2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

CL Journal Report for First Half-Year 2011

Robert Dale, Editor, Monday 13th June 2011

1 Summary

Mid-year results tell the same story as at the end of last year: our submissions are up, with our half-year total suggesting we'll match last year's submission count of 78, which was up from 69 in the previous year. An attached spreadsheet provides the detailed breakdown.

So far, this year's reviewing turnaround time is also tracking well, at around 58 days.

Our last few journal issues have been larger than in the past. Of course, this costs us more. It is not clear that the present funding model is sustainable, and attention should be directed to how we address this.

2 Submissions

2.1 Main Papers

See the attached tables for submission statistics for 2009, 2010 and 2011 so far. Media:Submissions2011H1.pdf; Media:Countries2011H1.pdf

As noted in the last report, we are receiving an increasing number of submissions that are considered to be inappropriate for CL.

We have two special issues in the pipeline: one on Modality and Negation, for which submissions have closed and 23 papers received, and one on Parsing Morphologically-Rich Languages, which has extended its submission deadline to September 30th.

2.2 Squibs

[Report provided by Pierre Isabelle]

At the beginning of year 2010, there were three submissions in the squibs pipeline pending from 2009. In the course of year 2010, 12 additional papers were (re-) submitted. At the end of 2010, there were 3 submissions left in the pipeline. Thus, 12 decisions were made over the year.

The results were as follows:

 * 5 papers accepted 
 * 3 papers rejected
 * 4 invitations to revise 

The mean time taken for these decisions was 83 days.

Thus far, 4 papers have been (re-) submitted to the Squibs Editor in 2010.

In the course of 2010, Pierre also acted as associate book review editor for ten different books.

2.3 Book Reviews

[See separate report by Graeme Hirst] 3 Administrative Matters

As of the beginning of 2011, the editorial assistance role is now solely carried out by Suzy Howlett. Mary Gardiner has been separately contracted to do some work on extending the functionalities of the Open Journal Systems manuscript management software that we use. Efficiencies gained here have freed up some of Suzy's time; she has been working on compiling a recommended set of LaTeX packages, and on updating our style guide.

As always, running the journal would be impossible without the help of both Suzy and Mary.

4 Upcoming Changes

The journal is growing, although not massively. However, given the other changes in ACL's publication practices that are under discussion, now may be a good time to reassess the journal's financial model. Since going open access, the journal has been funded via the ACL's central budget, and therefore from a combination of membership fees and conference surpluses. This model does not scale well. One way forward would be to put in place publication charges.

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