Ahakim: New page: 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, c...

2012-01-18T02:18:43Z

New page: 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, c...

New page

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

2012Q1 Reports: CL Journal - Revision history

Ahakim: New page: 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, c...