2014Q3 Reports: TACL Journal Editor

Statistics on papers from 2013

TACL published 35 papers in 2013, and at the time of writing (June 2014) it has published 19 papers in 2014. Papers have been presented at various conferences including ACL 2013 (16 papers), NAACL 2013 (6 papers), EMNLP 2013 (5 papers), and EACL 2014 (2 papers). 19 papers will be presented at ACL 2014.

Submission Numbers

The total number of papers submitted in 2013 was 117. The number of papers submitted each month was as follows:

 Jan 10
 Feb 4
 Mar 11
 Apr 3
 May 11
 Jun 10
 Jul 8
 Aug 8
 Sep 11
 Oct 13
 Nov 18
 Dec 15

Acceptance Rates, and Reviewing Times

At the time of writing all 117 papers submitted in 2013 had received first decisions.

On receiving reviews for a paper, the action editor makes 1 of 4 decisions for the paper: (a) Acceptance for publication as is, with encouragement to make minor revisions. (b) Acceptance for publication subject to specified revisions within two months. (c) Rejection with encouragement to revise and resubmit within 3-6 months. (d) Rejection with no possibility of resubmission within a moratorium period of one year. =

Breakdown by Decision Type

Of the 117 papers from 2013, the breakdown by decision type was as follows:

Category a:  4 papers  (3.4%)
Category b: 24 papers (20.5%)
Category c: 39 papers (33.3%)
Category d: 50 papers (42.7%)

It is worth noting that papers falling into category (b) are almost always accepted when the required revisions are carried out.

Reviewing Times

The mean time to first decision on a paper was 67 days for the 117 papers. Some other statistics on time to first decision (where a month is counted as 30 days):

 23 papers  (20%) had 1 month  13 days or less
 47 papers  (40%) had 1 month  24 days or less
 70 papers  (60%) had 2 months  7 days or less
 94 papers  (80%) had 3 months  1 days or less
105 papers  (90%) had 3 months 20 days or less
117 papers (100%) had 5 months  6 days or less

Recent Policy Decisions

Summary:

• Summary rejects are now allowed, with zero or one review
• Clarification of usage of the decision "rejection with encouragement to resubmit within 3-6 months"
• Workshop and preprint-server papers not considered archival with respect to TACL submission; details on the TransACL website.

(Please see the circulated non-public appendix, due to sensitivity, for further details)

Administrative Assistance

We are in the final stages of hiring Cindy Robinson (former editorial assistant for JACM) of Cornell as an editorial assistant for TACL.