2023Q3 Reports: TACL Journal Editor

Staff Update:

In October 1, 2022 and January 1, 2023 Roi Reichart and Asli Celikyilmaz, respectively, took the role of co-Editors-in-Chief. Ani Nenkova stepped down as co-Editor-in-Chief in June, 2023, due to personal circumstances. Starting in April 2023 the journal has been largely run by two EiCs (with the invaluable help of Cindy Robinson, the editorial assistant). In June, Asli and Roi communicated with the ACL executive board and it was decided that a recruitment process of a third EiC would start as soon as possible and that process has commenced. The EiCs are expected to send the ACL exec a report about the staff needs of the journal (see more details below) during September 2023. It is our understanding that the journal needs, in addition to a third EiC, an editorial assistance that will provide additional technical support (similarly to the ARR CTO). Such a person can be recruited from the research community (like the EiCs) or can be hired for a paid job (like the TACL editorial assistant, Cindy Robinson).

OJS System Upgrade:

In the beginning of April 2023 the journal system was upgraded to a new version of OJS. While the upgrade was time consuming and required much deliberation with the PKP team, the submission and reviewing cycle is currently running smoothly and the number of actual problems in paper handling has been very small. Roi and Asli would like to mention Cindy’s contribution to the upgrade process, which was particularly valuable given that the journal was run by two, rather than three, EiCs.

Desk Rejections:

In the 2023Q2 report we described the new desk rejection process that has been implemented since March 2023. In this process a paper may be rejected by the AE and handling EIC based on their estimate that the paper stands little chances to get accepted to TACL. In such a case, a desk-rejection email with a couple of explanation paragraphs is sent to the authors. The process runs smoothly and 10-15% of the papers in each cycle have been desk-rejected. Yet, our inspection of the process suggests that it can be better internalized by some of the AEs, which will make it even more beneficial. We are currently considering possible modifications to the process and means of communication with the AEs, in order to make the process even more effective.

Action Editors and Reviewers:

New Invitations and Service Extension: June is the month when typically some of TACL AEs and reviewers end their term. We have invited ~30 new AEs from the journal’s current reviewing pool, most of which accepted our invitation. Additionally, we sent an invitation for a two-year term expansion to most of the AEs whose term ends in June 2023, and have received mostly positive responses. Finally, we have collected information about promising reviewer candidates, both using our internal screening procedure (mostly based on seniority and publishing activity in the last few years), and by collecting information from our AEs. We will soon invite new reviewers to join the TACL editorial board.

A final Note:

Community Satisfaction with the Journal: Both Asli and Roi attended ACL 2023 in Toronto and had the opportunity to communicate with ACL community members about the journal. The feedback we received has been overwhelmingly positive; we believe this is an important positive signal of the current state of the journal.

Best,

Asli, Cindy and Roi