Letters to Language

Language accepts letters from readers that briefly and succinctly respond to or comment upon either material published previously in the journal or issues deemed of importance to the field. The editor reserves the right to edit letters as needed. Brief replies from relevant parties are included as warranted.

Language in the 21st century

November 29, 2005

To the Editor:

Language is a fine journal with an enviable reputation, blessed with a dedicated and energetic editor and board, and I am proud to have published in its exclusive pages. But in some ways it represents an anachronistic approach to publishing, one which seems out of tune with the pace of developments both inside the discipline and more widely in academia. It would seem to be time for a debate about whether the journal should come into the 21st century.

Current trends are for journals to reflect the vibrancy of their fields, the increasing bodies of accessible data, the growing diversity of professional associations, and the rapidity of scientific developments. Compare, for example, the American Psychology Association (with 49 journals), or the American Anthropological Association (with 24 journals), publishing thousands of articles a year with online supporting data, and serving their (admittedly larger) memberships with highly ranked outlets for a large portion of their work.

In contrast, Language publishes only about 20 articles a year, restricts concurrent multiple submissions by the same authors, has no online supporting data, and spends many of its precious pages on book notices and reviews. Its very thorough but cumbersome editorial process averages some 6 months—and in some instances can take several months longer—to recommend acceptance or (inevitably, in most cases, of course) rejection. This policy has the following consequences:

(a) The low number of articles means that very few scholars get a chance to publish in Language, and they will tend to be the well-established authors rather than the youthful talent with really new ideas.

(b) The policy (see http://www.lsadc.org/info/pubs-lang-notes.cfm) that authors may not submit while they have another paper anywhere in the pipeline, while intended to spread the honors, can do a real disservice to a dynamic field (especially as multiple authorship is increasingly the rule): Language should publish the best, without constraints.

(c) The slow response time makes it a high-risk strategy for younger scholars, with a need for publications, to submit to Language.

(d) The lack of online supporting material makes papers longer than necessary, but, despite that, not open to easy reanalysis of data; in general, it undermines the scientific status of the discipline (or at least, of its flagship journal).

(e) In the context of the constraints on papers, the amount of space spent on book notices and reviews is indefensible; this kind of information used to be essential, but is now at everyone’s fingertips through Google, LinguistList, or the like. (Review articles are another matter, of course.)

The end result is that the field, through its flagship publication, presents itself as a traditional humanities discipline, where exclusive publication privileges are handed out in rationed portions, where established scholarship is more valuable than brave new discoveries, where internal insight is more valuable than reanalyzable data, and where the modern affordances of online publishing are hardly activated. Every discipline is, whether we like it or not, in competition with its neighbors—for students, academic positions, research grants, and for public interest and awareness. At the moment, we are not in the race at all—we’ve hobbled our best horse.

The only plausible defense of the present policy is that it is better, in an age of information overflow, to have 20 pearls of wisdom per annum than 100 different papers. But having been shown by colleagues quite a few excellent papers that have been rejected by Language, I have not the slightest doubt that the door could not be opened a lot wider while still maintaining the very highest quality. Meanwhile, by excluding these papers from Language, the publication of the world’s premier linguistic association, we are putting them into the domain of commercial publishing, where the profession...