 25 new books for a total expenditure of $50,000—a cost far below that borne by traditional academic presses. Leveraging university resources (office space, computing resources, and web servers), the project has operated within its budget and had, by mid 2016, produced 19 books, with eight more in production and several others under contract.
Support
The Clearinghouse is hosted by Colorado State University and receives support from the Colorado State University Open Press and Colorado State University Online. It also receives support from donations and funds from purchases of selected books in print form. Donations are used to defray costs associated with honoraria for graduate students who serve as copy editors and designers for Clearinghouse books, for accessibility to the Web site and publications, for the purchase of ISBN numbers, and for software and equipment expense. Interested patrons my donate online or by check through the Clearinghouse Web site.