2012Q1 Reports: CL Journal
CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2011 Robert Dale, Editor Tuesday 17th January 2012
1 Summary
Submissions were up significantly this year: in 2011 we received 107 first submissions, compared to 78 in 2010, for an increase of 37%. These numbers do not include submissions for the two special issues announced in 2011, more on which below. On the downside, the number of submissions considered inappropriate for CL was 42, continuing a trend we noted last year. A large proportion of these papers come from the Indian subcontinent; they are often very short (sometimes even shorter than a typical conference paper) and often appear to have been submitted without regard for the submission guidelines we provide on the web.
Our average time to first decision, not including papers deemed inappropriate by the editor, was 59 days, compared with 58 days last year.
2 Submissions
2.1 Articles
See the numbers at the end of this report for a detailed breakdown of statistics regarding submissions. In 2011 we received submissions for two special issues: one on 'Modality and Negation' and one on 'Parsing Morphologically Rich Languages'. The former received 23 submissions, of which six were accepted for publication; this special issue will appear during 2012. The latter received 10 submissions, and these are still undergoing review.
2.2 Squibs
[Report provided by Pierre Isabelle, Squibs Editor]
At the beginning of year 2011, there were three submissions in the squibs pipeline pending from 2010. In the course of year 2011, 8 additional papers were (re-) submitted. At the end of 2011, there were no submissions left in the pipeline. Thus, 11 decisions were made over the year.
The results were as follows:
* 1 paper accepted * 6 papers rejected * 4 invitations to revise and resubmit
The mean time taken for those decisions was 70 days.
As of 15 January 2012, no papers have been (re-) submitted yet to the Squibs Editor for the current year.
In the course of 2011, Pierre also served as associate book review editor for three different books.
3 Administrative Matters
3.1 Editorial Assistance
Suzy Howlett did an absolutely exceptional job as editorial assistant during 2011. Mary Gardiner, our previous editorial assistant, has been doing a small amount of work extending the functionalities of the Open Journal Systems manuscript management software that we use; however, there is a larger backlog of items requiring attention here than Mary has the time to carry out, and this poses something of a risk for the journal.
3.2 Editorial Board
Eight new members have joined the editorial board for the period 2012-2014:
Jason Baldridge, The University of Texas at Austin, USA Sharon Goldwater, University of Edinburgh, UK Nizar Habash, Columbia University, USA James Henderson, University of Geneva, Switzerland Frank Keller, University of Edinburgh, UK Marco Kuhlmann, Uppsala University, Sweden Yusuke Miyao, National Institute of Informatics, Japan Kristina Toutanova, Microsoft, USA
At the same time, the following members of the board have reached the end of their three-year periods on the board:
Aoife Cahill Stephen Clark Kentaro Inui Alexander Koller Ani Nenkova Noah A Smith David R Traum Deniz Yuret
Their invaluable assistance in conscientiously reviewing papers for the journal is much appreciated.
3.3 Author Support
For some years, we have been using a LaTeX class file, called clv2.cls, provided to us by the typesetter. In part to remove this dependence, and in part to overcome some occasional compatibility problems we have found, Suzy has developed a replacement class file that is simpler, and works in conjunction with a number of recommended packages for various specialised purposes. We expect to role this out during the coming year.
4 Issues and Points of Note
4.1 OJS Support
As noted above, there are a number of changes we would like to make to our implementation of the Open Journal Systems software, but we have reached a bottleneck here in terms of the time that Mary Gardiner is able to commit. As a partial solution to this, Suzy may take over some site development work, but realistically we may have to scale back some of the workflow support mechanisms we had hoped to implement.
4.2 LaTeX Copyediting
During 2011, MIT Press had intended to switch to a new production workflow, where the copy editor would make changes to the source LaTeX files. Unfortunately, the LaTeX-aware copy editor we had identified decided against working with us when he saw the extent of the work required. MIT Press is looking for an alternative solution.
4.3 Journal Size
As noted last year, the journal is getting bigger. Traditionally our format was to publish four issues of 160 pages each year, for a total of 640 pages. In 2011, we published 884 pages in total, for an increase of 38%. 2012 is likely to be similar.
5 Statistics
Here are the raw statistics referred to above.
First submissions in 2011
Special Issue on Modality and Negation
Total: 23
Revise and resubmit: 6
Reject: 17
Special Issue on Parsing Morphologically Rich Languages
Total: 10
No decision: 10
Survey proposal
Total: 3
Reject: 2
"No review: resubmit as article": 1
Articles
Total: 107
Accept: 1
Revise and resubmit: 16
Reject: 35
Reject (not suitable): 42
SI Mod Neg intro: no review: 1
"No review: resubmit as squib": 1
No decision: 11
Average time to decision: 34 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)" and "no review"): 59 days
Resubmission of an article from 2010 or before
==================================
Total: 23
Accept: 14
Accept with revisions: 1
Revise and resubmit: 3
Reject: 3
No decision: 2
Resubmission of an article from 2011
========================
Special Issue on Modality and Negation
Total: 6
Accept with revisions: 5
Reject: 1
Articles
Total: 14
Accept: 5
Revise and resubmit: 6
No decision: 3
Totals (All submissions in 2011, including special issues and survey proposals)
Total: 186
Accept: 20
Accept with revisions: 6
Revise and resubmit: 31
Reject: 58
Reject (not suitable): 42
Survey proposal "No review: resubmit as article": 1
SI Mod Neg intro: no review: 1
"No review: resubmit as squib": 1
No decision: 26
Times for all submissions (incl. special issues and survey proposals)
Average time to decision: 47 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)" and "no review"): 64 days
Times for all article submissions
Average time to decision: 38 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)" and "no review"): 55 days
Country of first author
===========
(New submissions and resubmissions from 2010 or before)
Articles
Algeria 1
Argentina 1
Australia 1
Azerbaijan 1
Basque Country 1
Belgium 1
Brazil 3
Canada 6
China 9
Denmark 1
Finland 2
Germany 11
Hong Kong 2
Hungary 1
India 9
Iran 4
Ireland 2
Israel 4
Italy 4
Japan 1
Kazakhstan 1
Lithuania 1
Malaysia 6
Morocco 1
Netherlands 4
New Zealand 1
Pakistan 1
Portugal 1
Russian Federation 1
Saudi Arabia 1
South Africa 1
Spain 10
Sweden 2
Switzerland 1
Taiwan 1
Tunisia 2
UK 8
US 22
TOTAL 130
SI Mod Neg
Austria 1
Canada 1
China 1
Germany 3
Hong Kong 1
Italy 1
Korea 2
Norway 1
Spain 3
Sweden 2
UK 2
US 5
TOTAL 23
SI PMRL
Bulgaria 1
Czech Republic 2
Germany 3
Israel 1
Pakistan 1
US 2
TOTAL 10
Survey proposals
Australia 1
France 1
US 1
TOTAL 3
End