[EDLING:1375] The MLJ Turns 90 in a Digital Age

[Francis M. Hult]

The Modern Language Journal celebrates 90 years with the publication of the 
first issue of 2006

>>From the Editor, Sally Seiloff Magnan


Begun in 1916, The Modern Language Journal enters its 90th year of 
uninterrupted publication with this issue. From a first print issue of 42 
pages, the Journal now averages 164 pages per quarterly issue and is available 
in print and digitally to individuals, libraries, and consortia worldwide. The 
electronic dissemination of the Journal has increased its availability and 
usage under the careful guidance of Blackwell Publishing.

In 2004 the MLJ’s electronic access allowed it to reach over 135,000 scholars 
around the world. Given that the highest previous circulation number of 12,000 
existed at the end of Robert Roeming’s editorship in 1970 (Magnan, 2001, p. 
109), the current distribution of the MLJ is now higher than ever before in 
its 90-year history


The stature of scholarly journals is no longer well characterized by print 
circulation figures, which do not reflect readership accurately in this 
digital age. In addition to data about how often individual articles are 
accessed, some scholars consider citation indexes to estimate a journal’s 
scholarly reach. In the Thomson Journal Citation Reports Social Science 
Edition 2004, the MLJ ranked first in the applied linguistics category in the 
immediacy index (2.348), which considers how quickly articles in a journal are 
cited. Its impact factor was 0.750, which gives the average number of times 
articles published in the MLJ in the past 2 years were cited during 2004. The 
cited half-life was 7.8 years; this figure gives the median age of MLJ 
articles cited in 2004.

In closing, I want to stress that figures such as the ones included in this 
90th birthday summary of the status of the MLJ tell only partial stories and 
can also be misleading. They must be interpreted and used with care. 
Nonetheless, it is fair to say that at age 90, the MLJ is a vibrant journal 
with a far reach and a strong scholarly impact.

I thank Blackwell Publishing for taking the Journal into this new millennium 
and the digital world it represents, and the University of Wisconsin Press, 
the NFMLTA, and the 16 editors before me who shepherded it to the 
international stature it enjoys today. The next decade will take the Journal 
to its 100th birthday by which time electronic publishing and diversity of 
research methodologies can be expected to have enriched our discipline even 
further.

To read this letter from the editor in its entirety, click here:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/modl/90/1.


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