Computational Linguistics Is Seeking a New Editor

Computational Linguistics is the premier journal in the areas of natural language processing and computational linguistics. It is a high-impact-factor, open-access, electronic-only journal, published by the MIT Press for the Association for Computational Linguistics.

The editor's role includes the following activities:

  • day-to-day management of the journal's operations;
  • selection of reviewers for submitted articles;
  • facilitation of discussion between reviewers, leading to final decisions on submitted papers;
  • checking proofs of published articles and interacting with MIT Press;
  • consultation-based selection of new editorial board members;
  • steering the direction of the journal in terms of strategic initiatives;
  • interacting with the editors of Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL), an ACL
  • journal which publishes shorter papers;
  • reporting to and participating in the ACL Executive Committee, of which the editor is an ex-officio member.

The current editor finds that these activities require around half a day each week. The editorship is an unpaid position, but ACL provides financial assistance for hiring an editorial assistant for one day per week to help with administration. The journal uses the Open Journal System web-based manuscript submission processing platform.

The person seeking to be appointed editor must be a competent administrator with a commitment to timeliness, have a vision for the future of the journal, and adhere to the policy of diversity and inclusivity promoted by the association. The appointment is for five years, starting on the 15th of July 2018, with a period of shadowing the current editor, Paola Merlo, preceding the starting date.

Previous editors of the journal have been James Allen (1983-1993), Julia Hirschberg (1993-2003), Robert Dale (2003-2013), and Paola Merlo (2013-2018). Editors of the preceding American Journal of Computational Linguistics were David Hayes (1974-1978) and George Heidorn (1980-1982).

Nomination Procedure:

  1. Nomination deadline: December 1, 2017
  2. Send nominations to: Lori Levin (lsl [at] cs.cmu.edu) (You may nominate yourself.)
  3. Subject line: Nomination for CL editor
  4. You will receive a confirmation email. If you do not receive a confirmation email within one day, please send your nomination again.
  5. Nominated candidates will be asked to accept the nomination, and those who accept will be asked to provide a statement explaining their qualifications for the position and vision for how the journal may evolve during their tenure as editor.

Search Committee members:

  • James F. Allen, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
  • Yejin Choi, University of Washington
  • Robert Dale, Language Technology Group
  • Julia Hirschberg, Columbia University
  • Lori Levin, Carnegie Mellon University (chair)
  • Paola Merlo, University of Geneva
  • Joakim Nivre, Uppsala University
  • Ming Zhou, Microsoft