2022Q3 Reports: TACL Journal Editor

Journal Impact Factor

As we announced earlier this year, ACL is now indexed in Scopus, Web of Science (WoS) and the Directory of Open Access Journals. By virtue of being indexed in the WoS, the journal received its first impact factor for the year 2021: 9.194. Thanks to authors for submitting such great work, and to action editors and reviewers for providing extraordinary feedback — all of which is reflected in this impact factor.

Personnel updates

Editors-in-chief

Brian Roark's term concludes at the end of 2022, and a search for a new co-Editor-in-chief is nearing completion. Ani Nenkova's term expires in June, 2024.

Reviewing process

Increased submission volumes

As detailed in the 2022Q1 report, the number of submissions to TACL was higher in 2021 than in any previous year. There were 10% more papers submitted to the journal than in 2020 (the previous high water mark) — nearly double the number submitted in 2019.

Recruitment of action editors and reviewers

To keep our reviewing workloads consistent given the increased volume of submissions, we have been steadily recruiting new reviewers over the past few years, and also asking experienced reviewers with sufficient seniority to become action editors. Including a recently concluded reviewer recruitment effort, we have added over 250 new reviewers to our standing reviewer team in the past 3 years, and shifted over 50 veteran reviewers to action editor roles. As detailed in the 2020 Q3 report (and mentioned again in 2021 Q3), our process for identifying and recruiting candidates for these roles requires a sustained effort, in order to ensure that everyone we invite meets the prerequisites for their prospective role. We expect reviewers to be several years beyond PhD with a record of sustained publication in the field, and action editors must be at the associate professor (or equivalent) level of seniority in order to issue signed decisions on behalf of the journal. We have continued to follow our established procedures for identifying candidates for these roles in a way that yields strong diversity (geographic, demographic, and topical) across the editorial team. Once again, in 2022, we had a very high positive response rate from those we invited to these roles. Additionally, we have had relatively low attrition of existing reviewers and action editors, so that our roster has grown sufficiently to match the needs of the increased volume of submissions. We welcome our newest members of the editorial team (a list of which can be found on the TACL website) and a big thanks to all of those who have contributed to editing and reviewing at TACL over the past year.

Quick turnaround of reviewing

Another 2021 statistic that we can highlight from those published in the 2022Q1 report is the mean days to decision of our papers, which is commensurate with 2020 at 46.0 days. This is right in line with our targeted turnaround of 6 weeks. We are confident that we have the procedures and personnel in place to maintain this in 2022. Thanks again to the action editors and reviewers who make this possible, as well as to our Editorial Assistant extraordinaire Cindy Robinson who keeps us all on track in such a friendly way.

Reviewing system

PKP, who hosts our OJS reviewing system, has let it be known that they will be moving away from our current version 2 and eventually require all journals to use version 3 of the system. This is a substantial change which has the potential to disrupt TACL's demanding monthly review schedule. We are also attending to reviewing system developments at ARR, and working with the executive committee to understand our options for transitioning to a stable reviewing system with all of the feature we require to maintain (and improve) TACL's processes, either at PKP or elsewhere.