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2013Q1 Reports: CL Journal

2013-02-11T03:36:15Z

RobertDale:

CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2012
Robert Dale, Editor
Monday 4th February 2013

1 Highlights

Our raw submission numbers creep ever upwards: this year we received
113 new submissions, and a total of 180 submissions when resubmissions
of articles originally submitted in earlier years are included. But,
as we've seen over the last few years, the number of inappropriate
submissions is high: in 2012 we received 55 submssions deemed
unsuitable. For comparison, in 2011 we received 107 first
submissions, of which 42 were considered inappropriate. As in
previous years, a significant proportion of the inappropriate
submissions come from India; the papers concerned are often very short
(of typical conference paper length) and either outside CL's scope, or
unaware of relevant literature. Last year we revised our submission
guidelines in an attempt to discourage such submissions, but my
suspicion is that the guidelines are simply not read.

Our average time to first decision for 2012, not including papers
deemed inappropriate by the editor, was 64 days, compared with 57 days
in 2011 and 58 days in 2010.

See the numbers at the end of this report for a detailed breakdown of
statistics regarding submissions.

Since the beginning of 2010, we have averaged around six long articles
per issue, where prior to going electronic-only and open access, the
norm was four articles per issue. This increase in page count
increases our costs, of course. Currently, we operate with a small
number of articles in reserve, which gives us some ability to combine
related articles in the same issue, and provides some insurance in
case we have a temporary drying-up of material. However, articles are
published (in an not-yet-proofread form) under a 'Just Accepted' tab
on the MIT Press website as soon as they have been accepted for
publication, so that they are accessible prior to being formally
assigned to an issue.

2 Departments

2.1 Book Reviews [Report by Graeme Hirst]

Book reviews are edited by Graeme Hirst. We publish two or three
reviews in each issue. In order to avoid a conflict of interest,
reviews of books in the Morgan & Claypool series that Hirst edits are
coordinated by our squibs editor, Pierre Isabelle, with Hirst out of
the loop.

2.2 Squibs [Report by Pierre Isabelle]

At the beginning of year 2012, there were no submissions in the squibs
pipeline pending from the previous year. In the course of year 2012,
10 papers were (re-) submitted as squibs. At the end of 2012, there
was only one submission left in the pipeline. Thus, 11 decisions were
made over the year.

The results were as follows:

* 1 paper accepted
* 3 papers rejected
* 5 invitations to revise and resubmit

The mean time taken for those decisions was 59 days.

As of 10 February 2013, one paper has been (re-) submitted yet to the
Squibs Editor this year.

In the course of 2012, I also served as Associate Book Review Editor
for three different books.

3 Administrative Matters

3.1 Editorial Handover

Paola Merlo will officially take over as editor-in-chief of the
journal in mid 2013, at which point Robert Dale will step down after
10 years as editor. We are carrying out a phased handover process
during the first half of 2013.

3.2 Editorial Assistance

Suzy Howlett, who essentially runs the journal, will be standing down
at around the same time as I hand over to Paola. Paola is in the
process of looking for a replacement editorial assistant.

4 Statistics

Here are the raw statistics referred to above.

4.1 First submissions in 2012

4.1.1 Survey proposal

Total: 8
Proposal accepted: 1
Revise and resubmit: 4
Reject: 1
Reject (not suitable): 2

4.1.2 Survey

Total: 3
Reject (not suitable): 1 -- proposal had not been submitted first
Revise and resubmit: 2

4.1.3 Article

Total: 113
Revise and resubmit: 26
Reject: 22
Reject (not suitable): 55
Withdrawn: 2
No decision: 8

Average time to decision: 31 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)"): 64 days

4.2 Resubmission of an article from 2011 or before

4.2.1 Special Issue on Parsing Morphologically Rich Languages

Total: 6
Accept with revisions: 6

4.2.2 Article

Total: 17
Accept: 5
Accept with revisions: 1
Revise and resubmit: 11

4.3 Resubmission of an article from 2012

4.3.1 Survey proposal

Total: 5
Proposal accepted: 1
Revise and resubmit: 1
Reject: 2
Withdrawn: 1

4.3.2 Article

Total: 28
Accept: 17
Revise and resubmit: 7
Reject: 2
No decision: 2

4.4 Totals (All submissions in 2012, including special issues and survey proposals)

Total: 180
Accept: 22
Accept with revisions: 7
Revise and resubmit: 51
Reject: 27
Reject (not suitable): 58
Withdrawn: 3
No decision: 10
Proposal accepted: 2

4.4.1 Times for all submissions (incl. special issues and survey proposals)

Average time to decision: 36 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)"): 54 days

4.4.2 Times for all article submissions

Average time to decision: 36 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)"): 57 days

4.5 Country of first author

(New submissions and resubmissions from 2011 or before)

4.5.1 Articles

Australia 1
Basque Country 1
Brazil 1
Bulgaria 1
Canada 2
China 8
Egypt 2
Finland 1
France 5
Germany 4
Hong Kong 2
India 10
Indonesia 1
Iran 7
Israel 1
Italy 3
Japan 2
Jordan 2
Lebanon 1
Malaysia 4
Netherlands 1
Pakistan 4
Poland 1
Portugal 2
Russian Federation 1
Saudi Arabia 2
Spain 17
Sri Lanka 1
Sweden 3
Switzerland 2
Tunisia 3
Turkey 1
UAE 1
UK 10
Ukraine 1
US 21

TOTAL 130

4.5.2 SI PMRL

Germany 3
Israel 1
US 2

TOTAL 6

4.5.3 Survey proposals

Austria 1
Malaysia 2
Spain 1
Switzerland 1
United Arab Emirates 1
US 2

TOTAL 8

4.5.4 Survey without proposal first

Egypt 1

TOTAL 1

2013Q1 Reports: CL Journal

2013-02-11T03:31:36Z

RobertDale: New page: CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2012 Robert Dale, Editor Monday 4th February 2013 1 Highlights Our raw submission numbers creep ever upwards: this year we received 113 new submission...

CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2012
Robert Dale, Editor
Monday 4th February 2013

1 Highlights

Our raw submission numbers creep ever upwards: this year we received
113 new submissions, and a total of 180 submissions when resubmissions
of articles originally submitted in earlier years are included. But,
as we've seen over the last few years, the number of inappropriate
submissions is high: in 2012 we received 55 submssions deemed
unsuitable. For comparison, in 2011 we received 107 first
submissions, of which 42 were considered inappropriate. As in
previous years, a significant proportion of the inappropriate
submissions come from India; the papers concerned are often very short
(of typical conference paper length) and either outside CL's scope, or
unaware of relevant literature. Last year we revised our submission
guidelines in an attempt to discourage such submissions, but my
suspicion is that the guidelines are simply not read.

Our average time to first decision for 2012, not including papers
deemed inappropriate by the editor, was 64 days, compared with 57 days
in 2011 and 58 days in 2010.

See the numbers at the end of this report for a detailed breakdown of
statistics regarding submissions.

Since the beginning of 2010, we have averaged around six long articles
per issue, where prior to going electronic-only and open access, the
norm was four articles per issue. This increase in page count
increases our costs, of course. Currently, we operate with a small
number of articles in reserve, which gives us some ability to combine
related articles in the same issue, and provides some insurance in
case we have a temporary drying-up of material. However, articles are
published (in an not-yet-proofread form) under a 'Just Accepted' tab
on the MIT Press website as soon as they have been accepted for
publication, so that they are accessible prior to being formally
assigned to an issue.

2 Departments

2.1 Book Reviews [Report by Graeme Hirst]

Book reviews are edited by Graeme Hirst. We publish two or three
reviews in each issue. In order to avoid a conflict of interest,
reviews of books in the Morgan & Claypool series that Hirst edits are
coordinated by our squibs editor, Pierre Isabelle, with Hirst out of
the loop.

2.2 Squibs [Report by Pierre Isabelle]

At the beginning of year 2012, there were no submissions in the squibs
pipeline pending from the previous year. In the course of year 2012,
10 papers were (re-) submitted as squibs. At the end of 2012, there
was only one submission left in the pipeline. Thus, 11 decisions were
made over the year.

The results were as follows:

* 1 paper accepted
* 3 papers rejected
* 5 invitations to revise and resubmit

The mean time taken for those decisions was 59 days.

As of 10 February 2013, one paper has been (re-) submitted yet to the
Squibs Editor this year.

In the course of 2012, I also served as Associate Book Review Editor
for three different books.

3 Administrative Matters

3.1 Editorial Handover

Paola Merlo will officially take over as editor-in-chief of the
journal in mid 2013, at which point Robert Dale will step down after
10 years as editor. We are carrying out a phased handover process
during the first half of 2013.

3.2 Editorial Assistance

Suzy Howlett, who essentially runs the journal, will be standing down
at around the same time as I hand over to Paola. Paola is in the
process of looking for a replacement editorial assistant.

4 Statistics

Here are the raw statistics referred to above.

First submissions in 2012
=========================

Survey proposal
---------------

Total: 8
Proposal accepted: 1
Revise and resubmit: 4
Reject: 1
Reject (not suitable): 2

Survey
------

Total: 3
Reject (not suitable): 1 -- proposal had not been submitted first
Revise and resubmit: 2

Article
-------

Total: 113
Revise and resubmit: 26
Reject: 22
Reject (not suitable): 55
Withdrawn: 2
No decision: 8

Average time to decision: 31 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)"): 64 days

Resubmission of an article from 2011 or before
================================================

Special Issue on Parsing Morphologically Rich Languages
-------------------------------------------------------

Total: 6
Accept with revisions: 6

Article
-------

Total: 17
Accept: 5
Accept with revisions: 1
Revise and resubmit: 11

Resubmission of an article from 2012
====================================

Survey proposal
---------------

Total: 5
Proposal accepted: 1
Revise and resubmit: 1
Reject: 2
Withdrawn: 1

Article
-------

Total: 28
Accept: 17
Revise and resubmit: 7
Reject: 2
No decision: 2

Totals (All submissions in 2012, including special issues and survey proposals)
===============================================================================

Total: 180
Accept: 22
Accept with revisions: 7
Revise and resubmit: 51
Reject: 27
Reject (not suitable): 58
Withdrawn: 3
No decision: 10
Proposal accepted: 2

Times for all submissions (incl. special issues and survey proposals)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Average time to decision: 36 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)"): 54 days

Times for all article submissions
---------------------------------
Average time to decision: 36 days
Average time to decision (excluding "reject (not suitable)"): 57 days

Country of first author
=======================
(New submissions and resubmissions from 2011 or before)

Articles
--------
Australia 1
Basque Country 1
Brazil 1
Bulgaria 1
Canada 2
China 8
Egypt 2
Finland 1
France 5
Germany 4
Hong Kong 2
India 10
Indonesia 1
Iran 7
Israel 1
Italy 3
Japan 2
Jordan 2
Lebanon 1
Malaysia 4
Netherlands 1
Pakistan 4
Poland 1
Portugal 2
Russian Federation 1
Saudi Arabia 2
Spain 17
Sri Lanka 1
Sweden 3
Switzerland 2
Tunisia 3
Turkey 1
UAE 1
UK 10
Ukraine 1
US 21

TOTAL 130

SI PMRL
-------
Germany 3
Israel 1
US 2

TOTAL 6

Survey proposals
----------------
Austria 1
Malaysia 2
Spain 1
Switzerland 1
United Arab Emirates 1
US 2

TOTAL 8

Survey without proposal first
-----------------------------
Egypt 1

TOTAL 1

----End

2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2011-06-13T23:26:05Z

RobertDale:

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.

----End

2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2011-06-13T23:23:28Z

RobertDale:

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

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.

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.

----End

2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2011-06-13T23:22:52Z

RobertDale:

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

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

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.

----End

2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2011-06-13T23:22:25Z

RobertDale:

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

See the attached tables for submission statistics for 2009, 2010 and
2011 so far. [[Media:Submissions2011H1.ogg]]

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.

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.

----End

File:Countries2011H1.pdf

2011-06-13T23:21:32Z

RobertDale:

File:Submissions2011H1.pdf

2011-06-13T23:21:18Z

RobertDale:

2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2011-06-13T23:20:45Z

RobertDale:

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

See the attached tables for submission statistics for 2009, 2010 and
2011 so far.

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.

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.

----End

2011Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2011-06-13T23:20:10Z

RobertDale: New page: 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, wi...

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

See the attached tables for submission statistics for 2009, 2010 and
2011 so far.

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.

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.

----End

File:Submissions by Country.pdf

2011-03-02T23:58:55Z

RobertDale: uploaded a new version of "Image:Submissions by Country.pdf"

File:Submission Counts.pdf

2011-03-02T23:57:32Z

RobertDale: uploaded a new version of "Image:Submission Counts.pdf"

2011Q1 Reports: CL Journal

2011-03-02T20:59:24Z

RobertDale:

CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2010

Robert Dale, Editor

Wednesday 2nd March 2011

1 Summary

A good year for the journal: a healthy increase in submissions, with
first submissions up from 69 last year to 78 this year, and the total
number of papers processed, including resubmissions, up from 93 to
133. At the same time, our reviewing turnaround time has also
improved very significantly, from 148 days to 58 days. The year saw
some changes in our administrative processes (described below), as
well as the signing of a new contract with MIT Press.

2 Submissions

2.1 Papers

See the attached tables ([[Media:Submission Counts.pdf]], [[Media:Submissions_by_Country.pdf]])
for submission statistics for 2009 and 2010.
As noted above, our submissions are up, but it should be pointed out
that our immediate rejection of papers considered to be inappropriate
for CL more than covers our submissions increase.

2.2 Book Reviews

[Report by Graeme Hirst]

Book reviews are edited by Graeme Hirst. We publish two or three reviews in each issue. In order to avoid a conflict of interest, reviews of books in the Morgan & Claypool series that Hirst edits are coordinated by our squibs editor, Pierre Isabelle, with Hirst out of the loop.

3 Administrative Matters

3.1 Editorial Assistance

Mary Gardiner and Suzy Howlett shared the role of editorial assistant
in 2010. As of the beginning of 2011, this role is now solely carried
out by Suzy, while Mary has separately contracted to do some work on
extending the functionalities of the Open Journal Systems manuscript
management software that we use.

As always, running the journal would be impossible without the help of
both Suzy and Mary; we’re very fortunate to have such capable and
proactive assistance.

3.2 Editorial Board

Eight new members have joined the editorial board for the period 2011-2013:

Eneko Agirre, University of the Basque Country
Anja Belz, University of Brighton
Hal Daumé III, University of Maryland, College Park
Julia Hockenmaier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Anna Korhonen, University of Cambridge
Ryan McDonald, Google, Inc.
Roberto Navigli, Sapienza Universita' di Roma
Martha Palmer, University of Colorado

At the same time, the following members of the board have reached the
end of their three-year periods on the board:

James Curran, University of Sydney
Daniel Gildea, University of Rochester
Jan Haji?, Charles University, Prague
Katja Markert, University of Leeds
Raymond J Mooney, University of Texas at Austin
Patrick Pantel, Yahoo! Inc
Mark Stevenson, University of Sheffield
Ming Zhou, Microsoft Research Asia

Their invaluable assistance in conscientiously reviewing papers for
the journal is much appreciated.

3.3 Manuscript Processing

In 2010 we completed the transition to the Open Journal Systems
manuscript management system. During the year we implemented a
number of workflow enhancements to the platform, and incorporated a
new structured review form that makes it easier to process reviews.

3.4 Author Support

As a consequence of some of the streamlining of the workflow process,
some of Suzy’s time has been freed up; this has allowed us to commence
work on updating the style guide, to work on documenting the journal’s
LaTeX style files, and to begin creating a list of 'recommended
packages’ for use with LaTeX.

4 Upcoming Changes

During 2011 we will switch to the new production workflow, where the
copy editor will make changes to the source LaTeX files (previously
changes were indicated on a hard copy by a copy editor, and input by a
third-party typesetting company). This was a key element in the
reduction in costs we negotiated as part of the new contract with The
MIT Press.

The journal is getting bigger: I foresee that within one or two years
we will be 50% above our current target page count of 640 pages per
year. This will have cost implications.

2011Q1 Reports

2011-03-02T09:20:20Z

RobertDale:

* 2011Q1 Reports: ACL 2011 - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/ACL.ProgramChairsReport.Feb2011.doc - Ido Dagan (Coordinating Committee Chair)
* [[2011Q1 Reports: ACL 2012]] - Kevin Knight (Coordinating Committee Chair)
* [[2011Q1 Reports: ACL 2013]] - Ken Church (Coordinating Committee Chair)
* [[2011Q1 Reports: CL Journal]] - Robert Dale [[Media:Submission Counts.pdf]] [[Media:Submissions_by_Country.pdf]]
* 2011Q1 Reports: EACL - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/2011-Q1-EACL-Report.doc - Marie-Francine Moens
* [[2011Q1 Reports: NAACL]] - Rebecca Hwa
* 2011Q1 Reports: Office - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/membership-report-2002-2011-WINTER-statistics.xlsx - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/Memberships-2011-by-country-WINTER.xlsx - Priscilla Rasmussen
* [[2011Q1 Reports: Secretary]] - Dragomir Radev
* [[2011Q1 Reports: Sponsorship]] - Srinivas
* [[2011Q1 Reports: SIG Convener]] - Renata Vieira - at the second telecon
* [[2011Q1 Reports: Treasurer]] - Graeme Hirst - at the second telecon
* Executive Structure - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/ExecStructure.doc - Ido Dagan

File:Submissions by Country.pdf

2011-03-02T09:20:00Z

RobertDale:

2011Q1 Reports

2011-03-02T09:19:20Z

RobertDale:

* 2011Q1 Reports: ACL 2011 - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/ACL.ProgramChairsReport.Feb2011.doc - Ido Dagan (Coordinating Committee Chair)
* [[2011Q1 Reports: ACL 2012]] - Kevin Knight (Coordinating Committee Chair)
* [[2011Q1 Reports: ACL 2013]] - Ken Church (Coordinating Committee Chair)
* [[2011Q1 Reports: CL Journal]] - Robert Dale [[Media:Submission Counts.pdf]]
* 2011Q1 Reports: EACL - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/2011-Q1-EACL-Report.doc - Marie-Francine Moens
* [[2011Q1 Reports: NAACL]] - Rebecca Hwa
* 2011Q1 Reports: Office - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/membership-report-2002-2011-WINTER-statistics.xlsx - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/Memberships-2011-by-country-WINTER.xlsx - Priscilla Rasmussen
* [[2011Q1 Reports: Secretary]] - Dragomir Radev
* [[2011Q1 Reports: Sponsorship]] - Srinivas
* [[2011Q1 Reports: SIG Convener]] - Renata Vieira - at the second telecon
* [[2011Q1 Reports: Treasurer]] - Graeme Hirst - at the second telecon
* Executive Structure - http://clair.si.umich.edu/~radev/aclsec/reports-winter11/ExecStructure.doc - Ido Dagan

File:Submission Counts.pdf

2011-03-02T09:17:41Z

RobertDale:

2011Q1 Reports: CL Journal

2011-03-02T09:14:19Z

RobertDale: New page: CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2010 Robert Dale, Editor Wednesday 2nd March 2011 1 Summary A good year for the journal: a healthy increase in submissions, with first submissions u...

CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2010

Robert Dale, Editor

Wednesday 2nd March 2011

1 Summary

A good year for the journal: a healthy increase in submissions, with
first submissions up from 69 last year to 78 this year, and the total
number of papers processed, including resubmissions, up from 93 to
133. At the same time, our reviewing turnaround time has also
improved very significantly, from 148 days to 58 days. The year saw
some changes in our administrative processes (described below), as
well as the signing of a new contract with MIT Press.

2 Submissions

See the attached tables for submission statistics for 2009 and 2010.
As noted above, our submissions are up, but it should be pointed out
that our immediate rejection of papers considered to be inappropriate
for CL more than covers our submissions increase.

3 Administrative Matters

3.1 Editorial Assistance

Mary Gardiner and Suzy Howlett shared the role of editorial assistant
in 2010. As of the beginning of 2011, this role is now solely carried
out by Suzy, while Mary has separately contracted to do some work on
extending the functionalities of the Open Journal Systems manuscript
management software that we use.

As always, running the journal would be impossible without the help of
both Suzy and Mary; we’re very fortunate to have such capable and
proactive assistance.

3.2 Editorial Board

Eight new members have joined the editorial board for the period 2011-2013:

Eneko Agirre, University of the Basque Country
Anja Belz, University of Brighton
Hal Daumé III, University of Maryland, College Park
Julia Hockenmaier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Anna Korhonen, University of Cambridge
Ryan McDonald, Google, Inc.
Roberto Navigli, Sapienza Universita' di Roma
Martha Palmer, University of Colorado

At the same time, the following members of the board have reached the
end of their three-year periods on the board:

James Curran, University of Sydney
Daniel Gildea, University of Rochester
Jan Haji?, Charles University, Prague
Katja Markert, University of Leeds
Raymond J Mooney, University of Texas at Austin
Patrick Pantel, Yahoo! Inc
Mark Stevenson, University of Sheffield
Ming Zhou, Microsoft Research Asia

Their invaluable assistance in conscientiously reviewing papers for
the journal is much appreciated.

3.3 Manuscript Processing

In 2010 we completed the transition to the Open Journal Systems
manuscript management system. During the year we implemented a
number of workflow enhancements to the platform, and incorporated a
new structured review form that makes it easier to process reviews.

3.4 Author Support

As a consequence of some of the streamlining of the workflow process,
some of Suzy’s time has been freed up; this has allowed us to commence
work on updating the style guide, to work on documenting the journal’s
LaTeX style files, and to begin creating a list of 'recommended
packages’ for use with LaTeX.

4 Upcoming Changes

During 2011 we will switch to the new production workflow, where the
copy editor will make changes to the source LaTeX files (previously
changes were indicated on a hard copy by a copy editor, and input by a
third-party typesetting company). This was a key element in the
reduction in costs we negotiated as part of the new contract with The
MIT Press.

The journal is getting bigger: I foresee that within one or two years
we will be 50% above our current target page count of 640 pages per
year. This will have cost implications.

2010Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2010-06-10T23:51:26Z

RobertDale:

'''Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2009–2010'''

Robert Dale, Editor

'''1 Summary'''

In 2009, we published 18 articles, one LTA talk, one squib, 3 Last Words pieces, 3 book reviews, one letter to the editor and, sadly, three obituaries. One of our four issues was a special issue on Prepositions, guest-edited by Tim Baldwin, Valia Kordona and Aline Villavicencio.

We received 69 submissions in 2009, so our submission numbers are reasonably stable, although we have dropped from the highs of some earlier years in which we had issued special issue calls. At 148 days, our mean time to first decision appears to have suffered this year, but this is due a small number of outliers that took in excess of 250 days.

The major administrative activity this year was our shift to the Open Journal Management System, ably executed by Mary Gardiner. All reviews are now handled via this system, which provides both a database for storing and accessing all relevant information, and a workflow environment within which papers are submitted and reviewed. We simultaneously moved the journal's online editorial presence to www.cljournal.org, and subsequently moved our email hosting to Gmail because of changes to Macquarie University's email system.

As always, the journal could not function without the outstanding assistance provided by Suzy Howlett and Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistants, and our editorial board.

'''2 Upcoming Changes'''

During 2010H1, we designed a new review form on the basis of feedback and suggestions from the editorial board, and this will be rolled out in 2010H2.

Significant changes to our processes are likely if the proposal to route all conference submissions through the journal goes ahead, and there will be a need for further expenditure to implement the required changes to the online system.

More generally, there are a number of aspects of the standard processing provided by OJMS which are suboptimal given the particular workflow we use or CL. Once things are clearer in regard to the conference publishing proposal mentioned above, the Editorial Office will submit a proposal to the Executive to cover a number of upgrades to the system.

'''3 Summary Statistics'''

Detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on are provided in [[Media:ComputationalLinguisticsJournalReport2010.pdf]]. Here are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Submissions 47 64 57 65 65 72 88 99 80 71 69

And the all important mean time to first decision:

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Decision Time 110 127 129 131 146 125 100 97 148

Comparisons across years should be treated with some caution, because the methodology for deriving the statistics has changed over time; for example, a key question is how one treats resubmissions, especially if they are resubmissions in a later year than the original submission. Our move to the OJMS has also involved a new numbering and tracking system which should regularise things from here on.

2010Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2010-06-10T23:50:29Z

RobertDale:

'''Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2009–2010'''

Robert Dale, Editor

'''1 Summary'''

In 2009, we published 18 articles, one LTA talk, one squib, 3 Last Words pieces, 3 book reviews, one letter to the editor and, sadly, three obituaries. One of our four issues was a special issue on Prepositions, guest-edited by Tim Baldwin, Valia Kordona and Aline Villavicencio.

We received 69 submissions in 2009, so our submission numbers are reasonably stable, although we have dropped from the highs of some earlier years in which we had issued special issue calls. At 148 days, our mean time to first decision appears to have suffered this year, but this is due a small number of outliers that took in excess of 250 days.

The major administrative activity this year was our shift to the Open Journal Management System, ably executed by Mary Gardiner. All reviews are now handled via this system, which provides both a database for storing and accessing all relevant information, and a workflow environment within which papers are submitted and reviewed. We simultaneously moved the journal's online editorial presence to www.cljournal.org, and subsequently moved our email hosting to Gmail because of changes to Macquarie University's email system.

As always, the journal could not function without the outstanding assistance provided by Suzy Howlett and Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistants, and our editorial board.

'''2 Upcoming Changes'''

During 2010H1, we designed a new review form on the basis of feedback and suggestions from the editorial board, and this will be rolled out in 2010H2.

Significant changes to our processes are likely if the proposal to route all conference submissions through the journal goes ahead, and there will be a need for further expenditure to implement the required changes to the online system.

More generally, there are a number of aspects of the standard processing provided by OJMS which are suboptimal given the particular workflow we use or CL. Once things are clearer in regard to the conference publishing proposal mentioned above, the Editorial Office will submit a proposal to the Executive to cover a number of upgrades to the system.

'''3 Summary Statistics'''

Detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on are provided in [[Media:Example.ogg]]. Here are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Submissions 47 64 57 65 65 72 88 99 80 71 69

And the all important mean time to first decision:

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Decision Time 110 127 129 131 146 125 100 97 148

Comparisons across years should be treated with some caution, because the methodology for deriving the statistics has changed over time; for example, a key question is how one treats resubmissions, especially if they are resubmissions in a later year than the original submission. Our move to the OJMS has also involved a new numbering and tracking system which should regularise things from here on.

File:ComputationalLinguisticsJournalReport2010.pdf

2010-06-10T23:48:11Z

RobertDale:

2010Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2010-06-10T01:01:33Z

RobertDale:

'''Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2009–2010'''

Robert Dale, Editor

'''1 Summary'''

In 2009, we published 18 articles, one LTA talk, one squib, 3 Last Words pieces, 3 book reviews, one letter to the editor and, sadly, three obituaries. One of our four issues was a special issue on Prepositions, guest-edited by Tim Baldwin, Valia Kordona and Aline Villavicencio.

We received 69 submissions in 2009, so our submission numbers are reasonably stable, although we have dropped from the highs of some earlier years in which we had issued special issue calls. At 148 days, our mean time to first decision appears to have suffered this year, but this is due a small number of outliers that took in excess of 250 days.

The major administrative activity this year was our shift to the Open Journal Management System, ably executed by Mary Gardiner. All reviews are now handled via this system, which provides both a database for storing and accessing all relevant information, and a workflow environment within which papers are submitted and reviewed. We simultaneously moved the journal's online editorial presence to www.cljournal.org, and subsequently moved our email hosting to Gmail because of changes to Macquarie University's email system.

As always, the journal could not function without the outstanding assistance provided by Suzy Howlett and Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistants, and our editorial board.

'''2 Upcoming Changes'''

During 2010H1, we designed a new review form on the basis of feedback and suggestions from the editorial board, and this will be rolled out in 2010H2.

Significant changes to our processes are likely if the proposal to route all conference submissions through the journal goes ahead, and there will be a need for further expenditure to implement the required changes to the online system.

More generally, there are a number of aspects of the standard processing provided by OJMS which are suboptimal given the particular workflow we use or CL. Once things are clearer in regard to the conference publishing proposal mentioned above, the Editorial Office will submit a proposal to the Executive to cover a number of upgrades to the system.

'''3 Summary Statistics'''

Detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on are provided in [[Media:the attached PDF version of this report]]. Here are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Submissions 47 64 57 65 65 72 88 99 80 71 69

And the all important mean time to first decision:

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Decision Time 110 127 129 131 146 125 100 97 148

Comparisons across years should be treated with some caution, because the methodology for deriving the statistics has changed over time; for example, a key question is how one treats resubmissions, especially if they are resubmissions in a later year than the original submission. Our move to the OJMS has also involved a new numbering and tracking system which should regularise things from here on.

2010Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2010-06-10T01:01:06Z

RobertDale: New page: Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2009–2010 Robert Dale, Editor 1 Summary In 2009, we published 18 articles, one LTA talk, one squib, 3 Last Words pieces, 3 book reviews, o...

Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2009–2010

Robert Dale, Editor

1 Summary

In 2009, we published 18 articles, one LTA talk, one squib, 3 Last Words pieces, 3 book reviews, one letter to the editor and, sadly, three obituaries. One of our four issues was a special issue on Prepositions, guest-edited by Tim Baldwin, Valia Kordona and Aline Villavicencio.

We received 69 submissions in 2009, so our submission numbers are reasonably stable, although we have dropped from the highs of some earlier years in which we had issued special issue calls. At 148 days, our mean time to first decision appears to have suffered this year, but this is due a small number of outliers that took in excess of 250 days.

The major administrative activity this year was our shift to the Open Journal Management System, ably executed by Mary Gardiner. All reviews are now handled via this system, which provides both a database for storing and accessing all relevant information, and a workflow environment within which papers are submitted and reviewed. We simultaneously moved the journal's online editorial presence to www.cljournal.org, and subsequently moved our email hosting to Gmail because of changes to Macquarie University's email system.

As always, the journal could not function without the outstanding assistance provided by Suzy Howlett and Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistants, and our editorial board.

2 Upcoming Changes

During 2010H1, we designed a new review form on the basis of feedback and suggestions from the editorial board, and this will be rolled out in 2010H2.

Significant changes to our processes are likely if the proposal to route all conference submissions through the journal goes ahead, and there will be a need for further expenditure to implement the required changes to the online system.

More generally, there are a number of aspects of the standard processing provided by OJMS which are suboptimal given the particular workflow we use or CL. Once things are clearer in regard to the conference publishing proposal mentioned above, the Editorial Office will submit a proposal to the Executive to cover a number of upgrades to the system.

3 Summary Statistics

Detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on are provided in [[Media:the attached PDF version of this report]]. Here are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Submissions 47 64 57 65 65 72 88 99 80 71 69

And the all important mean time to first decision:

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Decision Time 110 127 129 131 146 125 100 97 148

Comparisons across years should be treated with some caution, because the methodology for deriving the statistics has changed over time; for example, a key question is how one treats resubmissions, especially if they are resubmissions in a later year than the original submission. Our move to the OJMS has also involved a new numbering and tracking system which should regularise things from here on.

2010Q1 Reports: CL Journal

2010-02-09T20:03:46Z

RobertDale: New page: CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2009 Robert Dale, Editor 1 Summary Submissions slightly up on last year, from 71 to 84. In terms of or processes, currently the journal is in a stat...

CL Journal Report for Calendar Year 2009

Robert Dale, Editor

1 Summary

Submissions slightly up on last year, from 71 to 84. In terms of or processes, currently the journal is in a state of flux, with a lot of changes ongoing, and more to come. Overall things are just about under control.

2 Statistics

These statistics are not in the form that they are usually provided: Mary Gardiner, Editorial Assistant, usually compiles these for me, but her hands are full with a very new baby, so I have cobbled these together as best as I can.

In 2009, we received 84 submissions. This is an increase on previous years – we have beat this number before, but only with the help of special issues, of which we had none in 2009.

At the time of writing, first decisions on 10 of these papers were still outstanding. I don't have figures on our mean time to first decision in 2009, but the fact that in early February we only have 10 papers from 2009 awaiting first decisions suggests that we are doing well. Generally speaking, our decision times have been getting faster, but there's still wide variance on a per paper basis: some of our best reviewers are also our slowest reviewers.
Of the 74 papers from 2009 on which decisions were reached, 9 have so far been accepted for publication, 38 are under revision, 1 has been invited to resubmit as a squib, 19 were rejected, and 7 were considered inappropriate for CL. One paper was a proposal for a survey which was accepted; the survey itself is late.

Historically we have not insisted on revised papers being submitted within a specified time frame, but we're very likely to start doing this in 2010, as part of a planned revamp of our reviewing process. I have not carried out a detailed analysis, but I suspect a good proportion of the papers we send back for revision and resubmission don't come back to us.

3 Journal Departments

3.1 Squibs [Pierre Isabelle]

At the beginning of year 2009, there were two submissions in the squibs pipeline pending from 2008. In the course of year 2009, 11 additional papers were (re-) submitted. At the end of 2009, there were 3 submissions left in the pipeline. Thus, 10 decisions were made over the year.

The results were as follows:
* 2 papers accepted
* 5 papers rejected
* 3 invitations to revise
The mean time taken for these decisions was 72 days.

Thus far, 3 papers have been (re-) submitted to the Squibs Editor in 2010.

Also, I have been handling some book reviews on behalf of Graeme Hirst, for books published in a series he is editing for Morgan & Claypool. I received three books during 2009. Two reviews were completed and the third was pending at the end of the year.

3.2 Obituaries

Over the last two or three years we have started running obituaries in the journal. Our field is of an age, unfortunately, such that these are likely to become a little more frequent.

3.3 Main Articles

We continue to receive mainly long articles of around 40 pages, and relatively few short articles of around 20 pages. Although, despite being an electronic journal, we still have per-page costs (for copy editing and typesetting), we can experiment a bit more with length variation; and we should probably look to hosting additional material related to papers on the journal's website.

3.4 Book Reviews [Graeme Hirst]

Book reviews are edited by Graeme Hirst. We continue to publish one or two reviews in each issue, a smaller number than in the past as fewer books overall are being published in computational linguistics nowadays.
However, a new series of CL books edited by Graeme Hirst recently began publication. In order to avoid a conflict of interest, reviews of these books are being coordinated by our squibs editor, Pierre Isabelle, with Hirst out of the loop.

3.5 Last Words

Finding members of our community who are willing to write a Last Words piece is difficult. It's not clear to me whether this means that all our controversial issues have now been raised, or I'm not asking the right people; suggestions for possible LW authors are most welcome.

4 Current Changes

4.1 Editorial Assistance

Mary Gardiner, who has been our one-day-per-week editorial assistant for a number of years, is on maternity leave in 2010H1; Suzy Howlett has taken over the editorial assistance role in the interim. Running the journal would be impossible without their help.

4.2 Editorial Board

Eight new members have joined the editorial board for the period 2010-2012:

Michael White, The Ohio State University
Chris Callison-Burch, Johns Hopkins University
Katrin Erk, University of Texas at Austin
Philipp Koehn, University of Edinburgh
Joakim Nivre, Uppsala University
George Foster, National Research Council of Canada
GuoDong Zhou , Soochow University, China
Advaith Siddharthan, University of Aberdeen

At the same time, the following members of the board have reached the end of their three-year periods on the board:

Claire Cardie, Cornell University
Bob Carpenter, Alias-i
Olivia Kwong, City University of Hong Kong
Ellen Riloff, University of Utah
Sabine Schulte im Walde, Universität Stuttgart
Simone Teufel, University of Cambridge
Peter Turney, National Research Council of Canada

Their invaluable assistance in conscientiously reviewing papers for the journal is much appreciated.

4.3 Review Management

For the last seven or eight years, the journal has survived using email as the primary workflow tool, backed up by a spreadsheet database. In the last few months, we have switched to using the web-based Open Journal System. The transition has gone reasonably smoothly, but the software still needs quite a few tweaks before it meshes perfectly with our workflow. At the same time as these modifications are being implemented, we'll be reviewing our processes and making changes where appropriate. The software development work is being carried out by Mary Gardiner, who, as noted above, recently became a mother, so there is a temporary halt on this development. A trickle of changes are likely to made throughout the rest of this calendar year.

5 Upcoming Changes

5.1 Article-by-Article Publication

Although the journal is now electronic only, we still make use of the concept of issues that are published on a quarterly basis. There's no reason why we need to continue to do this; we could instead publish articles one by one as they are ready. However, doing this requires making various changes to the way MIT Press processes our materials, so what happens here depends on what happens in regard to a number of other possible developments, noted below.

5.2 Funding Models

Now that CL is open access, we are reliant on sources of funding other than subscriptions for the ongoing funding of the journal. In 2010, the cost of producing the journal is likely to be around $60k. This is a significant cost, and so we may want to look at alternative funding models. My intention is to table a discussion paper on this topic at the mid-year ACL executive meeting.

5.3 Publication Model

The ongoing discussions in regard to the relationship between conference and journal publication clearly have an impact on how the journal develops in the future. It would be good to arrive at some concrete decisions here relatively soon, since the various possibilities have impacts on the different possible funding models. One possibility is that we may wish to reconsider our relationship with MIT Press.

---End

Portal Feedback

2009-12-13T19:43:36Z

RobertDale: New page: The ACL Member Portal is currently being tested for acceptance by the ACL Executive. It will be in this state until Thursday 24th December, which is the target date for formal acceptance....

The ACL Member Portal is currently being tested for acceptance by the ACL Executive. It will be in this state until Thursday 24th December, which is the target date for formal acceptance. Exec members should use this page to log bugs and feature requests. For present purposes, bugs are problems with the site which mean that it does not provide the basic functionality that was requested of the contractor, and feature requests are extensions beyond that basic functionality. Bugs will need to be fixed for formal acceptance to take place; feature requests will be handled subsequent to the formal acceptance as additional work requests.

'''Bugs'''

[Please add bugs here.]

'''Feature Requests'''

[Please add feature requests here.]

2009Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2009-07-07T20:10:53Z

RobertDale:

Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2008-2009
Robert Dale, Editor

1 Summary

The journal appears to be in a reasonably healthy state. Submissions for 2008 have dropped back to 2004 levels (see stats below), so the growth in submissions during 2005-2007 may have been a temporary glitch; only time will tell. Our mean time to first decision is slightly better than last year, at 97 days.

We are now halfway through our first year of being open access and electronic only. This is a transitional period: we are in the process of negotiating the new contract with MIT Press, but we will likely want to review our association with MIT Press in the next 18 months, since it is only in 2010 that we will begin to see the real costs of operating a journal without the subsidies provided by library subscriptions.

As always, the journal could not function without the able assistance provided by Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistant, and of course our editorial board.

2 Upcoming Changes

The Early Access mechanism, whereby 'first revises' are posted on the web before final proofreading is completed, now seems a little redundant: electronic-only publication means we are in a position to publish articles as soon as they have completed the copy-editing and proofreading process, without waiting until a regular issue publication date. I therefore propose to drop the Early Access mechanism, and shift to article-by-article publication. This has the advantage of avoiding citation complications that may be introduced by having two different versions of an article, at the cost of delaying publication by 2-4 weeks.

Mary is continuing work on integrating the Online Journal Management System into our processes. We've commissioned a webhost and
the early steps of paper submissions have been tested; we are yet to complete a full review cycle using OJMS, but we plan to do so by the end of August.

The ACL Member Portal should also go live shortly. We will need to look at how and whether we want to integrate 'premium services' in relation to the journal into the portal.

3 Statistics

In the past we have provided fairly detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on. These are available on request, but in their place in this report are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

<table>
<tr><td>Year</td><td>1999</td><td>2000</td><td>2001</td><td>2002</td><td>2003</td><td>2004</td><td>2005</td><td>2006</td><td>2007</td><td>2008</td></tr>
<tr><td>Submissions</td><td>47</td><td>64</td><td>57</td><td>65</td><td>65</td><td>72</td><td>88</td><td>99</td><td>80</td><td>71</td></tr></table>

And the all important mean time to first decision:

<table>
<tr><td>Year</td><td>2001</td><td>2002</td><td>2003</td><td>2004</td><td>2005</td><td>2006</td><td>2007</td><td>2008</td></tr>
<tr><td>Decision Time</td><td>110</td><td>127</td><td>129</td><td>131</td><td>146</td><td>125</td><td>100</td><td>97</td></tr></table>

-----End

2009Q3 Reports: Squibs and Comments

2009-07-07T00:50:35Z

RobertDale: New page: Book Reviews Report [Posted by Robert Dale on behalf of Graeme Hirst] Book reviews are edited by Graeme Hirst. We continue to publish one or two reviews in each issue, a smaller number...

Book Reviews Report
[Posted by Robert Dale on behalf of Graeme Hirst]

Book reviews are edited by Graeme Hirst. We continue to publish one or two reviews in each issue, a smaller number than in the past as fewer books overall are being published in computational linguistics nowadays.

However, a new series of CL books edited by Graeme Hirst recently began publication. In order to avoid a conflict of interest, reviews of these books will be coordinated by our squibs editor, Pierre Isabelle, with Graeme out of the loop.

2009Q3 Reports: Book Reviews for CL Journal

2009-07-07T00:50:02Z

RobertDale: New page: Squibs Report [Posted on behalf of Pierre Isabelle by Robert Dale] At the beginning of year 2008, there were four submissions in the Squibs pipeline. In the course of year 2008, 9 additio...

Squibs Report
[Posted on behalf of Pierre Isabelle by Robert Dale]

At the beginning of year 2008, there were four submissions in the Squibs pipeline. In the course of year 2008, 9 additional papers were (re-) submitted. At the end of 2008, there were 2 submissions left in the pipeline. Thus, 11 decisions were made over the year.

The results were as follows:

* 1 paper accepted
* 7 papers rejected
* 3 invitations to revise

The mean time taken for these decisions was 75 days.

Thus far, 5 papers have been (re-) submitted to the Squibs Editor in 2007.

Also, I have started to handle some book reviews on behalf of Graeme Hirst, for books published in a series he is editing for Morgan & Claypool.

2009Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2009-07-07T00:49:03Z

RobertDale:

Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2008-2009
Robert Dale, Editor

1 Summary

The journal appears to be in a reasonably healthy state. Submissions for 2008 have dropped back to 2004 levels (see stats below), so the growth in submissions during 2005-2007 may have been a temporary glitch; only time will tell. Our mean time to first decision is slightly better than last year, at 97 days.

We are now halfway through our first year of being open access and electronic only. This is a transitional period: we are in the process of negotiating the new contract with MIT Press, but we will likely want to review our association with MIT Press in the next 18 months, since it is only in 2010 that we will begin to see the real costs of operating a journal without the subsidies provided by library subscriptions.

As always, the journal could not function without the able assistance provided by Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistant, and of course our editorial board.

2 Upcoming Changes

The Early Access mechanism, whereby 'first revises' are posted on the web before final proofreading is completed, now seems a little redundant: electronic-only publication means we are in a position to publish articles as soon as they have completed the copy-editing and proofreading process, without waiting until a regular issue publication date. I therefore propose to drop the Early Access mechanism, and shift to article-by-article publication. This has the advantage of avoiding citation complications that may be introduced by having two different versions of an article, at the cost of delaying publication by 2-4 weeks.

Mary is continuing work on integrating the Online Journal Management System into our processes. This has gone slowly, but we should see the first authors using the process from end-to-end by the end of the year.

The ACL Member Portal should also go live shortly. We will need to look at how and whether we want to integrate 'premium services' in relation to the journal into the portal.

3 Statistics

In the past we have provided fairly detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on. These are available on request, but in their place in this report are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

<table>
<tr><td>Year</td><td>1999</td><td>2000</td><td>2001</td><td>2002</td><td>2003</td><td>2004</td><td>2005</td><td>2006</td><td>2007</td><td>2008</td></tr>
<tr><td>Submissions</td><td>47</td><td>64</td><td>57</td><td>65</td><td>65</td><td>72</td><td>88</td><td>99</td><td>80</td><td>71</td></tr></table>

And the all important mean time to first decision:

<table>
<tr><td>Year</td><td>2001</td><td>2002</td><td>2003</td><td>2004</td><td>2005</td><td>2006</td><td>2007</td><td>2008</td></tr>
<tr><td>Decision Time</td><td>110</td><td>127</td><td>129</td><td>131</td><td>146</td><td>125</td><td>100</td><td>97</td></tr></table>

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2009Q3 Reports: Journal Editor

2009-07-07T00:45:30Z

RobertDale: New page: Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2008-2009 Robert Dale, Editor 1 Summary The journal appears to be in a reasonably healthy state. Submissions for 2008 have dropped back to 2...

Computational Linguistics Journal Report for 2008-2009
Robert Dale, Editor

1 Summary

The journal appears to be in a reasonably healthy state. Submissions for 2008 have dropped back to 2004 levels (see stats below), so the growth in submissions during 2005-2007 may have been a temporary glitch; only time will tell. Our mean time to first decision is slightly better than last year, at 97 days.

We are now halfway through our first year of being open access and electronic only. This is a transitional period: we are in the process of negotiating the new contract with MIT Press, but we will likely want to review our association with MIT Press in the next 18 months, since it is only in 2010 that we will begin to see the real costs of operating a journal without the subsidies provided by library subscriptions.

As always, the journal could not function without the able assistance provided by Mary Gardiner, the CL editorial assistant, and of course our editorial board.

2 Upcoming Changes

The Early Access mechanism, whereby 'first revises' are posted on the web before final proofreading is completed, now seems a little redundant: electronic-only publication means we are in a position to publish articles as soon as they have completed the copy-editing and proofreading process, without waiting until a regular issue publication date. I therefore propose to drop the Early Access mechanism, and shift to article-by-article publication. This has the advantage of avoiding citation complications that may be introduced by having two different versions of an article, at the cost of delaying publication by 2-4 weeks.

Mary is continuing work on integrating the Online Journal Management System into our processes. This has gone slowly, but we should see the first authors using the process from end-to-end by the end of the year.

The ACL Member Portal should also go live shortly. We will need to look at how and whether we want to integrate 'premium services' in relation to the journal into the portal.

3 Statistics

In the past we have provided fairly detailed statistics regarding number of papers submitted, accepted, given revise and resubmit decisions, and so on. These are available on request, but in their place in this report are some higher level stats that may be more interesting.

First, number of submissions per year:

Year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Submissions 47 64 57 65 65 72 88 99 80 71

And the all important mean time to first decision:

Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Decision Time 110 127 129 131 146 125 100 97

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2009Q1 Reports: CL Journal

2009-01-26T20:01:35Z

RobertDale: New page: Computational Linguistics Journal Report for Calendar Year 2008 Robert Dale, Editor 1 Summary From CL's point of view this is considered an interim report, since many submissions to the ...

Computational Linguistics Journal Report for Calendar Year 2008
Robert Dale, Editor

1 Summary

From CL's point of view this is considered an interim report, since
many submissions to the journal in 2008 are still being processed.

As of the beginning of this year, we have gone Open Access and the
journal's content is now freely available via the ACL website, where
anyone can download the content and, I believe, set up email alerts
for new issues as they appear. The first issue of 2009, being Volume
35 Issue 1, will appear in the next few weeks; Volume 35 Issue 2 is a
special issue on prepositions, which will appear by mid year.
Thereafter it is possible we will switch to an article-by-article
publication stream, with quarterly retrospective 'batch-ups' into
issues.

This year, in an attempt to kick-start a new short papers track in
the journal, the authors of all seven best paper candidates for ACL 2008
were invited to submit extended versions of their conference papers
(which would then be subjected to further review). Five have
indicated an intention to submit, and two declined; none of the
extended papers have yet been received, although most authors
indicated an intention to provide their articles during the early part
of 2009.

Work on the CL online review management system, which uses the Open
Journal Management System software, has been delayed, but should be
completed by the middle of the year.

At the mid-year Exec Meeting, we will need to review where things
stand financially and with regard to the future funding model for the
journal.

As ever, Mary Gardiner has provided magnificent support as editorial assistant
for CL.

2 Early Access

Articles are published 'Early Access' -- after the copyeditor has
worked over the article, but prior to final proofreading and
correction -- before the final versions appear; at the time of
writing, eight articles are now available Early Access, although there
apppears to be a bug on the MIT Press website that prevents getting to
the appropriate page; this has been reported. Once the special issue
has been published, I would expect we will publish a bumper issue for
35:3 to clear the Early Access queue. There are still some unresolved
issues regarding citation of Early Access articles; it may be that it
is more sensible to drop this delivery category once we are in a
position to publish article by article.

3 Statistics

Here are the usual statistics relating to the journal.

In 2008 we had 55 new submissions, 15 resubs from a previous year and 1
resub of a 2008 paper.

Disposition for first submissions is:
- 0 accepts
- 0 accept with minor
- 8 revise and resub
- 5 reject
- 11 reject without review
- 29 decisions pending

Disposition for all submissions is:
- 7 accepts
- 2 accept with minor
- 12 revise and resub
- 6 reject
- 11 reject without review
- 31 decisions pending

Not counting reject without review, we are averaging 70 days to decision
and 79 for first submissions. These numbers are skewed downwards due to
the remaining non-decisions (most papers in 2008 were submitted late in
the year). Final numbers are likely to resemble 2007: 86 days to
decision.