Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission includes an abstract, a list of keywords, and a list of references used in the text.
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, DOIs for the references have been provided.
  • The text layout is reasonably legible.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • No information identifying the author(s)—including self-citations, first-person references, headers with names, acknowledgements, etc.—remains in the text if submitted for blind review (when necessary, these references can be restored at the copy-editing stage).

Author Guidelines

Language Under Discussion is committed to promoting discussion on language between scholars from different disciplines and theoretical backgrounds. This means our style requirements are, at the same time, both pluralistic and demanding.

Insofar as formatting citations and other technical aspects of style are concerned, LUD will publish papers in any consistent style (we recommend using one of the major standards, such as the APA style, the MLA style, the Chicago Manual of Style, as appropriate within your discipline). A list of references must appear at the end of each paper. In this list, all items that have a DOI identifier should have that identifier listed. An abstract (preferably 75–150 words long) and a list of no more than ten keywords are required for all submissions, including discussion notes and replies to discussion notes. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain and present permissions for reproducing copyrighted materials in the paper, if any.

But style is not confined to the list of references. A multidisciplinary academic readership requires from authors a combination of lucidity and accessibility with scholarly rigor. In this respect, LUD insists that any text finally accepted for publication conforms to the highest standards.

In particular, we expect authors to state their argument clearly and be explicit about their assumptions, their conclusions, and the implications of their work for our understanding of language. Write in a way that would explain your ideas, not hide them, and provoke your readers to respond.

Please remember that your paper’s readers come from different disciplines. This means you should explicitly state, and if necessary, explain, the theoretical framework (or frameworks) within which you are working. Assuming everybody knows does not work. Also, please avoid using jargon and keep the use of abbreviations and acronyms only for those rare occasions on which it would improve the readability of your text. Remember that the same term or abbreviation often has conflicting uses in different disciplines and fields and remember to define key terms according to the ways in which you use them.

Finally, please bear in mind that language is a complex object of study and that there are many valid perspectives from which it can be examined. If your opponent in a discussion does not share some of your assumptions or preoccupations, that does not mean s/he is stupid or vicious. And while LUD is meant to be a forum for heated scholarly debate, please do not let your view of your opponent’s claims cross the line and turn into an attack on your opponent’s person. That said, do feel free to use humor and other rhetorical devices in your writing. An engaging and lively style of writing is always welcome on the (web) pages of Language Under Discussion.

Copyright: As a matter of general policy, authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Focus Article

A focus article should present a well-argued and original thesis furthering our understanding of language and/or challenging widely-held beliefs about it. Each focus article finally accepted for publication will be published online as a new issue of the journal. Each issue will remain open for a period of one year, in which discussion notes responding to the focus article will be added to it. The author(s) of the focus article will be welcome to write a response to the arguments raised in the discussion notes, after which the issue will be closed. A focus article may be of any reasonable length. All focus articles undergo rigorous peer-review prior to publication.

Round-Table Discussion

Roundtable issues consist of a group of articles in which several authors jointly debate and discuss a topic of importance for the study of language. The precise format of discussion and the length of individual contributions to it are flexible. Each proposed roundtable issue will be first reviewed by the editors for the general quality of its contribution and then each article making up the round-table discussion evaluated by external peer reviewers for the soundness of the arguments raised. Once published, each roundtable issue will remain open for one year to additional contributions in the form of discussion notes, weighing in on the subject under discussion.

Discussion Notes

Discussion notes are shorter papers offering an argued response to a focus article (or to portions of the contents of a roundtable issue). Discussion notes may agree, partly agree, or disagree with the focus article (and possibly also with other discussion notes in the issue), but should always add something to the perspective presented in it. Discussion notes undergo peer review to determine the basic soundness of the argument. We consider discussion notes to be a form of post-publication peer review for the focus article they respond to (coming on top of the pre-publication peer review). However, each discussion note is also a publication in its own right.

Response to Discussion Notes

Before an issue is closed, the author(s) of the focus article or round-table discussion articles are invited to publish their responses to the points made in the discussion.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. If the submission is accepted and published, the article will include a contact e-mail address for each of the authors.