- The Executive Committee of the LSA will be holding its Spring meeting on 9-10 May, 2008, in Washington, DC. For further information, contact Katha Kissman.
- Nominations for the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award are due 1 June, 2008.
- Nominations for the LSA's "Linguistics, Language and the Public" Award will be accepted until 1 June, 2008.
eLanguage: A Linguistic Agora*
15 September 2006
Stephen R. Anderson
Yale University
Dieter Stein
Heinrich-Heine-Universität
Düsseldorf, Germany
*In the sense of ágora 'a public open space used for assemblies and markets', from Greek, not agóra or àgorá, 'small change', from Hebrew.
Current web-based technology offers the possibility of addressing some of the problems of standard print journals while serving the broad range of interests represented by the members of the LSA and offering them a product of value. To satisfy these goals, however, an electronic journal has to go beyond simply reproducing the structure of standard journals in a new medium, the conception underlying at least some of the e-journals that have been introduced in recent years.
Traditional journals must achieve their goals within a fixed number of pages, with a single structure and a uniform set of policies for content and editorial review. The more diverse the community such a journal attempts to serve, however, the more difficult it is to fit all of its heterogeneous parts into such a single framework and the pages available. As a result, journals aspiring to general coverage (such as Language, Journal of Linguistics, etc.) are forced to make compromises and impose limitations for the sake of overall breadth, with the result that many scholars lose the sense that these publications are adequately responsive to their specific interests. Apart from fast publication and truly global reach, electronic media are not subject to the same limitations imposed by scope and cost, however, and it is possible to envision a single "journal" that in fact responds in individually appropriate ways to different segments of its potential readership.
Freedom from the printed page can mean more than this, of course. An electronic journal can incorporate sound and video files as well as additional multi-media content into published work. It can also offer the possibility of direct links to extensive files of background material that would be quite impossible to publish in the format of a traditional print journal (an extensive collection of comparison sets in support of a single assertion of relatedness in a historical article, for example).
For the LSA's electronic journal eLanguage, we envision an organization providing some central content of a general nature, and a common overall organization, while allowing individual "co-journals" within this framework a maximum of flexibility in addressing issues of intellectual content. The central structure will be based on a unitary main page presented to the reader, from which a variety of content can be accessed. Some of this will be material of general interest to members of the Society (and others), and as such would be under the control of the journal's core editorial administration. The more specialized material constituting the intellectual core, however, would be provided by separate editorial groups each handling in a largely autonomous fashion submissions and publication for a co-journal under their supervision.
The availability of the central support structure will make it quite easy for a group of scholars to organize their own co-journal within this overall framework. As a primary benefit of this, if a diverse enough collection of such co-journals can be encouraged, the overall product will come closer to serving the various sub-communities of our field in ways that all will find congenial.
The need for Language to serve the entire membership of the LSA has had the unfortunate result, over time, that some parts of the field have developed a sense that the journal (and by extension, the Society) is insufficiently responsive (perhaps even hostile) to their interests and concerns. The more flexible structure proposed here should allow any of these groups to feel fully enfranchised, without requiring trade-offs that would make others feel less so.
1. Editorial Organization
The journal will have an overall Editorial Board, headed by an Editor-in-Chief (initially, Dieter Stein of Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf) to supervise its overall structure and operation. This board will not be involved directly in the editorial process for the associated co-journals; its function is rather to (a) formulate standards for co-journals; (b) consider proposals for new co-journals, making recommendations for changes in their proposed procedures so as to conform to the overall standards of eLanguage, and accepting or rejecting particular proposals (with a view to the overall balance of the journal as well as the merits of particular proposals); and (c) to provide general oversight of the constituent co-journals, making recommendations to their individual editorial staffs when necessary. The Editorial Board would accept proposals on the basis of their potential to complement other existing components of the journal, and could actively solicit proposals to cover areas of interest to substantial constituencies within the society.
Membership on the Editorial Board will be on the basis of recommendations by the Editor-in-Chief with the approval of the LSA Executive Committee. In addition to the Editorial Board, the principal editors of all operating co-journals will serve as an Advisory Board. Their advice and approval will be sought as appropriate by the Editor-in-chief on issues affecting the co-journals, such as proposed changes to the journal's style sheet or operating procedures, etc.
The Editor-in-Chief will have primary responsibility for overseeing the areas of content provided on the Main Page of eLanguage, consulting with the Editorial Board and the Advisory Editorial Board as appropriate. The Editor-in-Chief will serve for an initial seven year term, renewable in five year increments in consultation with the Executive Committee. In the event of the journal's editorial functions being transferred from their initial location in Düsseldorf, a number of the provisions of the current plan will require changes, and it is hoped that planning can be initiated at least two years in advance of any such change, on the basis of a review of the journal's operation.
2. Co-Journals
Any LSA member or group headed by at least one member wishing to establish a co-journal within eLanguage will provide the Editorial Board with a proposal outlining the general area of coverage intended, an editorial structure, and a description of procedures to be followed for the solicitation, evaluation and processing of material for publication. The proposed structure must meet certain basic needs, assuring both speedy publication of material submitted and credible standards of review. Normally, at least one author of any item submitted for publication in any part of eLanguage will be required to be a member of the LSA.
Co-journal proposers are encouraged to address the ways in which their potential component of eLanguage takes advantage of the potential of online electronic publication, and serves a significant community within the field of Linguistics. The description of procedures should address the nature of the review process, frequency of publication (e.g., articles published as they become available, with post hoc aggregation into an "issue" or "volume" periodically or when a certain quantity are available), special features of content that might have implications for style sheet matters, etc. Beyond such broad considerations, prospective editors would be free to set their own standards and procedures. Editors will, however, be encouraged to adopt standards that utilize the electronic medium efficiently, rather than simply reproducing the style of presentation of a traditional paper-based journal.
Constituent co-journals operating within this framework will have a high degree of autonomy, including at least an independent editorial board and their own independent policies regarding content, length and scope of contributions, manner of review, frequency of publication, etc. Currently available material within the co-journals will be "advertised" in the form of titles linked to abstracts, available freely to anyone through the Main Page. We anticipate that it will also be possible to offer information about newly available articles through RSS feeds (either for eLanguage as a whole or for specific co-journals).
To ensure as broad coverage of the field as possible, the Editorial Board may be actively involved in soliciting co-journal proposals. It is quite impossible to predict in advance just how this intellectual landscape will be organized, but a virtue of the approach is that it would make it relatively easy for that organization to shift rapidly in response to changing interests within the field as a whole.
Because e-journals are a new phenomenon, and publication in them has not yet come to be widely accepted as comparable in status to publication in traditional printed journals, it is important to maintain a very high standard for eLanguage from the beginning. This means that co-journals must ensure a reviewing process which, while expeditious, does not compromise the general standards of peer review. It also means that some co-journal proposals which, while interesting and potentially quite useful, do not seem likely to produce content of an appropriate quality may have to be deferred until a point at which the journal has become established.
3. The Central Structure
The common central structure of eLanguage will be based on a set of standards for form intended to promote coherence among its component parts. This central structure will also provide a number of basic technical and support functions so that co-journal organizers can focus on content rather than on infrastructure. Among these are the following:
- A central server on which all component co-journals can be hosted (also allowing for the possibility that some of these might be hosted on separately maintained servers provided by a co-journal's organizers);
- Standard software supporting the entire editorial process based on the Open Journal System from the Public Knowledge Project at Simon Fraser University (cf. http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs);
- A standardized style sheet, based on the style sheet for Language and incorporating proposals for a unified Linguistics style sheet currently being developed by a working group of journal editors;
- Overall supervision with an eye to maintaining standards and balance, including solicitation and approval of co-journal proposals;
- A centralized process for indexing and archiving content, and for providing a suitable print version for libraries where required.
Content of general interest to be provided through the central structure of the journal will include a number of departments, such as the following:
- Book Notices, provided by the Book Review editor of Language.
- Op-ed page;
- Letters to the Editor and other commentary on current issues and controversies in the field, possibly including an interactive "focus debate" on some issue of current interest;
- "The Grapevine" (a summary of news about career movements in the field and major news about Departments of Linguistics, limited to recording established facts and avoiding mere gossip or speculation);
Stylistic matters, subject to the structure imposed by the overall style sheet together with guidance intended to ensure a reasonably uniform format for visual presentation, will be the responsibility of co-journal editors. They will be urged, however, to favor a style and organization that is appropriate for online viewing. That is, articles should not simply adopt the standard scientific style appropriate to print journals intended for viewing on paper, but try to present material concisely and in a format adapted to the reading process on screen. This should lead to a somewhat different structuring of content from that in standard scientific writing for print, utilizing different ways to build text coherence and ample linking, both internal and external to the document itself. Footnotes and (where possible) references should be linkable. Use should be made where appropriate of supplementary files stored and accessed separately, such as sound files, language data and corpora, etc.
The Main Page of eLanguage (http://www.elanguage.net) will be the central portal connecting all co-journals, openly accessible on the web. Titles of newly published articles will be aggregated on this page, providing a comprehensive table of contents for readers and facilitating further syndication of the published articles. Individual co-journals will each have some space on this page, from which a link to the main page of that co-journal will be available, as well as a list of currently available articles (linked to abstracts).
Access to eLanguage will be freely available on the web, although those who wish to submit items for publication will normally be required to be LSA members. Those who find this requirement a barrier to access by virtue of currency restrictions or other financial difficulties may apply to the Members Assistance Fund of the LSA to have their membership subsidized from this fund.
4. Technical Underpinning
An electronic journal structure of the sort we plan requires resources of many kinds. It is important that the staff providing its underpinnings be as conversant as possible with the sorts of issue that arise in the new field of electronic publication, and that they be prepared to respond quickly and intelligently to the novel problems of organization that are sure to arise. We are confident that the structure proposed here meets these requirements as comprehensively as possible. The responsibilities that will be undertaken by various institutions and the background of the participants in similar projects are sketched below.
4.1 Support and Experience
This project will be realized through a collaboration between the LSA and a group of university organizations centering on the Heinrich-Heine Universität in Düsseldorf.
Editorial work will be based at the Heinrich-Heine University: the departments of English, in particular the chair of English Language, the Department of Linguistics, the Philosophische Fakultät, the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf (The University and State Library or "ULB", http://www.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/home) and the University itself at the level of the Rektorat ("Presidency"), as well as the Ministry for Science and Innovation of the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen will provide the backbone of the necessary infrastructure and resources for the central editorial function. In addition, the project is supported by the "Hochschulbibliothekszentrum" at Cologne (cf. section 4.4 below).
4.2 Publishing Infrastructure
The Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs), a highly successful and widely adopted content management system developed specifically for publishing electronic journals, will serve as the basis for maintaining eLanguage and its constituent co-journals. OJS is open-source software and provides a degree of flexibility, robustness and ease of use that makes it an excellent platform for speedy and simple online publication. In addition, OJS has built-in functions which can be easily integrated into the editorial work process, such as blind-review management, journal layout tools, and management of user roles. OJS is normally used to publish open access journals, without restriction on who can retrieve published content.
Copyright to material published in eLanguage (including any of its co-journals) will remain with the author(s). The author(s) will, however, be expected to agree in advance of publication to withhold such material from publication elsewhere (except for posting on author's websites) for a period of one year.
4.3 Technical Journal Management
The editors of all member co-journals can choose among three different options for managing their publications. They may either
- submit articles which have been fully reviewed, copy-edited and approved by the editors to the operational staff in Düsseldorf for publication; or
- use the interface provided by the OJS to process the article themselves and then publish it autonomously; or
- both host and operate their own installation of the OJS, using only the aggregation and hosting functions provided by elanguage.net.
These different options are meant to accommodate different types of editor with varying degrees of interest and experience in the technicalities of electronic publishing. Both those who wish to focus purely on the journal content and leave the technical issues to the operational staff, and those who seek to be as independent as possible and to control their operation at lower levels can operate within the proposed framework.
4.4 Hosting, Syndication and Storage
The University and State Library of Düsseldorf ("ULB") will operate the database and web servers on which both the member co-journals and elanguage.net will be hosted. Adjacent services such as indexing and syndication of articles in catalogs and databases, and detailed usage statistics of journal web sites, will also be provided by the ULB. Since Düsseldorf cataloging data is automatically integrated into the Nordrhein-Westfalen Union catalog, which is a part of the German national network of union catalogs, a very high level of basic bibliographic availability will be achieved for articles in all member co-journals. Furthermore, all articles will be indexed according to the thesaurus used by the leading German bibliography for linguistic studies, the Bibliography of Linguistic Literature Database ("BLLD"), a product of Frankfurt University Library. Thus, all papers will be included in the BLLD and other important linguistic bibliographies such as Linguistics Abstracts ("LABS") and the Bibliographie linguistique online ("BLO"). The Hochschulbibliothekszentrum (University Library Center, http://www.hbz-nrw.de) in Cologne will further support the project with long-term storage facilities. This institution, with which the Düsseldorf group has collaborated for some time, hosts several e-journals and has comprehensive experience in all aspects of electronic publishing (see http://www.dipp.nrw.de/service/spektrum for further details). Its DiPP platform is a public, not-for-profit service provider. DiPP does not act as a publisher, in that it does not claim any rights for a journal title, its publications, the usage data and metadata, a URL or other conceivable forms for information subject to copyright.
The Department of Electronic Publishing at Düsseldorf has been hosting Düsseldorf University academic publications for the past several years and is aiming to broaden its service for the academic community by transforming itself into a proper university press with the appropriate advisory infrastructure and support for editing and publishing. In addition, the library will provide support with regard to marketing within the German library and information science community, and help with evaluating the impact and acceptance of the new e-journal. In addition to providing journal management support as outlined above, the operational staff in Düsseldorf will also work to promote elanguage.net (and consequently, the constituent co-journals) in search engines and other online sources and seek to facilitate communication among all participants.
All levels of operation are already profiting from well established cooperative activity within the Düsseldorf/Cologne community in several areas of scientific publishing, especially in the area of e-publishing.
As an alternative to the traditional structure of print journals, this approach appears to hold considerable promise. It also offers an opportunity to utilize the flexibility of online publication to serve a community as diverse as the membership of the LSA in ways that respond to all of its parts without sacrificing detailed coverage on the altar of breadth and balance. We hope that the LSA Executive Committee will agree, and authorize the initiation of this project as soon as possible.
Call for Co-Journal Proposals
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