IJAL Editors’ annual report for 2015
The current make up of editorial boards:
Associate EditorsJohn Alderete (Simon Fraser University)Amy Dahlstrom (University of Chicago)Caleb Everett (University of Miami)Rodrigo Gutiérrez Bravo (Colegio de México)Lisa Matthewson (University of British Columbia)Enrique Palancar (University of Surrey)Siri Tuttle (University of Alaska)Leo Wetzels (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)Alan C. L. Yu (University of Chicago)Editorial Advisory BoardWillem Adelaar (University of Leiden)Matthew Gordon (University of California—Santa Barbara)Eric Hamp (University of Chicago)Harriet Klein (State University of New York—Stony Brook)Paulette Levy (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)Steve Marlett (SIL International)Monica Macaulay (University of Wisconsin—Madison)Keren Rice (University of Toronto)David Rood (University of Colorado)We appreciate the hard work of the Associate Editors, and thank everyone for their efforts. Since the work is quite intense, we will generally be asking people to serve three-year terms. This means that we will regularly be seeking new volunteers to take on this role. People who think they might be interested down the road are encouraged to let us know—if not, stand-by to be button-holed.
Our Book Review Editor continues to be Willem de Reuse, and Adam Werle is the Editorial Assistant. Alma Dean Kolb continues as the Managing Editor and keeps the operation afloat.
Submissions and editorial policy:
This year we handled a total of 72 new papers. We have accepted 18 papers this year and rejected 17 (not including papers rejected for being outside the scope of the journal), for a rate of 51% acceptance. There are currently 42 active papers (including 5 from last year) under revision/review.
We continue to be concerned about the length of the production queue, which is still currently around one year from acceptance to publication.
The transition to the Editorial Manager (EM) electronic submission system is complete, though there continue to be a few hiccups from time to time.
State of the journal:
The journal continues to be in good financial shape and goes well from a business perspective. The publisher is happy with us.
The journal now offers on-line purchase of individual articles, and is available for subscribers in HTML format, which is more-or-less readable on mobile devices, and in eBook format for those who want to purchase individual issues. Subscriptions are available at a 50% discount to SSILA members, who can opt to include the subscription in their membership.
The the citation-rates for articles (impact factor) has improved slightly over last year, though we are still well below our highs of a few years back. This might be a concern for contributors from institutions that use these measures in performance evaluations, so please cite our articles as often as you can.
NATS/TILA:
The first volume of the new TILA series was scheduled for production this January, but has been delayed. We hope to release it in July. Because the original publication cycle we set up for this project (approximately 8 months from acceptance to final submission) was short, we slected another volume from the original call for the second issue of TILA. This should be ready to for release in January 2017, with subsequent volumes of TILA appearing regularly along with the first IJAL issue of the year. A call for proposals for TILA went out in late September and we are currently in the process of selecting from among the five submissions received.
The original 12 volumes of the initial NATS. UCPress is are now available in electronic and e-book format. Links to these can be found on the IJAL website (www.americanlinguistics.org).
IJAL Texts On-Line:
We have have now published the first issue of our short texts series, IJAL Texts On-Line. We encourage people to submit shorter texts with audio files for this series. A call for submissions was sent out in late September and another should follow shortly.
IJAL centenary issue:
IJAL will be 100 years old in January, and to mark this event we are planning a special centenary issue. We have invited papers on the past, present, and future of several of the key areas in Americanist linguistics identified by Franz Boas in his inaugural article. We hope this issue will kick off a successful second century.