Computational Linguistics Journal Editorial Report 
Robert Dale


1       SUMMARY


All is stable and going well, but big changes may be in the offing.



2       HIGHLIGHTS


2.1     Last Words column now running in every issue.
2.2     Survey Articles category being redefined to clarify its aim.
2.3     Stephen Wan has stepped down after two and a half years of excellent 
service as editorial assistant, to be replaced by Mary Gardiner, who carried
out the role (also excellently!) in 2003-2004.
2.4     Mary is currently undertaking a detailed exploration of online review management systems so we can improve our processes.
2.5     Blackwell have approached us in an attempt to entice us away from MIT 
Press.
2.6     Talk of Open Access is all the rage (and being taken into account in 2.4).


Important:  Note that my five year tenure as editor ends mid 2008.  I'm 
happy to serve another five years, as both Julia Hirschberg and James Allen 
did, but this would be at the Executive's pleasure.



3       STATISTICS


Time to first decision for new submissions:


For 2001 papers: 110 days
For 2002 papers: 127 days
For 2003 papers: 129 days
For 2004 papers: 131 days
For 2005 papers: 146 days
For 2006 papers: 125 days[*]


[*] The 2006 number excludes special issue papers (we do not have all the data), proposals for survey articles, and one paper on which we do not have a decision.


Excluding special issue submissions, we had: 69 submissions consisting of 52 
New (+2 same year revision of a submission in 2006) and 15 resubmissions. 
Special issue submissions were another 31 New submissions.


Here's the traditional 'disposition by first decision' table (2006 excludes 
special issue submissions):


Decision                  2006   2005   2004  2003   2002  2001  2000   1999
Submitted                  52     62     53    65     65    57    64     47
Accept               	    2     13     11    16     23    18    15     13
Reject                     21     29     22    20     20    12    11      9
Resubmit as squib           1      0      3     2      2     2     1      3
Revise and resubmit        27     37     23    25     18    22    27     12
Withdrawn                   0      0      1     0      2     3     3      2
No decision                 1      1      2     2      0     0     7      8 


At the time of writing, for 2007 we have the following: 22 Submissions total,
consisting of 12 New and 10 resubmissions.


Average time to date to decisions for New submissions: no new submissions have
decisions yet.


2007 Decisions:
Submitted              22
Accept                  5
Reject                  1
Revise and resubmit     0
No decision yet        16


(At the time of this report in 2006 we had 31 submissions for that year,and in 
2004 we had 42.)