The Editor's Department: Annual Report

My yearly duties as editor include the filing of a report with the LSA Executive Committee for its consideration during the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in January. This report surveys and discusses activities and matters pertaining to the running of the journal, highlights any new noteworthy developments, and generally brings to light any issues that either the Executive Committee or I myself might consider important for some reason. My fifth ‘State of the Journal’ report, reviewing Language’s past year, is given below, taking the place of my more usual editorial remarks in this section of the journal, in accordance with what has become my usual procedure for fulfilling this duty. The version here is essentially the form the report took when submitted to the Executive Committee in January, though I have added some informational updates in footnotes, corrected some errors, and embellished and elaborated in a few places as appropriate.

Brian D. Joseph
Columbus, Ohio
April 23, 2007

The Editor’s Report

Preamble

This past year, 2006, was the fifth year of my editorship of Language. With twenty issues of the journal under my belt, I am beginning to feel comfortable in the job and to have a sense that I know what I am doing. I can only hope that Language’s readership has a similar sense. This position continues to be an intense but exciting one; the levels of interest, stimulation, and frustration that the position occasions remain as high as ever, but so does the feeling of reward and satisfaction that it brings.

In what follows, I continue my custom of surveying the relevant events of the year that pertain to Language, just as I continue to feel privileged to hold the position I do and to be associated with such an excellent publication and a superb supporting cast.

Language by the numbers

As in my past reports, I begin with a statistical overview of volume 82, offering as well some commentary where needed. In 2006, the customary four issues of Language appeared, and once again, as has been the case since issue 79.3 (September 2003), the four issues appeared on time, being posted electronically with Project Muse and being mailed out to subscribers by approximately the third week of the month in which they were slated to appear (March, June, September, and December). I am confident that we can maintain this record, since we have a good handle on the routine for the production of an issue. Moreover, as I noted in an earlier Editor’s Department column (from Language 79.4, December 2003), the past, present, and future come together in our office continually, since typically one issue is coming out (the past) as we begin to work on the new current issue (the present) while at the same time laying the groundwork for the issue after that (the future). Indeed, even as the December 2006 (volume 82.4) issue is off to the printers at this very moment, papers for the March 2007 issue (volume 83.1) are in production, and the docket for the June 2007 issue is about to be filled with the next paper I accept (most likely next week).

The four issues of volume 82 contained 991 numbered pages, with 552 pages devoted to 18 articles, 16 to 1 short report, 84 to 5 discussion notes, 21 to 1 review article, 12 to 1 obituary, 115 to 36 reviews, 118 to 168 book notices, and 73 to other sorts of material (letters: 15 pages for 9 letters; Editor’s Department columns: 19 pages for 4 pieces, including the annual Editor’s Report; Recent Publications lists: 13 pages; index: 24 pages; eLanguage call for proposals: 1 page; slippage: 1 page).

The distribution of types of published pieces and the rough ratios of these types to one another are comparable to, though interestingly somewhat different from, those of past years. Overall the volume was substantially longer than the current annual target length of 900 pages. This greater length was made possible by the Executive Committee’s temporary expansion of the page count to allow us to...