In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Annual Report

Every year the Editor is asked to submit to the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America, at the time of the annual meeting in January, a report on activities, any important developments, and issues pertaining to the running of the journal. My first such ‘State of the Journal’ report, summing up my first year on the job, is printed below in its entirety, with only minor editorial and typographical adjustments and a few corrections, in lieu of my more usual editorial comments in this section of the journal.

Brian D. Joseph
Columbus, Ohio
May 5, 2003

THE EDITOR’S REPORT

For me, the 78th year of Language’s existence has been a memorable one. During this year, the transition from Mark Aronoff’s editorship to my own was managed relatively smoothly, thanks to his staff and to mine; during this year, I accepted my first paper as editor and rejected my first paper; I handled my first crisis and experienced my first delight at a successful resolution; I (inevitably) received my first complaint(s) and (unexpectedly) received my first words of praise (I am hoping for more of the latter and less of the former!). Most importantly, though, to turn to the journal itself, the requisite four issues came out, and delays that the transition occasioned in the normal publication schedule of March, June, September, and December were reduced with each passing issue, from 45 days with the March issue (counting from the end of the designated month to the date of arrival in the Language office, May 15), to 42 days with the June issue, to 29 days with the September issue, and finally to zero with the December issue, which as of this writing is set to be mailed before the end of the month.

The four issues contained 857 pages, with 544 devoted to 17 articles, 94 to 31 Book Reviews, 145 to 194 Book Notices, and 74 to other sorts of material (Discussion Notes: 4 pages for 2 items; Editor’s Department columns: 13 pages for 4 pieces; Editor’s Report: 4 pages; index: 25 pages; letters: 1 page; Obituaries: 10 pages; Publications Received/Recent Publications: 16 pages; slippage: 1 page). These totals are comparable to those of the past eight years (see Mark Aronoff’s Editor’s Report in Language 78.2.394-97 (2002)), though a bit on the low side, where the average volume contained 20 articles that took up on average 564 pages and the average number was 48 for Book Reviews and 178 for Book Notices. These figures suggest that the average length of articles is increasing, as volume 78’s average of 32 pages per article is the second [End Page 449] highest in the past nine years. Whether this is indeed a trend or not remains to be seen, and the import of this figure is not clear to me (are longer articles good, if length means greater thoroughness? Are shorter articles good, if brevity indicates conciseness of expression and greater clarity?).

It was a lively year also in terms of traffic in and out of the office, as measured by the number of papers submitted and the number acted upon—the figures reported here are for January 1, 2002 to October 31, 2002 (taking this as a cut-off date to allow for a reasonable and accurate tally to be made within the reporting deadlines—this will be the cut-off date in future years, so that in subsequent years at this time a full 12 months of ‘business’ will be reported on):

  • • 110 papers submitted since January 1, 2002 (including a few ‘late arrivals’ in 2001 for which my office initiated the review process)

  • • 95 papers acted on since January 1, 2002: 15 accepted; 57 rejected; 23 returned for revisions with an invitation to resubmit.

The number acted on includes several submitted in and carried over from the previous year and, further, of those submitted since January, some are still in the process of being reviewed and decided upon; hence the numbers do not match. Although the meaning of these numbers is perhaps open to interpretation (e.g. do resubmissions count as separate...

pdf

Share