The Editor's Report

[The following represents a somewhat expanded version of the annual report about Language submitted by then-editor Brian D. Joseph on December 8, 2008, to the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America for its consideration at its January meeting; the time references are kept as they were in the December version, and footnotes provide some updating since December where necessary or appropriate.]

Preamble

It has finally come to this: as I sit here writing my annual report—an exercise I have engaged in at this time of year since 2002—looming before me is the end of my term as editor of Language, just about a month from now when the results of the election of Greg Carlson as the new editor are ratified at the LSA business meeting. The past seven years have sped by, and it is hard for me to believe that with my final issue—the December 2008 issue of Language (84.4)—now on its way to the printers and with my final decision letters waiting to be mailed, fully twenty-eight issues of Language have been produced in this office and almost 800 submitted papers have been decided on since that day in early January of 2002 when my office staff and I began to learn about handling submissions and putting together an issue of the journal (the March 2002 issue (Language 78.1) being our guinea pig). At the time we had almost no idea what the overall operation entailed, and while there was a steep learning curve, by the middle of my second year, things were rolling along smoothly and they have continued that way right up to now.

This report is somewhat different from the others I have written. While it does sum up the year's activities, it also takes a long view over the seven years of my editorship, especially with regard to the statistics on submissions and decisions. What follows therefore is the usual overview of some key events, developments, and issues with regard to the journal and the editorship, covering updates from matters raised last year at this time, some special activities during the past year, some ongoing activities that continued, and then a few concerns for the Executive Committee to consider for the future. All of this is then followed by the usual statistics for the past year, along with a statistical recap of my editorship.

1. Updates From Last Year's Concerns

1.1. BOOK NOTICES AND eLanguage

Language 84 (2008) was the first volume in some thirty years without any print book notices, as was signaled in my report last year at this time. Book notices have migrated to eLanguage, and during the past year, after several kinks were worked out regarding how to format the notices and how to work on them, several batches, covering nearly 100 notices in all, have been posted on eLanguage (see http://elanguage.net/blogs/booknotices/archive month.php for the postings).

The technical side of posting these notices is covered, and covered well, by the eLanguage team, while the editorial side has been handled by the editor's office, working with the review editor as well. As may be recalled from last year, our decision was to run the notices through a few (relatively light) levels of editorial control, in order to be sure that they had a uniform and professional look and that there was consistency across all of the posted notices in wording, style, and format. Those that have come out on eLanguage show very nicely the benefits of this editorial care. Still, while it was hoped that the notices could be dealt with fairly quickly, this desired rapid turn-around did not materialize, largely, I would say, because they have always been the last thing on the mind of anyone connected with working on them; with print notices, there were regular deadlines that absolutely demanded our attention, while with electronic book notices, deadlines are far more fluid, and thus, unfortunately, more easily stretched to accommodate other more pressing concerns. See the remarks in §4.1 below for some thoughts on the...