From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Thu Apr 1 07:18:42 2010 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:18:42 +0200 Subject: peer review: selecting and helping vs. shaping In-Reply-To: <6EBD0725-4878-4C7C-8038-CD96F3896C77@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: I agree that "most editors and referees are competent and reasonable", but I am suggesting that the system can be improved. In particular, I think that "revise and resubmit" isn't very helpful, and I suspect that it is often used when an editor is undecided, not only when an editor is convinced that the paper can and should be improved along the lines proposed by the reviewers. Let's assume the following figures for an average linguistics journal (if they are way off, forget the rest of the message): 20%: "accepted (with recommended improvements)" 50%: "revise and resubmit (R&R)" 30%: "rejected" Now of those 50% with an R&R decision, let's assume that about two thirds are resubmitted, and that most of these are eventually accepted, i.e. 15%: not resubmitted 30%: accepted after rewriting 5%: rejected even after resubmission (This would thus lead to a final acceptance rate of 50% (20% immediately, 30% after rewriting), and an effective rejection rate of 50%.) Now compare this with a new system without R&R, where 50% are accepted with recommended improvements, and 50% are rejected without invitation to resubmit. It seems to me that everyone is better off in the new system: -- especially the 5% rejected even after rewriting -- also the 15% who don't resubmit, because many of the authors will spend a lot of time considering the option of resubmitting to the same journal or trying a different journal -- and also the 30% accepted after rewriting, because their papers come out with a considerable delay (often a year or more), and they come out with features that the authors aren't really happy with -- the editors and reviewers, because they have less work -- the field as a whole, because journal papers appear more quickly The only advantage of R&R that I can see is that most of the 30% of articles that are accepted after rewriting will be more to the reviewers' liking. But is that an advantage for science? Two or three individuals can never be representative of the field as a whole. I think that peer reviewers have very different roles from professors guiding immature students. They can suggest improvements and different directions to their colleagues, but it should not be their role to guide them. Martin Daniel L. Everett schrieb: > I agree, Lise. I am still not quite understanding the problem with 'revise and resubmit'. Seems like a perfectly sensible recommendation. > > I have occasionally decided to submit papers elsewhere because I disagreed with the recommendations of the reviewers. There are plenty of journals, after all (though this doesn't completely rule out the possibility that the same reviewer might get the same ms in succession from more than one journal). > > And on at least two occasions that I can remember, an article of mine that received a very negative review was nevertheless still published in the journal - without revision - (in one case in the most competitive theoretical journal at that time) because the editor thought that the referee had blown it. The editor said explicitly that he was setting aside the referee report (the paper fell within his area of expertise). > > My own impression is that most editors and referees are competent and reasonable and that the process still works well. > > But I also think that there are times when self-publishing can make more sense. Rarely. But not never. > > What am I missing, Martin? > > Dan > > > > On Mar 31, 2010, at 2:42 PM, Lise Menn wrote: > > >> I'm not sure about that, Martin. The author always has the option of seeking another journal if s/he gets a 'revise/resubmit'. I've been on both sides of that recommendation, and in all of my cases, the problem was not a matter of the theory, but of how much a single paper could accomplish and/or of needing restructuring in order to make a coherent argument. >> Lise >> >> On Mar 31, 2010, at 3:32 AM, Martin Haspelmath wrote: >> >> >>> Yes, peer review often has the effect of improving a paper, but in my experience, it is equally often the case that a paper changes in the direction desired by the reviewers, without really getting better. The author wants to publish the paper in the journal, so she goes out of her way to please the reviewers. >>> >>> I think this latter outcome, which is really unfortunate, could be avoided by giving authors just one of two decisions: "accept with recommended revisions" or "reject". >>> >>> If the paper is accepted with recommended revisions, the author can then make use of those suggestions from the reviewers that he finds helpful, while ignoring those that would lead into directions he doesn't want to take. >>> >>> So if we eliminate "revise and resubmit", we would retain the positive effects of peer review, while getting rid of the negative effects that arise from reviewers who feel they want to shape a paper. The task of reviewers should be to help authors improve the paper, and to advise the editor on which papers to select for publication. Their task should not be to shape the paper. >>> >>> Martin Haspelmath >>> >>> >>> > > From yutamb at mail.ru Thu Apr 1 09:10:41 2010 From: yutamb at mail.ru (Yuri Tambovtsev) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 16:10:41 +0700 Subject: I started this discussion on Peer Reviewing Message-ID: Dear Funknet colleagues, I started this discussion on Peer Reviewing and I am quite happy about it. It looks that it is a burning question in linguistics. I agree with those who say that Peer Reviewing results are not satisfactory. It usually forces the author to go along the way he does not like even if the article is published with changes. Peer Reviewing makes the article more primitive and common. One should remove all innovations and new theories. It makes the article more common and not so interesting. It also makes the waiting process too long while our life is so short= Can we afford it? I feel it is a waiste of time of your life. Recently I received two reviews from Linguistica Uralica. The first reviewer wrote that that article has too much new original information and therefore the readers shall not understand it. The other reviewer wrote that there was no new information and therefore it shall not be interesting for the readers. I wonder if the editor read these two contradictory statements before sending them to me? The edotors of the great linguistics journal LANGUAGE usually answered me that my articles are not in the scope of their journal as if I wrote my articles not about languages but about how to collect potatoes in the fields. It was always so. I think they had too many areticles to get published. So they had to reject 90% articles any way. Surely, I published my articles which were rejected in other journals. I am sure the peer reviewing process must be reconsidered. The reviewers must answer for what they wrote. The only way is to open the names of the reviewers. Why should I hide my name if I gave a negative review? If I think the article is bad, then I must say it openly. Otherwise, it is not logical. Otherwise, all the speakers at conferences should also cover their faces if they want to criticize other linguists. Now that the reviewers know that their names are under cover , they write what their LEFT LEG wants. They do not answer for what they write. In courts all judges and lawyers who want to condem a criminal must also cover their faces. But they do not do it. They have great risks, but still they do not hide their names, they sign the papers with their true names. Why should the reviewer cover their names? If they really believe in what they write, they should openly say so. So, I wonder if the general linguistic public support my preposal not to let the reviewers hide their names. Looking forward to hearing from you soon to yutamb at mail.ru Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev From lachlan_mackenzie at hotmail.com Thu Apr 1 11:18:21 2010 From: lachlan_mackenzie at hotmail.com (Lachlan Mackenzie) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:18:21 +0100 Subject: Peer reviewing Message-ID: Dear all, As one of the general editors of Functions of Language, my sense is that the discussion is lacking in realism. Peer reviewers are, to me, the salt of the earth, hard-pressed academics who are prepared to give up some of their precious time to perform an act of charity, a close study of an anonymous manuscript by a perfect stranger and to deliver detailed comments. In my experience, the comments that are given are overwhelmingly fair and constructive and are an essential element in the process of helping authors develop from their first submission through to the final, publishable version. Very few articles are publishable in their original form (10% at most), and the great majority of authors are genuinely grateful for the feedback they receive. This applies to both the “revise and resubmit” (about 40%) and the “reject” categories (about 50%). The essential point is the role of the general editors. They are ultimately responsible for the quality of the material that appears in their journal and for the quality of the process between submission and publication/rejection. General editors should therefore not simply farm out the responsibility for the fate of an article to the peer reviewers. They should be familiar with and have formed a preliminary judgement on each article submitted so that they are in a position to advise the author on the status of the recommendations of the reviewers. General editors should also be prepared to negotiate with the author about how the revision should be carried out: slavish implementation of reviewers' recommendations is not the goal, and reviewers will understand that too. What we want to achieve (and generally do) is a published article that is satisfactory to the author and to the general editors, and in which the reviewers can trace the impact of their suggestions for improvement; I reject the suggestion that the result is some kind of insipid compromise. Needless to day, good journal management means that every effort is made to keep the process, for all its valuable complexity, as quick as possible. As for anonymity (double-blind reviewing), I believe that anything that will help persuade highly qualified colleagues to do a review is welcome. There are other and better ways for linguists to criticize each other (for example in peer-reviewed articles!). Lachlan Prof. J. Lachlan Mackenzie Researcher at ILTEC -- Honorary Professor at VU University -- Editor of Functions of Language -- Research Manager of SCIMITAR ILTEC has a new address:Avenida Elias Garcia 147 - 5 dto1050-099 LisboaPortugal Visit my website! From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Apr 1 12:08:15 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:08:15 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Lachlan, Martin, and all, One of the best published pieces I know of on journals, their shortcomings, and what is still right about the process is an old NLLT Topic-Comment piece written by the master of irony and witty prose, Geoff Pullum. The article is: Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1984) Stalking the perfect journal. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2, 261-267. (TOPIC...COMMENT series.) In fact, while on the subtopic of GK Pullum, visit his website to see a list of his 250 publications, most of them in top journals: http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/pubs.html This just shows that the referee process need not overly slow one's academic output. OK. The last two lines were unnecessary. But I couldn't resist. Dan On 1 Apr 2010, at 07:18, Lachlan Mackenzie wrote: > > Dear all, > As one of the general editors of Functions of Language, my sense is that the discussion is lacking in realism. Peer reviewers are, to me, the salt of the earth, hard-pressed academics who are prepared to give up some of their precious time to perform an act of charity, a close study of an anonymous manuscript by a perfect stranger and to deliver detailed comments. In my experience, the comments that are given are overwhelmingly fair and constructive and are an essential element in the process of helping authors develop from their first submission through to the final, publishable version. Very few articles are publishable in their original form (10% at most), and the great majority of authors are genuinely grateful for the feedback they receive. This applies to both the “revise and resubmit” (about 40%) and the “reject” categories (about 50%). > The essential point is the role of the general editors. They are ultimately responsible for the quality of the material that appears in their journal and for the quality of the process between submission and publication/rejection. General editors should therefore not simply farm out the responsibility for the fate of an article to the peer reviewers. They should be familiar with and have formed a preliminary judgement on each article submitted so that they are in a position to advise the author on the status of the recommendations of the reviewers. General editors should also be prepared to negotiate with the author about how the revision should be carried out: slavish implementation of reviewers' recommendations is not the goal, and reviewers will understand that too. What we want to achieve (and generally do) is a published article that is satisfactory to the author and to the general editors, and in which the reviewers can trace the impact of their suggestions for improvement; I reject the suggestion that the result is some kind of insipid compromise. Needless to day, good journal management means that every effort is made to keep the process, for all its valuable complexity, as quick as possible. > As for anonymity (double-blind reviewing), I believe that anything that will help persuade highly qualified colleagues to do a review is welcome. There are other and better ways for linguists to criticize each other (for example in peer-reviewed articles!). > Lachlan > > > Prof. J. Lachlan Mackenzie > > > Researcher at ILTEC -- Honorary Professor at VU University -- Editor of Functions of Language -- Research Manager of SCIMITAR > ILTEC has a new address:Avenida Elias Garcia 147 - 5 dto1050-099 LisboaPortugal > Visit my website! From wcroft at unm.edu Thu Apr 1 14:42:21 2010 From: wcroft at unm.edu (Bill Croft) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:42:21 -0600 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear all, I endorse Lachlan's view about the role of the referee. I have not had the experience that Martin apparently has of being told to revise a paper in a direction I didn't want to take it. (Maybe it's because I submit to different journals.) As Dan said, even negative criticisms improve the manuscript in the end. And the author can always explain to the editor why certain recommendations were not followed - I have not had an editor challenge me in those circumstances. On the other hand, as a referee for many journals, there is value for "revise and resubmit". I have very rarely seen a manuscript that can be accepted in its original form (and editors have taken the same view of my own submissions as well). One should not recommend "revise and resubmit" unless one really thinks the paper could be accepted upon reasonable revision (if radical revision is believed necessary, then "reject" is a better recommendation - resubmission would really be a new submission). But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. But I do not know in advance which author will take the recommendations seriously and which will not. Bill >Dear all, >As one of the general editors of Functions of Language, my sense is >that the discussion is lacking in realism. Peer reviewers are, to >me, the salt of the earth, hard-pressed academics who are prepared >to give up some of their precious time to perform an act of charity, >a close study of an anonymous manuscript by a perfect stranger and >to deliver detailed comments. In my experience, the comments that >are given are overwhelmingly fair and constructive and are an >essential element in the process of helping authors develop from >their first submission through to the final, publishable version. >Very few articles are publishable in their original form (10% at >most), and the great majority of authors are genuinely grateful for >the feedback they receive. This applies to both the "revise and >resubmit" (about 40%) and the "reject" categories (about 50%). >The essential point is the role of the general editors. They are >ultimately responsible for the quality of the material that appears >in their journal and for the quality of the process between >submission and publication/rejection. General editors should >therefore not simply farm out the responsibility for the fate of an >article to the peer reviewers. They should be familiar with and have >formed a preliminary judgement on each article submitted so that >they are in a position to advise the author on the status of the >recommendations of the reviewers. General editors should also be >prepared to negotiate with the author about how the revision should >be carried out: slavish implementation of reviewers' recommendations >is not the goal, and reviewers will understand that too. What we >want to achieve (and generally do) is a published article that is >satisfactory to the author and to the general editors, and in which >the reviewers can trace the impact of their suggestions for >improvement; I reject the suggestion that the result is some kind of >insipid compromise. Needless to day, good journal management means >that every effort is made to keep the process, for all its valuable >complexity, as quick as possible. >As for anonymity (double-blind reviewing), I believe that anything >that will help persuade highly qualified colleagues to do a review >is welcome. There are other and better ways for linguists to >criticize each other (for example in peer-reviewed articles!). >Lachlan > > >Prof. J. Lachlan Mackenzie > > >Researcher at ILTEC -- Honorary Professor at VU University -- Editor >of Functions of Language -- Research Manager of SCIMITAR >ILTEC has a new address:Avenida Elias Garcia 147 - 5 dto1050-099 >LisboaPortugal >Visit my website! From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Thu Apr 1 15:00:14 2010 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 17:00:14 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bill Croft wrote: > But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know > how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not > infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant > problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the > original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my > precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my view. In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the author. But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different journal? So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make everybody's lives easier. Martin From wcroft at unm.edu Thu Apr 1 15:21:40 2010 From: wcroft at unm.edu (Bill Croft) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:21:40 -0600 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4B4FE.5030208@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. Bill >Bill Croft wrote: >>But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't >>know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not >>infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant >>problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the >>original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted >>my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend >>rejection. >What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, >in my view. > >In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the >reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often >the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more >knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less >about the paper's topic than the author. > >But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not >is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely >tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at >a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy >with, or try a different journal? > >So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would >make everybody's lives easier. > >Martin From wilcox at unm.edu Thu Apr 1 15:28:12 2010 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:28:12 -0600 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <12228_1270135313_4BB4BA11_12228_23_1_a06240803c7da680bd84d@[71.228.126.8]> Message-ID: I'm with Bill on this one. I feel that most of the revisions suggested to me by reviewers have improved my papers. For those that were off-base, or that I felt I didn't want to implement, I've always found that when I explain my reasons to the editor, they have been accepted (i.e., I didn't make the changes, and that was accepted by the editor). But as Bill says, maybe this is a reflection of which journals I submit to. -- Sherman Wilcox On 4/1/10 9:21 AM, Bill Croft wrote: > I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in > effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are > always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, > as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers > are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after > "revise and resubmit". > > But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see > the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them > on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the > weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' > perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing > "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors > nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he > revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as > well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. > > Bill > > >> Bill Croft wrote: >>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't >>> know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not >>> infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant >>> problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the >>> original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my >>> precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, >> in my view. >> >> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >> adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the >> reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often >> the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more >> knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less >> about the paper's topic than the author. >> >> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not >> is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely >> tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at >> a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, >> or try a different journal? >> >> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would >> make everybody's lives easier. >> >> Martin From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Apr 1 15:33:27 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:33:27 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I completely agree with Bill here. And as I said earlier, I have editors take their role seriously and not merely pass along referee reports. Having reviewed many articles and book ms over the years, I can say that there are always (!) places that the article needs to be *improved*, not merely changed. More than that, in most cases in my experience, including my own submitted pieces, the author almost always needs help, whether famous or beginning. If two people read your point and don't get it, then *you*, not they, are at fault. And that doesn't even include points about style and clarity of writing. Science writing is by and large clunky and in need of some aesthetic improvement as well as more substantive advice on content. Another example I like to give students is this. Back when I was a beginning graduate student in Brazil, I submitted articles to a couple of journals. Both editors, Dell Hymes and David Rood, wrote back polite messages that insinuated that I either wrote terribly or had little to say. The accompanying referee reports made these points even more forcefully. David (then editor of IJAL) said in his letter that I clearly wasn't very good at writing, but that he was willing to help. And he did. And a few years later, I was on the Editorial Board of IJAL. I learned a lot about writing from referees. I learned a lot about linguistics from them. And about my own shortcomings. These are lessons everybody needs and it is wrong to communicate in any way to students that their professors somehow just started generating major articles one day and that when referees disagree, the author is probably right. It is not a matter of the referees being better linguists or writers. It is a matter of their expertise coupled with their viewing of the ms as a stand-alone object, without access to the author's implicit information about what he/she intended to say or knows about the subject that they didn't say. I also tell students that they should get used to taking exams if they want to be academics because every journal submission entails a thorough examination by one's peers. Dan On 1 Apr 2010, at 11:21, Bill Croft wrote: > I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". > > But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. > > Bill > > >> Bill Croft wrote: >>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my view. >> >> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the author. >> >> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different journal? >> >> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make everybody's lives easier. >> >> Martin > From autotype at uni-leipzig.de Thu Apr 1 15:39:11 2010 From: autotype at uni-leipzig.de (Balthasar Bickel) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 17:39:11 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I fully agree with what Lachlan and Bill have said. The task of editors or editorial board members is precisely to evaluate both the paper *and* the reviews and to communicate the conclusions to the author. And yes, authors do need to explain how they respond to reviews. If one provides good arguments, it is perfectly possible not to follow a referee's suggestions, and this happens quite often in my experience (both as an editor and as an author). Balthasar. On Apr 1, 2010, at 5:21 PM, Bill Croft wrote: > I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". > > But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. > > Bill > > >> Bill Croft wrote: >>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my view. >> >> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the author. >> >> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different journal? >> >> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make everybody's lives easier. >> >> Martin > From amnfn at well.com Thu Apr 1 15:39:31 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:39:31 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4BB8C.50601@unm.edu> Message-ID: Many suggestions from reviewers do improve our papers, and we are happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to implement them. Other suggestions make the paper less coherent. There is probably more involved here than which publications we submit to. There is also the question of how similar our theoretical approach is to that of the reviewer. That's why authors who are practitioners within more established theoretical frameworks find they have better rapport with their reviewers. It isn't so much personal, as theoretical... --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > I'm with Bill on this one. I feel that most of the revisions suggested to me > by reviewers have improved my papers. For those that were off-base, or that I > felt I didn't want to implement, I've always found that when I explain my > reasons to the editor, they have been accepted (i.e., I didn't make the > changes, and that was accepted by the editor). But as Bill says, maybe this > is a reflection of which journals I submit to. > > -- > Sherman Wilcox > > > > > > > On 4/1/10 9:21 AM, Bill Croft wrote: >> I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in >> effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are >> always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as >> Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are >> right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and >> resubmit". >> >> But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the >> reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At >> that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the >> evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and >> communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or >> "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the >> author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon >> resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge >> whether the revisions are sufficient. >> >> Bill >> >> >>> Bill Croft wrote: >>>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how >>>> much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I >>>> receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the >>>> author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In >>>> those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan >>>> puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >>> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my >>> view. >>> >>> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >>> adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer >>> that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is >>> right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than >>> authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic >>> than the author. >>> >>> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is >>> very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, >>> and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what >>> to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a >>> different journal? >>> >>> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make >>> everybody's lives easier. >>> >>> Martin > > From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 1 15:46:59 2010 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:46:59 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Economics is a field with "revise and resubmit" as a minor category and the vast majority of decisions being "reject" for the top journals. The results of that is that papers are often submitted and rejected from 5 or more journals before being published (or being given up on). Each time there are two or three new referee reports. That may not be a problem in a field 10 times the size of ours but if the net effect of abolishing A"revise and resubmit" is to have papers going to more journals, that doesn't seem a particularly good use of the limited time and goodwill of referees. (oh yeah, also in economics, referees usually get paid for their reports if they're submitted on time...) Claire On 1 April 2010 11:39, A. Katz wrote: > Many suggestions from reviewers do improve our papers, and we are happy and > grateful to be given the opportunity to implement them. Other suggestions > make the paper less coherent. > > There is probably more involved here than which publications we submit to. > There is also the question of how similar our theoretical approach is to > that of the reviewer. That's why authors who are practitioners within more > established theoretical frameworks find they have better rapport with their > reviewers. It isn't so much personal, as theoretical... > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > > On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > > I'm with Bill on this one. I feel that most of the revisions suggested to >> me by reviewers have improved my papers. For those that were off-base, or >> that I felt I didn't want to implement, I've always found that when I >> explain my reasons to the editor, they have been accepted (i.e., I didn't >> make the changes, and that was accepted by the editor). But as Bill says, >> maybe this is a reflection of which journals I submit to. >> >> -- >> Sherman Wilcox >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On 4/1/10 9:21 AM, Bill Croft wrote: >> >>> I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in >>> effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always >>> wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has >>> been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have >>> always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". >>> >>> But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the >>> reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At >>> that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the >>> evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and >>> communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or >>> "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author >>> to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That >>> allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions >>> are sufficient. >>> >>> Bill >>> >>> >>> Bill Croft wrote: >>>> >>>>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know >>>>> how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I >>>>> receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the >>>>> author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those >>>>> cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, >>>>> and I will recommend rejection. >>>>> >>>> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in >>>> my view. >>>> >>>> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >>>> adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer >>>> that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is >>>> right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; >>>> in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the >>>> author. >>>> >>>> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is >>>> very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and >>>> I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: >>>> Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different >>>> journal? >>>> >>>> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make >>>> everybody's lives easier. >>>> >>>> Martin >>>> >>> >> >> From amnfn at well.com Thu Apr 1 15:48:50 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:48:50 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > > If two people read your point and don't get it, then *you*, not they, are at fault. > The above statement can't possibly be univerally true. I'm sure we've all had the experience of making a point, and stating it very clearly, and having two other people not understand. It's not the number of people who understand a statement that determines ultimately whether it is well drafted, falsifiable or true. I think the number of people who will not understand a point goes up in direct relation to how novel the assertion is. We have trouble parsing sentences we've never seen before. Best, --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Apr 1 15:52:38 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:52:38 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 1 Apr 2010, at 11:48, A. Katz wrote: > > > On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > >> If two people read your point and don't get it, then *you*, not they, are at fault. >> > > The above statement can't possibly be univerally true. I'm sure we've all had the experience of making a point, and stating it very clearly, and having two other people not understand. Of course. I cannot think of anything that would be universally true, or even True, except by definition. But by and large it is a good rule of thumb. Dan From mark at polymathix.com Thu Apr 1 16:56:43 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:56:43 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4B4FE.5030208@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: I've been following this thread from the sidelines but with great interest. On the specific topic of this thread, I would point out that today, we have journals covering many theoretical camps, and good articles can almost always get published in an established journal. That was not always the case, and in those days the peer review process was abusive. Other things being equal, I'm with Martin on this one simply to minimize the probability of future abuse. (For that, in fact, Martin's proposal probably doesn't go far enough.) But that said, I think the discussion seems to be skirting a much larger issue: Why do people go through all the delays and rigamarole to publish articles in old, established, expensive print journals in this age of Web 2.0, feed aggregators, tweets and iPhone apps? The answer, I think, is *prestige*. But prestige evolves over a catastrophe surface, and the academic community can confer prestige on, or deny prestige from, any publishing vehicle that it chooses. If, say, all the academic linguists who are subscribed to FUNKNET decided to get together and start an online, peer-reviewed journal or two, it wouldn't be that hard (compared to, say, arguing about how many phonemes there are in Tok Pisin). The community could confer prestige on these online journals by using them in their hiring and tenure decisions (which is, I think, how the prestige of established print journals is manifested). At the same time, the community could deny prestige from the old, inefficient print journals by failing to use them in their hiring and tenure decisions. Sometimes we forget that it's really just one academic community -- one community that does all the research, all the thinking, all the writing, all the reviewing, all the accepting and rejecting and all the general editing. Everything except the printing and distribution: That's still done by publishing companies that really have nothing at all to do with the academic community. So at the end of the day, it's all one community and it can do whatever the hell it wants. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Bill Croft wrote: >> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know >> how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not >> infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant >> problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the >> original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my >> precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. > What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in > my view. > > In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to > adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer > that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is > right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than > authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic > than the author. > > But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is > very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, > and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what > to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a > different journal? > > So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make > everybody's lives easier. > > Martin From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Apr 1 17:01:02 2010 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 19:01:02 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4BB8C.50601@unm.edu> Message-ID: A tricky problem, indeed! I think that the R&R problem is only part of a major problem that is linked to peer reviewing as such. From an economical/commercial point of view, peer reviewing is absolutely necessary to secure the role a journal plays on the market and to maintain its economic 'value' (surplus). This value guarantees that the journal is constantly sold to those who expect a certain profile represented by the individual articles. Here, the reviewers have to keep the balance between contents that are both in line with the general expectations of the journal's readership /and/ include modestly formulated innovations. Basically, this is the same 'function' that subeditors of any commercial journal or newspaper have to observe. The problem is that these commercial aspects are mixed with scientific evaluation. Nowadays, the paradigm of humanities is much more oriented towards maintaining a certain mainstream than say 100 to 150 years ago. Authors who submit papers not in line with this paradigm / mainstream will hardly ever have the chance to get their papers published, not because they tell stupid things (that may happen, too), but because their arguments, analyses, or theoremes do not fall into what is currently mainstream. I guess that much of what we currently 'think' in linguistics is grounded in papers and books the manuscripts of which would never have had the chance to get published if they were written (two/tree)hundred years later (that is today) [just recall the New Grammarian controversy, Herders' text on the origins of language, Rousseau's reference towards 'primitive' societies and their way of communicating, just to name a few]. The difference naturally also is that today, linguistics s a (payed) profession, controlled by those who offer employment and who set up certain rules which have to be obeyed and to be internalized by those who want to get such a job. Freedom of public (!) thinking becomes more and more replaced by self-constraints and the internalization of public 'rules', a process that is reinforced by the way 'publicity' is expected to be achieved by the researcher. The many regulations that are currently practiced (citation index, number of publications in peer reviewed journals etc.) essentially contribute to the 'linearization' (or: harmonization) of linguistic thinking. This is what Jean-Louis Calvet refers to when saying : "./.. la façon dont on analyse l'ensemble des langues et les rapports qu'elles entretiennent est profondément déterminée par l'organisation sociale du sein de laquelle on écrit et par les conflits qui opposent la communauté de l'écrivain à d'autres communautés/" Calvet, Louis-Jean 1979 [1974] /Linguistique et colonialisme, petit traité de glottophagie./ 2e édition. Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, p.21). 'Public Linguistics' is thus strongly governed by commercial and social features that again are embodied in the overall 'philosophic paradigm' we have to live with. Calvet continues: "/'Chaque siècle a la grammaire de sa philosophie', écrivait Antoine Meillet. Cette proposition, on l'aura compris, nous paraît très incomplète et, par souci de simplification, c'est par la suivante que nous la remplacerons pour conclure : chaque société a la linguistique de ses rapports de productio/n" (p.39). Peer reviewing thus is an important tool to safeguard the type of linguistics we're used to nowadays - we cannot escape from it. It's another question whether it really promotes the development of linguistics or whether it pulls it back to what is currently 'correct'. Sure, this also is a problem of ethics - and all of us should rely on the fact that the peer reviewers meet these the ethical standards that include the readiness to consider hypotheses, arguments, and theoremes they are not used to (unfortunately, I sometimes made the experience that this is not always the case: I once had an article rejected with the simple note of one the reviewers saying: "Don't publish! I don't understand the paper!"). And many reviewers really help to improve the quality of a paper by simply taking the perspective of the potential readership. Likewise, reviewing is essential for eliminating flaws, faults, wrong data etc. But often enough, papers seem to be rejected just because they do not meet the interest of the reviewer, their self-profiling attitude, or global perspective (OK, then you would say: Try another journal. But imagine that you deal in your paper with data from a language for which there are only few experts. The chance to meet the same reviewer again is rather high). Linguistics, just as any other type of sciences that is strongly grounded in the dimension of 'interpretation' and 'modeling' always wavers between four tendencies: Conversation (and confirmation) of a given paradigm, evolution (or modification), reactionary draw-back, and revolution. Presently, much seems to be allowed as long as it tries to find its way between conservation and modest evolution (and sometimes to comfort reviewers). In this sense, public 'linguistic revolutions' won't have any chance any more..... Let's wait and see what linguists will say about all this when writing a history of linguistics in say 500 years.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- -- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Ludwigstraße 25 Postanschrift / Postal address: Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-16567 // 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professoren/schulze/index.html http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistiký Fakulta humanitných vied Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica Tajovského 40 SK-97401 Banská Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze From dryer at buffalo.edu Fri Apr 2 23:20:15 2010 From: dryer at buffalo.edu (dryer at buffalo.edu) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 19:20:15 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for online journals. Matthew From amnfn at well.com Fri Apr 2 23:27:14 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 16:27:14 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1270236015@cast-dryerm2.caset.buffalo.edu> Message-ID: Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly > in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of > peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited > volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the > reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications > tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why > they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the > peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed > journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the > availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money > that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it > is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will > always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From jose.deulofeu at wanadoo.fr Sat Apr 3 07:34:52 2010 From: jose.deulofeu at wanadoo.fr (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?henri_jos=E9_deulofeu?=) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 09:34:52 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear All, One point that is missed in this discussion is the fact that English is a dominant language in scientific publications. A lot of valuable papers remain confidential because they are not written in English. And even if the author tries to write in English, the problem is that the English accepted by journals is not the kind of scientific lingua franca people generally think it is. The stylistic requirements of the editorial boards go far beyond mere readability. As a consequence, it is very difficult for non natives or non specialists of academic English to meet them (as you can see from the ongoing text ). And further, to forecast their ideas to large audiences. One way to overcome this shortcoming could be to put the money saved by extending the use of web journals into translation programs of "bests of" papers originally not written in English and/or linguistic assistance to non native writers during the peer review process. Best José DEULOFEU Université de Provence (France) http://jose.deulofeu.free.fr Le 3 avr. 10 à 01:27, A. Katz a écrit : > > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is > limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can > make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites > online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, > some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not > accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > >> >> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made >> explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) >> is that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for >> journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far >> higher chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. >> And this is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense >> to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are >> justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. >> >> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry >> is that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as >> it is for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 >> here. While on the one hand the availability of electronic >> publishing renders the cost of publishers as "middle-men" >> unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money >> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means >> that it is almost inevitable that the peer review process for >> printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for >> online journals. >> >> Matthew >> >> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Orange vous informe que cet e-mail a ete controle par l'anti-virus > mail. Aucun virus connu a ce jour par nos services n'a ete detecte. > > Henri-José Deulofeu UNIVERSITÉ AIX-MARSEILLE I DEPT. LINGUISTIQUE FRANCAISE 29 AV. Robert Schuman 13621 Aix-en-Provence CEDEX +33442953569 From tthornes at uca.edu Sun Apr 4 00:19:19 2010 From: tthornes at uca.edu (Tim Thornes) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 19:19:19 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing Message-ID: Hello, I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? Best, Tim Tim Thornes, PhD Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly > in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of > peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited > volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the > reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications > tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why > they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the > peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed > journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the > availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money > that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it > is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will > always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From amnfn at well.com Sun Apr 4 01:04:07 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 18:04:07 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB794BF020000870007A8D6@GWIA1.uca.edu> Message-ID: Tim, Both creative writers and linguists are self-selected. Many of us not in an academic position submit to both trade publishers and to linguistic journals. Some of us fancy ourselves to be both novelists and linguists. We get rejected more often than not. But only time will tell. ;-> Among those on Funknet, T. Givon has published both linguistics books and trade novels. Short term prestige may lie in the prestige of the publisher. But surely in the long run, it's the contribution to the field that really counts! --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Sat, 3 Apr 2010, Tim Thornes wrote: > Hello, > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? > > Best, Tim > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > Department of Writing > University of Central Arkansas > Conway, AR 72035 > (501)450-5613 > >>>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > >> >> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly >> in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of >> peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited >> volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the >> reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications >> tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why >> they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. >> >> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the >> peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed >> journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the >> availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as >> "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money >> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it >> is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will >> always be taken more seriously than for online journals. >> >> Matthew >> >> > > From tpayne at uoregon.edu Sun Apr 4 09:15:41 2010 From: tpayne at uoregon.edu (Thomas E. Payne) Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 12:15:41 +0300 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB794BF020000870007A8D6@GWIA1.uca.edu> Message-ID: I think that, in general, journal publication should be given more weight than publication in edited collections for the following reasons: 1. As you mention, Tim, contributors to edited collections are often invited by the editors. This may make it more difficult for an editor to "reject" a paper that turns out not to meet expectations -- it may seem ungracious to invite someone to submit a paper, and then reject their contribution. 2. Being the editor of a collection is itself a significant entry on a CV, so editors are motivated to collect papers and get them published. A journal editor, on the other hand, probably already has tenure, and in any case already has the CV entry as a journal editor, so the motivation is more toward enriching the quality and reputation of the journal, rather than in simply getting something published. 3. Journal editors are editing professionals. If they have been doing the job for any length of time, they have extensive knowledge of the field, including who are good reviewers for which topics, etc. Editors of collections are likely to lack this breadth of experience, and are more likely to tap into a comparatively smaller circle of reviewers. 4. A journal has a reputation to build on, whereas edited collections do not. Not all journals are created equal, of course. But we have a "sense" of what the quality and significance of a publication in a particular journal is likely to be. (Similar to how one has a "sense" of the likely academic preparation of a graduate of a particular graduate program). For edited collections, unless the editor is well-known and/or has a series of previous collections, one has no such history on which to base one's expectations. None of this is absolute, of course. There are particular cases in which some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. This is just my attempt to "flesh out" my intuition that journal publications tend to be more substantive than publications in edited collections. Tom Payne -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Thornes Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 03:19 To: dryer at buffalo.edu; amnfn at well.com Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing Hello, I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? Best, Tim Tim Thornes, PhD Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is > that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for > journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher > chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this > is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth > more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is > for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While > on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the > cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that > there are companies making money that they will not make if they do > not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the > peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From bischoff.st at gmail.com Mon Apr 5 00:01:03 2010 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 19:31:03 -0430 Subject: FUNKNET Digest, Vol 79, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As a graduate student in a generative program at an R1 institution I was told by a few faculty members that the only publications that count are those in a "tier 1" journals when it came to hiring (e.g. members of the higher committee at this particular institution looked for publications in these journals when considering a candidate)...for the department the following were often cited as "tier 1" journals in no particular order: Language Linguistic Inquiry International Journal of American Linguistics Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Having published in different subfields I've learned that different journals have different weight, in fact different publications have different weight (e.g. some conferences in computational linguistics are extremely difficult to get accepted into and the post proceedings go through a second round of review...so those are considered rather "prestigious" publications for folks in that area). I wonder what journals FUNKETers consider "prestige" journals? I also wonder if in general, for those that have served on hiring committees, how much weight prestige journal publications really have. Cheers, Shannon On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 12:30 PM, wrote: > Send FUNKNET mailing list submissions to > funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/funknet > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > funknet-owner at mailman.rice.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of FUNKNET digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Peer reviewing (Tim Thornes) > 2. Re: Peer reviewing (A. Katz) > 3. Re: Peer reviewing (Thomas E. Payne) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2010 19:19:19 -0500 > From: "Tim Thornes" > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > To: , > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: <4BB794BF020000870007A8D6 at GWIA1.uca.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > Hello, > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of > equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and > tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited > volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant > contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other > possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an > edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as > well? > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over > the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point > out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a > self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics > journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to > publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors > play a role? > > Best, Tim > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > Department of Writing > University of Central Arkansas > Conway, AR 72035 > (501)450-5613 > > >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > > > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly > > in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the > process of > > peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for > edited > > volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the > > reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal > publications > > tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and > why > > they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion > decisions. > > > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that > the > > peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed > > journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand > the > > availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > > "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making > money > > that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that > it > > is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals > will > > always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > > > Matthew > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 18:04:07 -0700 (PDT) > From: "A. Katz" > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > To: Tim Thornes > Cc: dryer at buffalo.edu, funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed > > Tim, > > Both creative writers and linguists are self-selected. Many of us not in > an academic position submit to both trade publishers and to linguistic > journals. Some of us fancy ourselves to be both novelists and linguists. > We get rejected more often than not. But only time will tell. ;-> > > Among those on Funknet, T. Givon has published both linguistics books and > trade novels. > > Short term prestige may lie in the prestige of the publisher. But surely > in the long run, it's the contribution to the field that really counts! > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Sat, 3 Apr 2010, Tim Thornes wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of > equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and > tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited > volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant > contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other > possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an > edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as > well? > > > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy > over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to > point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a > self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics > journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to > publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors > play a role? > > > > Best, Tim > > > > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > > Department of Writing > > University of Central Arkansas > > Conway, AR 72035 > > (501)450-5613 > > > >>>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > > Matthew, > > > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > > and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > > > --Aya > > > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > > >> > >> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly > >> in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the > process of > >> peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for > edited > >> volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often > the > >> reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal > publications > >> tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and > why > >> they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion > decisions. > >> > >> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > that the > >> peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for > printed > >> journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand > the > >> availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > >> "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making > money > >> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that > it > >> is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals > will > >> always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > >> > >> Matthew > >> > >> > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 12:15:41 +0300 > From: "Thomas E. Payne" > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > To: "'Tim Thornes'" > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: <7AFAFC95AC1148119AE5ABE08FB8A66F at TEPAYNEPC> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > I think that, in general, journal publication should be given more weight > than publication in edited collections for the following reasons: > > 1. As you mention, Tim, contributors to edited collections are often > invited > by the editors. This may make it more difficult for an editor to "reject" a > paper that turns out not to meet expectations -- it may seem ungracious to > invite someone to submit a paper, and then reject their contribution. > > 2. Being the editor of a collection is itself a significant entry on a CV, > so editors are motivated to collect papers and get them published. A > journal > editor, on the other hand, probably already has tenure, and in any case > already has the CV entry as a journal editor, so the motivation is more > toward enriching the quality and reputation of the journal, rather than in > simply getting something published. > > 3. Journal editors are editing professionals. If they have been doing the > job for any length of time, they have extensive knowledge of the field, > including who are good reviewers for which topics, etc. Editors of > collections are likely to lack this breadth of experience, and are more > likely to tap into a comparatively smaller circle of reviewers. > > 4. A journal has a reputation to build on, whereas edited collections do > not. Not all journals are created equal, of course. But we have a "sense" > of > what the quality and significance of a publication in a particular journal > is likely to be. (Similar to how one has a "sense" of the likely academic > preparation of a graduate of a particular graduate program). For edited > collections, unless the editor is well-known and/or has a series of > previous > collections, one has no such history on which to base one's expectations. > > None of this is absolute, of course. There are particular cases in which > some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. This is just my attempt > to "flesh out" my intuition that journal publications tend to be more > substantive than publications in edited collections. > > Tom Payne > > > -----Original Message----- > From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Thornes > Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 03:19 > To: dryer at buffalo.edu; amnfn at well.com > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > > Hello, > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of > equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion > and > tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited > volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant > contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other > possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an > edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as > well? > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over > the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point > out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a > self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics > journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to > publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors > play a role? > > Best, Tim > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > Department of Writing > University of Central Arkansas > Conway, AR 72035 > (501)450-5613 > > >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > and > there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > > > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is > > that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for > > journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher > > chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this > > is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth > > more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated > as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > > that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is > > for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While > > on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the > > cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that > > there are companies making money that they will not make if they do > > not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the > > peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more > seriously than for online journals. > > > > Matthew > > > > > > > > End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 79, Issue 4 > ************************************** > From bischoff.st at gmail.com Mon Apr 5 13:22:21 2010 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 08:52:21 -0430 Subject: Journal Rankings Message-ID: Hi all, Sorry if this is a double post....I didn't read the posting instructions before my first attempt and it may have made its way to the listserve. The conversation on "peer reviewing" led me to wonder what journals, or publications in general, funkneters consider "prestige". As a graduate student, in a Generative program, the following journals were touted as "the tier 1" journals that we should all aspire to publish in if we wanted a job (in no particular order): Language Linguistic Inquiry International Journal of American Linguistics Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Personally, I find that my interests often lead me to some different journals, for example Morphology and especially The Linguistic Review which both seem to be exceptional journals and of "teir 1" status. Cheers, Shannon From langconf at bu.edu Mon Apr 5 13:37:01 2010 From: langconf at bu.edu (langconf at bu.edu) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 09:37:01 -0400 Subject: BUCLD 35 Call for Papers Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS THE 35th ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT NOVEMBER 5-7, 2010 Keynote Speaker: Rachel Mayberry, University of California at San Diego "Nurture and biology in language acquisition: What the hands say" Plenary Speaker: William Snyder, University of Connecticut "Children's grammatical conservatism: Implications for syntactic theory" Lunch Symposium: "The acquisition of number words: Integrating formal and developmental perspectives" Susan Carey, Harvard University Justin Halberda, Johns Hopkins University Jeff Lidz, University of Maryland Julien Musolino, Rutgers University Submissions that present research on any topic in the fields of first and second language acquisition from any theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: Bilingualism, Cognition & Language, Creoles & Pidgins, Dialects, Discourse and Narrative, Gesture, Hearing Impairment and Deafness, Input & Interaction, Language Disorders, Linguistic Theory, Neurolinguistics, Pragmatics, Pre-linguistic Development, Reading and Literacy, Signed Languages, Sociolinguistics, and Speech Perception & Production. A suggested format and style for abstracts is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD/template.html We will begin accepting abstract submissions on April 15. Please check http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD for a link to the submission form and any important updates. DEADLINE: All submissions must be received by 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2010. FURTHER INFORMATION General conference information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD/ Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Room 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 Questions about abstracts should be sent to abstract at bu.edu From mark at polymathix.com Mon Apr 5 19:17:14 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 14:17:14 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1270236015@cast-dryerm2.caset.buffalo.edu> Message-ID: The term "peer" is not a misnomer: As I was saying, it's the same community of researchers who do the writing as well as the reviewing as well as the hiring, firing and promoting (departmental pecking orders notwithstanding). In other words, quality control is and should be a function of the community of peers -- a publishing company's business process must support that function, not the other way around. So I don't think we're limited to profit-making companies for the dissemination of high-quality literature. -- Mark Mark P. Line dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that > the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than > it > is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection > and often the reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why > journal > publications tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited > volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and > promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that > the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for > printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the > one > hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of > publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are > companies making money that they will not make if they do not provide a > good product means that it is almost inevitable that the peer review > process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for > online journals. > > Matthew > > > -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From mark at polymathix.com Mon Apr 5 19:24:04 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 14:24:04 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <95390057-1820-45CC-BBC8-48A11F7BD4C3@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: Absolutely agree 100%. Some of my best "finds" have been in something like Hungarian or Indonesian where I could barely make out enough of the title and abstract to know I needed to get it translated or summarized. Who knows how much I've missed seeing because it was in a language that I didn't even have a leg up on. -- Mark Mark P. Line henri josé deulofeu wrote: > Dear All, > One point that is missed in this discussion is the fact that English > is a dominant language in scientific publications. A lot of valuable > papers remain confidential because they are not written in English. > And even if the author tries to write in English, the problem is that > the English accepted by journals is not the kind of scientific lingua > franca people generally think it is. The stylistic requirements of the > editorial boards go far beyond mere readability. As a consequence, it > is very difficult for non natives or non specialists of academic > English to meet them (as you can see from the ongoing text ). And > further, to forecast their ideas to large audiences. One way to > overcome this shortcoming could be to put the money saved by extending > the use of web journals into translation programs of "bests of" papers > originally not written in English and/or linguistic assistance to non > native writers during the peer review process. > Best > José DEULOFEU > Université de Provence (France) > http://jose.deulofeu.free.fr > Le 3 avr. 10 à 01:27, A. Katz a écrit : > >> >> Matthew, >> >> These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is >> limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can >> make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites >> online, too. >> >> Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, >> some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not >> accessible. >> >> --Aya >> >> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >> >> >> >> On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: >> >>> >>> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made >>> explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) >>> is that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for >>> journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far >>> higher chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. >>> And this is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense >>> to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are >>> justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. >>> >>> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry >>> is that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as >>> it is for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 >>> here. While on the one hand the availability of electronic >>> publishing renders the cost of publishers as "middle-men" >>> unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money >>> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means >>> that it is almost inevitable that the peer review process for >>> printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for >>> online journals. >>> >>> Matthew >>> >>> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Orange vous informe que cet e-mail a ete controle par l'anti-virus >> mail. Aucun virus connu a ce jour par nos services n'a ete detecte. >> >> > > Henri-José Deulofeu > UNIVERSITÉ AIX-MARSEILLE I > DEPT. LINGUISTIQUE FRANCAISE > 29 AV. Robert Schuman > 13621 Aix-en-Provence CEDEX > +33442953569 > > > > > > > -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From tgivon at uoregon.edu Thu Apr 8 21:48:35 2010 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 15:48:35 -0600 Subject: etc. Message-ID: Dear FUNK people, I have been following the recent exchange with some interest. There seem to be a number of constituencies here, whose interests do not always coincide. We have first our young generation, struggling to get a tenure-track position and then secure a lifetime license to practice with impunity. We then have the universities, with their departmental search committees, deans and their advisory committees, provosts and theirs--all anxious to follow clear criteria for evaluating candidates. We then have the old professional alpha males, determined to keep their control of the process via journals, refereeing and resounding academic posts. And we have, lastly, the perennial orphan, the one that tends to fall between the cracks--the interest of advancing our lurching discipline toward some semblance of a real science--of human language, culture, society, mind and brain. The old establishment bulls and the universities have always co-existed in close symbiosis, sharing their preference for ranked journals, exhaustive refereeing, downgrading edited collections and the quantification of quality judgements. In this, they have striven to perpetuate the pretense that, somehow, quality emerges--Deus ex machina--out of rigid criteria and rigorous quantification. Here I thought my own life experience may be of some value. I have always found the editorial review process of journals a closed door for my work. In this I am in full sympathy with Martin Haspelmath's original note--by the time you are finished revising to the referees' specs, it is their work, not yours. As far as I could determine, the editorial review process enshrined the gate-keepers, those in charge of conserving the status quo and slapping down the upstarts who came out of nowhere. The typical referee's world-view has always seemed narrow, defensive, preservationist and process-oriented. They seemed to champions playing the by the rules as a core value. And their view of the coming generation appeared to be: Slow down, tread with caution, let us squeeze the creative marrow out of you till you produce tiny square pegs that fit our tiny square holes. I might as well confess--the very few journal articles I did publish were let into the inner sanctum by editors who bent the rules for me, who brazenly bypassed their own reviewers, editors who just happened to consider my perspective worthwhile. They are long gone now, so I hope they will forgive me--from whatever elevated perch they may occupy now--for revealing their unprincipled violations of the established canons of refereed professionalism. I might as well say something about the much-maligned edited collections. In the early 1970's, Charles Li organized three consecutive symposia, which came out in three successive edited-- brazenly-unrefereed --volumes: "Word-Order and Word-Order Change" (1975), "Subject and Topic" (1976), and "Mechanism for Syntactic Change" (1977). As far as I can see, if these three unrefereed volumes had not appeared, the subsequent rise of the functionalist-typological-diachronic-acquisitional ground-swell we have all been part of would have never taken place. Carol Justus' functionalist-typological-diachronic LSA Summer in Oswego (1976) was a direct outcome of the Charles Li symposia. The TSL edited--and proudly unrefereed--series was a direct, explicit continuation of Charles Li's three volumes, beginning with Hopper (ed. 1982) "Tense and Aspect" and counting ca. 90-odd volumes now. The transformation of Studies in Language into ?our' journal was a direct outcome of the three moves noted above. This transformation was done in collusion with a visionary editor--Jon Verhaar, RIP--who decided to flaunt the rules, and damn the torpedoes. So when someone tells you that ?unrefereed' volumes do not count as much as ranked, strictly-refereed journals, perhaps you should ask yourselves, and them: Who are the rankers? Who are the referees? And what is their underlying interest, conscious or not, in this convoluted enterprise? We can steer our younger generation into safe, conservative, slow-and-sluggish careers designed to preserve the prevailing disciplinary order, and to embellish the current paradigms with unthreateningly-small increments. This is certainly one way careers and status are constructed. If it were up to me, tho, I would caution our y'all as follows: Those authoritative referees are after you hide. They want to chop your ideas down to their size and in the process diminish them--and you. They want to squeeze you into their mould, so that you may emerge as carbon copies of them. So that whatever juice of adventure, discovery and innovation flows in your veins would be curdled and denatured and made palatable--to them. So that you may gain the whole world but lose your soul. This is, lastly, not only about your nascent careers. It is also about the future of linguistics as a credible field of inquiry. That future is in your hands. It is up to you to move this contentious would-be science off the dime, so that we may all quit our perennial regurgitation of old pablums and move on. Y'all be good, TG From tthornes at uca.edu Fri Apr 9 03:01:24 2010 From: tthornes at uca.edu (Tim Thornes) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 22:01:24 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing Message-ID: Thanks to Aya and Tom for your comments. I find myself wanting to wax a bit rhetorical here. Please know that my motives are not "why are my chapters not worth as much as my articles?" particularly since in total, they amount to very very little relative to the contributions of many members of this list, especially those who have been leading this discussion. I honestly had no inkling I would even be interested in contributing to it, but now have come to find it an interesting exercise and a very revealing discussion about the relative value not only of the peer review--whose benefits seem obvious to me--but of the judgments of those same peers post-publication. The advantage of any publication is, of course, exposure. The advantage of any particular venue for publication, I would say, is prestige. I'm only interested in tossing a wrench into the works to question the relative value of prestige over exposure and to reiterate an old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know," in the hope that the discipline I've hitched my rickety old wagon to is honest enough to own that there is a bit of exorcism involved in the process. I know that edited volumes generally involve invitation and that rejection is less likely, unless one simply refuses to make the revisions suggested by the editors or external reviewers, for whatever reasons, or decides to pull one's participation in the process. No doubt there are at least an equal number of folks who do not "revise and resubmit" either, tantamount, in my view, to turning down an invitation to contribute to an edited volume. I don't, however, believe that most publishers are so short sighted that they would agree to publish an edited volume just because someone took the trouble to collect the papers for it. Which brings me back to my rhetorical interest in this discussion. How do we "justify" (in Matthew Dryer's words) the relative value (or prestige) of a publication? The work of William Jacobsen, Jr. comes immediately to mind here, and his incredibly influential papers "Noun and Verb in Nootka,” "Switch-reference in Hokan-Coahuiltecan," “The Heterogeneity of Evidentials in Makah,” and "Bi-partite Stems in Washo," the latter three of which appeared in edited volumes, as I recall, and the other, perhaps the most cited of all, in a conference proceedings--the seeming bottom of the barrel, as far as publications are concerned. I sincerely appreciate this interesting and enlightening discussion. All the best, Tim Thornes Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "Thomas E. Payne" 04/04/10 4:16 AM >>> I think that, in general, journal publication should be given more weight than publication in edited collections for the following reasons: 1. As you mention, Tim, contributors to edited collections are often invited by the editors. This may make it more difficult for an editor to "reject" a paper that turns out not to meet expectations -- it may seem ungracious to invite someone to submit a paper, and then reject their contribution. 2. Being the editor of a collection is itself a significant entry on a CV, so editors are motivated to collect papers and get them published. A journal editor, on the other hand, probably already has tenure, and in any case already has the CV entry as a journal editor, so the motivation is more toward enriching the quality and reputation of the journal, rather than in simply getting something published. 3. Journal editors are editing professionals. If they have been doing the job for any length of time, they have extensive knowledge of the field, including who are good reviewers for which topics, etc. Editors of collections are likely to lack this breadth of experience, and are more likely to tap into a comparatively smaller circle of reviewers. 4. A journal has a reputation to build on, whereas edited collections do not. Not all journawhat the quality and significance of a publication in a particular journal is likely to be. (Similar to how one has a "sense" of the likely academic preparation of a graduate of a particular graduate program). For edited collections, unless the editor is well-known and/or has a series of previous collections, one has no such history on which to base one's expectations. None of this is absolute, of course. There are particular cases in which some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. This is just my attempt to "flesh out" my intuition that journal publications tend to be more substantive than publications in edited collections. Tom Payne -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Thornes Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 03:19 To: dryer at buffalo.edu; amnfn at well.com Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing Hello, I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? Best, Tim Tim Thornes, PhD Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is > that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for > journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher > chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this > is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth > more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is > for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While > on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the > cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that > there are companies making money that they will not make if they do > not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the > peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From sclancy at uchicago.edu Sat Apr 10 21:34:52 2010 From: sclancy at uchicago.edu (Steven Clancy) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:34:52 -0500 Subject: Final CFP for SCLC-2010 Conference at Brown University, October 9-11, 2010 Message-ID: Please note: The deadline for submission of abstracts is in one week: Friday, April 16, 2010. See below for details. ********************************************************************* The Department of Slavic Languages and the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Brown University present THE TENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SLAVIC COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION (SCLC-2010) October 9-11, 2010 The Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA) announces the Call for Papers for the 2010 annual conference. The conference will be held on the campus of Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) on Saturday, October 9 through Monday, October 11, 2010. SCLC-2010 Keynote Speakers Eugene Charniak Brown University Adele E. Goldberg Princeton University Ronald W. Langacker University of California, San Diego CALL FOR PAPERS Abstracts are invited for presentations addressing issues of significance for cognitive linguistics with some bearing on data from the Slavic languages. As long as there is a cognitive orientation, papers may be on synchronic or diachronic topics in any of the traditional areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, or sociolinguistics. In addition to the Slavic Languages, relevant papers on other languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are also acceptable. Abstracts may be submitted up until the deadline of April 16, 2010 to Steven Clancy . Abstracts should be approximately 500 words, but strict word limits are not required. Notification of acceptance will be provided by May 31, 2010. Most presentations at SCLC are given in English, but may be in the native (Slavic) language of the presenter. However, if the presentation is not to be made in English we ask that you provide an abstract in English in addition to an abstract in any other SCLA language. MAIN SESSIONS (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) Each presentation for the main sessions will be given 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute discussion period. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE Saturday, October 9: conference panels beginning in the morning and continue throughout the day, evening reception, keynote address, and conference dinner Sunday, October 10: main sessions and keynote address throughout the day, lunch and dinner Monday, October 11: main sessions and keynote address with conclusion by noon REGISTRATION AND CONFERENCE FEES Registration Fee: Regular participants 60USD Graduate student participants 40USD Conference dinner: 50USD Please make your checks payable to “Brown University”. Registration deadline will be forthcoming. FURTHER INFORMATION Information on transportation, accommodations, and the conference venue will be forthcoming. Please see the conference website for further information. http://languages.uchicago.edu/scla Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island and is accessible from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS, 55 miles away) or T.F. Green Airport (PVD) in Providence. We hope you will be able to join us for SCLC-2010. Please forward this call for papers to your colleagues and graduate students who may be interested in presenting or attending. Sincerely, Steven Clancy Tore Nesset Masako Fidler President, SCLA Vice-President, SCLA Conference Organizer and Host, Brown University on behalf of the SCLA officers and the 2010 SCLA organizing committee From pedprax at terra.com.br Thu Apr 15 02:03:48 2010 From: pedprax at terra.com.br (Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:03:48 -0300 Subject: VI ALSFAL / Chamada de trabalhos / Llamada de trabajos / Call for papers Message-ID: (PARA ESPAÑOL, POR FAVOR VER MÁS ABAJO / FOR ENGLISH, PLEASE SEE BELOW): PORTUGUÊS: Prezados Colegas, Temos o prazer de fazer o anúncio oficial da chamada de trabalhos para o VI Congresso da Associação de Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional da América Latina-ALSFAL, que será anfitrionado pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística Aplicada do Centro de Humanidades da Universidade Estadual do Ceará (Fortaleza - Ceará - Nordeste do Brasil) e realizado no Hotel Ponta Mar (****) de 05 a 09 de outubro de 2010. O tema do VI ALSFAL é: 'A Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional e seu potencial de empoderamento semiótico-discursivo'. Para detalhes sobre o tema, a programação, os pesquisadores convidados, as comissões, a inscrição no congresso e nos minicursos pré-congresso, a hospedagem, os parceiros, etc, por favor visitem a página do VI ALSFAL em http://www.6alsfal-uece.com.br/ (contato: info at 6alsfal-uece.com.br). Serão aceitos trabalhos nas áreas abaixo, vistas necessariamente da perspectiva da Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional, mas de modo não necessariamente exclusivo: · ESTUDOS DISCURSIVOS: ANÁLISE DE DISCURSO CRÍTICA / ESTRATÉGICA / POSITIVA - ADC / ADE / ADP · ESTUDOS CULTURAIS · ESTUDOS SOBRE GÊNERO/REGISTRO E INTERTEXTUALIDADE · COESÃO E COERÊNCIA · LINGUÍSTICA ARTÍSTICA · LINGUÍSTICA DA MÍDIA · LINGUÍSTICA ORGANIZACIONAL/ADMINISTRATIVA: A LINGUAGEM NO AMBIENTE DE TRABALHO · ECOLINGUÍSTICA E POLÍTICA LINGUÍSTICA: ESTUDOS SOBRE PLANEJAMENTO LINGUÍSTICO, DIREITOS HUMANOS LINGUÍSTICOS, LÍNGUAS DE MIGRANTES, LINGUICISMO E IMPERIALISMO LINGUÍSTICO · LINGUÍSTICA EDUCACIONAL: CONSCIÊNCIA CRÍTICA DA LINGUAGEM, ENSINO DOS GÊNEROS DO PODER, LETRAMENTO CRÍTICO · ESTUDOS SOBRE LINGUAGENS TÉCNICAS E COMUNICAÇÃO INTERCULTURAL · LINGUÍSTICA CLÍNICA · LINGUÍSTICA FORENSE · ONTOGÊNESE LINGUÍSTICA · DESCRIÇÃO DE LÍNGUAS INDIVIDUAIS · ESTUDOS MULTILINGUÍSTICOS: DESCRIÇÃO, COMPARAÇÃO E TIPOLOGIA DE LÍNGUAS, TRADUÇÃO E INTERPRETAÇÃO, ENSINO E APRENDIZAGEM DE L2 · ESTUDOS MULTISEMIÓTICOS: MULTIMODALIDADE NOS MEIOS ORAL, ESCRITO, VISUAL E DE SINAIS E MULTIMODALIDADE NO CANAL WEB · TEORIA DA AVALIATIVIDADE · LINGUÍSTICA DE CORPUS · LINGUÍSTICA COMPUTACIONAL: PROCESSAMENTO DE LÍNGUAS NATURAIS O estudo de cada uma dessas áreas pode resultar em um meio potencial de disponibilizar recursos semiótico-discursivos individuais e coletivos e abrir oportunidades para que as pessoas, em situações de desvantagem, fortaleçam sua autodeterminação, desenvolvam suas habilidades, leiam o mundo criticamente para nele viverem também criticamente ou, em outras palavras, se empoderem como construtores do seu êxito cotidiano e como autores da sua própria biografia. Desejamos dialogar com e refletir sobre a LSF sob a perspectiva do empoderamento. Mas desejamos fazê-lo com pesquisadore(a)s, professore(a)s e estudantes que trabalham nessas áreas na América Latina e ao redor do mundo, sendo essa a razão pela qual todo(a)s vocês são sinceramente convidado(a)s a virem a Fortaleza a fim de compartilharem conosco as suas visões sobre esses assuntos. Quanto às inscrições: INSCRIÇÕES Modalidades de participação: Minicursos - instrutore(a)s convidado(a)s. Sessões plenárias - participantes convidado(a)s. Mesas redondas - participantes convidado(a)s. (NOTA: O(a)s plenaristas, o(a)s participantes das mesas redondas e o(a)s instrutore(a)s de minicursos devem também fazer sua inscrição, com exceção do pagamento da taxa. O(a)s participantes das mesas redondas devem se inscrever individualmente, mas o(a) coordenador(a) deve inscrever, além do seu trabalho individual, o resumo geral da mesa). Comunicações coordenadas - participantes em geral, com doutorado ou mestrado ou estudantes de pós-graduação: Duração da sessão: 2 horas. Número de participantes: até 4, incluindo o coordenador. Tempo por participante: 20 minutos + 10 minutos para discussão. Comunicações individuais - participantes em geral, com doutorado ou mestrado ou estudantes de pós-graduação: Duração da sessão: 2 horas. Número de participantes: 4 ou 5. Tempo por participante: 25 minutos + 5 minutos para discussão (4 participantes) ou 20 minutos + 4 minutos para discussão (5 participantes). Pôsteres - participantes em geral, incluindo estudantes de graduação: Formato: 90 x 90 cm. Em relação às comunicações coordenadas e individuais e aos pôsteres: Datas: Submissão de resumos: 12 de abril a 06 de junho. Carta de aceite: a partir de 28 de junho tanto na página do congresso como através de mensagem automática de e-mail. NOTA: Os participantes de comunicações coordenadas devem se inscrever individualmente. Resumos: Língua: português, espanhol ou inglês. Tamanho: até 2.200 caracteres com espaço. Formato: título, resumo e 3 palavras-chave. Estrutura do resumo: tema, justificativa/relevância, objetivo(s), referencial teórico, metodologia, resultado(s) ou resultado(s) preliminar(es) e conclusão(ões) ou conclusão(ões) preliminar(es). As palavras-chave devem ser separadas por ponto e vírgula. NOTA: A inscrição de trabalhos em coautoria deve seguir os seguintes passos: 1. Cada coautor/a que pretenda estar na sessão de apresentação do trabalho registra login (endereço eletrônico) e senha e preenche a ficha de inscrição. 2. Somente um/a coautor/a preenche o formulário de resumo e inclui o(s) nome(s) do/a(s) outro/a (s). Um/a coautor/a não inscrito/a não receberá certificado, mas sua coautoria será devidamente registrada nos anais do congresso. Taxas de inscrição: Datas Tipos de participantes até 15 de julho a partir de 16 julho a partir de 15 setembro Professore(a)s-pesquisadore(a)s Congresso R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Minicurso R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Estudantes de pós-graduação Congresso R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Estudantes de graduação Congresso R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Minicurso R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participantes sem trabalho Congresso R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Pagamento: Depósito no Banco do Brasil: Conta corrente: 23.108-8 Agência: 3296-4 Em nome de: Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho e/ou Antonia Dilamar Araújo O comprovante de pagamento deve ser escaneado e enviado, em forma de anexo, para o endereço de e-mail: inscr at 6alsfal-uece.com.br. O(a)s estudantes precisam escanear também um documento oficial que comprove seu status de estudante e anexar o arquivo à mesma mensagem. O assunto da mensagem deve ser o nome completo do participante e o corpo da mensagem deve ser deixado em branco. Devido aos custos das e às dificuldades com as transferências bancárias vindas do exterior, os participantes estrangeiros pagarão as taxas de inscrição para o congresso e/ou o(s) minicurso(s) no primeiro dia de comparecimento ao evento. O(s) valor(es) a ser(em) pago(s) são o(s) correspondente(s) ao segundo período de tempo na tabela acima (do dia 16 de julho ao dia 14 de setembro de 2010), em conformidade com a categoria de cada um. Serão aceitos exclusivamente pagamentos em moeda nacional brasileira (real). Os estudantes deverão apresentar um documento oficial que comprove a sua categoria. Estamos esperando por vocês aqui em Fortaleza a fim de que possamos ter um grande evento acadêmico sistêmico-funcional. Um abraço, Dr. Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho (UECE) Dra. Antonia Dilamar Araújo (UECE) Presidente e Vice-Presidente ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ESPAÑOL: Estimados Colegas, Tenemos el placer de hacer el anuncio oficial de la llamada de trabajos para el VI Congreso de la Asociación de Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional de América Latina-ALSFAL, que está siendo organizado por el Programa de Postgrado en Lingüística Aplicada del Centro de Humanidades de la Universidade Estadual do Ceará (Fortaleza - Ceará - Nordeste de Brasil) y tendrá lugar en el Hotel Ponta Mar (****), 05 al 09 de octubre de 2010. El tema del VI ALSFAL es: 'La Lingüística Sistémico-Funcional y su potencial para el empoderamiento semiótico-discursivo'. Para obtener más información sobre el tema, el programa, los investigadores invitados, los comités, la inscripción para el congreso y para los minicursos pre-congreso, el alojamiento, los patrocinadores, etc, por favor visite la página del VI ALSFAL en http://www.6alsfal-uece.com.br/ (contacto: info at 6alsfal-uece.com.br). Se aceptarán trabajos en las áreas abajo, vistas necesariamente, mas no exclusivamente, desde la perspectiva de la LSF: · ESTUDIOS DISCURSIVOS: ANÁLIS CRÍTICO / ESTRATÉGICO / POSITIVO DEL DISCURSO - ACD / AED / APD · ESTUDIOS CULTURALES · ESTUDIOS SOBRE GÉNERO/REGISTRO E INTERTEXTUALIDAD · COHESIÓN Y COHERENCIA · LINGÜÍSTICA ARTÍSTICA · LINGÜÍSTICA DE LOS MEDIOS MASIVOS · LINGÜÍSTICA ORGANIZACIONAL/ADMINISTRATIVA: EL LENGUAJE EN EL AMBIENTE DEL TRABAJO · ECOLINGÜÍSTICA Y POLÍTICA LINGÜÍSTICA: ESTUDIOS SOBRE PLANIFICACIÓN LINGÜÍSTICA, DERECHOS HUMANOS LINGÜÍSTICOS, LENGUAS DE MIGRANTES, LINGUICISMO Y IMPERIALISMO LINGÜÍSTICO · LINGÜÍSTICA EDUCATIVA: CONCIENCIA CRÍTICA DEL LENGUAJE, ENSEÑANZA DE LOS GÉNEROS DEL PODER, ALFABETIZACIÓN CRÍTICA · ESTUDIOS SOBRE LENGUAJES TÉCNICAS Y COMUNICACIÓN INTERCULTURAL · LINGÜÍSTICA CLÍNICA · LINGÜÍSTICA FORENSE · ONTOGÉNESIS LINGÜÍSTICA · DESCRIPCIÓN DE LENGUAS INDIVIDUALES · ESTUDIOS MULTILINGÜÍSTICOS: DESCRIPCIÓN, COMPARACIÓN Y TIPOLOGÍA DE LENGUAS; TRADUCCIÓN Y INTERPRETACIÓN; ENSEÑANZA Y APRENDIZAJE DE L2 · ESTUDIOS MULTISEMIÓTICOS: MULTIMODALIDAD EN LOS MEDIOS ORAL, ESCRITO, VISUAL Y DE SEÑAS Y MULTIMODALIDAD EN LA WEB · TEORIA DE LA VALORACIÓN · LINGÜÍSTICA DE CORPUS · LINGÜÍSTICA COMPUTACIONAL: PROCESAMENTO DE LENGUAS NATURALES El estudio de cada una de estas áreas puede convertirse en un medio potencial para facilitar el acceso a recursos semiótico-discursivos individuales y colectivos y abrir oportunidades para que las personas, en situaciones de desventaja, fortalezcan su autodeterminación, desarrollen sus habilidades, lean el mundo críticamente para que en él vivan también críticamente o, en otras palabras, se empoderen como constructores de su éxito cotidiano y como autores de su propia biografía. Deseamos dialogar con y reflexionar sobre la LSF desde la perspectiva del empoderamiento. Mas deseamos hacerlo con investigadore(a)s, profesore(a)s y estudiantes que trabajan en estas áreas en América Latina y alrededor del mundo; por este motivo, todo(a)s ustedes están cordialmente invitado(a)s a venir a Fortaleza para compartir con nosotros sus puntos de vista sobre estos asuntos. En cuanto a las inscripciones: INSCRIPCIÓN Modalidades de participación: Minicursos - instructores/as invitados/as. Sesiones plenarias - participantes invitados/as. Mesas redondas - participantes invitados/as. (NOTA: Los/las plenaristas, los/las participantes en las mesas redondas y los/las instructores/as de minicursos deben también hacer su inscripción, excepto el pago de la tasa. Los/las participantes en las mesas redondas deben inscribirse individualmente, pero el/la coordinador/a debe inscribir, además de su trabajo individual, el resumen general de la mesa). Ponencias coordinadas - participantes en general, con doctorado o maestría o estudiantes de postgrado: Duración de la sesión: 2 horas. Número de participantes: hasta 4, incluyendo el/la coordinador/a. Tiempo por participante: 20 minutos + 10 minutos para discusión. (NOTA: Los participantes de ponencias coordinadas deben inscribirse individualmente). Ponencias individuales - participantes en general, con doctorado o maestría o estudiantes de postgrado: Duración de la sesión: 2 horas. Número de participantes: 4 o 5. Tiempo por participante: 25 minutos + 5 minutos para discusión (4 participantes) o 20 minutos + 4 minutos para discusión (5 participantes). Pósteres - participantes en general, incluyendo estudiantes de pregrado: Formato: 90 x 90 cm. Con relación a las ponencias coordinadas e individuales y a los pósteres: Fechas: Envío de resúmenes: 12 de abril a 06 de junio de 2010. Carta de aceptación: a partir del 28 de junio de 2010 en el sitio del congreso y por medio de un mensaje automático de e-mail. Resúmenes: Lengua: portugués, español o inglés. Tamaño: hasta 2.200 caracteres con espacios. Formato: título, resumen y 3 palabras-clave. Estructura del resumen: tema, justificación/pertinencia, objetivo(s), marco teórico, metodología, resultado(s) o resultado(s) preliminar(es) y conclusión(ones) o conclusión(ones) preliminar(es). Las palabras-clave deben estar separadas por punto y coma. NOTA: La inscripción de trabajos en co-autoría debe seguir los siguientes pasos: 1. Cada co-autor/a que desee estar en la sesión de presentación del trabajo registra login (dirección electrónica) y contraseña y completa la ficha de inscripción. 2. Sólo uno/a co-autor/a completa el formulario de resumen y incluye el(los) nombre(s) del(de los) otro(s) o de la(s) otra(s). Un/a co-autor/a no inscrito/a no recibirá certificado, pero su co-autoría será debidamente registrada en los anales del congreso. Tasas de inscripción: Fechas Tipos de participantes hasta el 15 de julio a partir del 16 julio a partir del 15 septiembre Profesores/ras-investigadores/ras Congreso R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Minicurso R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Estudiantes de postgrado Congreso R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Estudiantes de pregrado Congreso R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Minicurso R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participantes sin trabajo Congreso R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Forma de pago: Depósito en el Banco do Brasil: Cuenta corriente: 23.108-8 Agencia bancaria: 3296-4 A nombre de: Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho e/ou Antonia Dilamar Araújo Se debe escanear y enviar el volante de consignación, adjuntándolo a la dirección de correo electrónico: inscr at 6alsfal-uece.com.br. Los/las estudiantes necesitan escanear también un documento oficial que certifique su condición de estudiante y adjuntar el archivo a la misma mensaje. El asunto del mensaje debe consistir en el nombre completo del participante y se debe dejar en blanco el cuerpo del mensaje. Debido a los costos y las dificultades en cuanto a las transferencias bancarias desde el extranjero, los participantes extranjeros pagarán las tasas de inscripción para el congreso y/o lo(s) minicurso(s) en el primer día de asistencia en el evento. El/los importe(s) a pagar es/son el/los que coincide(n) con el segundo período de tiempo en el cuadro arriba (del 16 de julio al 14 de septiembre 2010), de acuerdo con la categoría de cada uno. Sólo los pagos en moneda brasileña (real) serán aceptados. Los estudiantes deben mostrar un documento oficial que certifique su condición de estudiante. Estamos esperando por ustedes aquí en Fortaleza para que podamos tener un gran evento académico sistémico-funcional. Un cordial saludo, Dr. Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho (UECE) Dra. Antonia Dilamar Araújo (UECE) Presidente y Vicepresidente ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENGLISH: Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to make the official announcement of the call for papers for the VI Conference of the Latin American Systemic-Functional Linguistics Association-ALSFAL, which will be hosted by the Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics - Center of Humanities / Universidade Estadual do Ceará (Fortaleza - Ceará - Northeastern Brazil) and held at Ponta Mar Hotel (****) from the 5th to the 9th of October, 2010. The theme of the VI ALSFAL is: 'Systemic-Functional Linguistics ans its potential for semiotic-discursive empowerment'. For further information on the theme, the program, the invited researchers, the committees, the registration for the conference and for the pre-conference workshops, the accommodation, the sponsors, etc, please visit the VI ALSFAL page at http://www.6alsfal-uece.com.br/ (contact: info at 6alsfal-uece.com.br). Papers may be submitted in the areas below, viewed necessarily from an SFL perspective, but not necessarily in an exclusive way: · DISCOURSE STUDIES: CRITICAL / STRATEGIC / POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS - CDA / SDA / PDA · CULTURAL STUDIES · GENRE/REGISTER STUDIES AND INTERTEXTUALITY · COHESION AND COHERENCE · ARTISTIC LINGUISTICS · MEDIA LINGUISTICS · ORGANIZATIONAL/ADMINISTRATIVE LINGUISTICS: LANGUAGE IN THE WORKPLACE · ECOLINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE POLICY: STUDIES ON LINGUISTIC PLANNING, LINGUISTIC HUMAN RIGHTS, MIGRANTS' LANGUAGES, LINGUICISM, AND LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM · EDUCATIONAL LINGUISTICS: CRITICAL LANGUAGE AWARENESS, TEACHING OF THE POWER-RELATED GENRES, CRITICAL LITERACY · STUDIES ON TECHNICAL LANGUAGES AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION · CLINICAL LINGUISTICS · FORENSIC LINGUISTICS · LINGUISTIC ONTOGENESIS · DESCRIPTION OF INDIVIDUAL LANGUAGES · MULTILINGUAL STUDIES: DESCRIPTION, COMPARISON AND TYPOLOGY OF LANGUAGES; TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING; L2 TEACHING AND LEARNING · MULTISEMIOTIC STUDIES: MULTIMODALITY IN THE SPOKEN, WRITTEN, VISUAL, AND SIGNED MEDIA, AND MULTIMODALITY IN THE WEB CHANNEL · APPRAISAL THEORY · CORPUS LINGUISTICS · COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS: NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING The study of each of these may result in a potential means of making available individual and collective semiotic-discursive resources and opening opportunities for disadvantaged people to strengthen their self-determination, to develop their abilities, to read the world critically and live in it also critically or, in other words, to empower themselves as constructors of their daily success and as authors of their own biography. We wish to dialog with and reflect on SFL from the viewpoint of empowerment. But we wish to do so with researchers, teachers, and students working on these areas in Latin America and world-wide, which is the reason why all of you are warmly invited to Fortaleza to share with us your views on these matters. As for the registration: REGISTRATION Participation modalities: Workshops - invited instructors. Plenary sessions - invited participants. Roundtables - invited participants. (NOTE: Plenarists, roundtable participants, and workshop instructors must also go through the registration steps, except for fee payment. Roundtable participants must register individually, but the coordinator must register, besides her/his individual paper, the table's general abstract). Coordinated paper sessions - participants in general, with a Ph.D. or an MA degree or graduate students: Session duration: 2 hours. Number of participants: up to 4, including the coordinator. Time per participant: 20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion. Individual paper sessions - participants in general, with a Ph.D. or an MA degree or graduate students: Session duration: 2 hours. Number of participants: 4 or 5. Time per participant: 20 minutes + 5 minutes for discussion (4 participants) or 20 minutes + 4 minutes for discussion (5 participants). Posters - participants in general, including undergraduate students. Format: 90 x 90 cm. As regards the coordinated and individual paper sessions as well as the posters: Dates: Abstract submission: April 12 through June 06. Acceptance letter: from June 28 onwards both on the conference page and by automatic e-mail message. NOTE: Participants of coordinated paper sessions must register individually. Abstracts: Language: Portuguese, Spanish, or English. Size: up to 2,200 characters with spaces. Format: title, abstract, and 3 key words. Structure of the abstract: theme, relevance, objective(s), theoretical framework, methodology, result(s) or preliminary result(s), and conclusion(s) or preliminary conclusion(s). The keywords must be separated by semicolons. NOTE: The registration of papers with co-authorship must be made as follows: 1. Each co-author that intends to be at the paper's presentation session registers login (e-mail address) and password and fills out the registration form. 2. Only one co-author fills out the abstract form and includes the name(s) of the other(s). A non-registered co-author will not receive a certificate, but her/his authorship will be duly recorded in the conference proceedings. Registration fees: Dates Types of participants up to July 15 from July 16 from September 15 onwards Professors-researchers Conference R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Workshop R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Graduate students Conference R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Workshop R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Undergraduate students Conference R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Workshop R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participants without paper or poster presentation Conference R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Workshop R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Payment: Deposit in Banco do Brasil: Checking account: 23.108-8 Branch: 3296-4 In favor of: Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho e/ou Antonia Dilamar Araújo The payment receipt must be scanned and sent, as an attachment, to the e-mail address: inscr at 6alsfal-uece.com.br. Students must also scan an official document that certifies their student status and attach the file to the same message. The message subject must be the participant's full name, and the body of the message must be left blank. Due to the costs and the difficulties as regards bank transfers from abroad, foreign participants will pay the registration fees for the conference and/or workshop(s) on the first day of attendance at the event. The amount(s) to be paid is/are that/those relative to the second time range within the above table (from July 16th through September 14th, 2010), according to each one's category. Only payments in Brazilian currency (real) will be accepted. Students must show an official document that certifies their student status. We will be waiting for you here in fortaleza so that we can have a great systemic-functional academic event. Our best regards, Dr. Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho (UECE) Dr. Antonia Dilamar Araújo (UECE) Convenors Datas Tipos de participantes até 15 de julho a partir de 16 julho a partir de 15 setembro Professore(a)s-pesquisadore(a)s Congresso R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Minicurso R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Estudantes de pós-graduação Congresso R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Estudantes de graduação Congresso R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Minicurso R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participantes sem trabalho Congresso R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 From eitkonen at utu.fi Thu Apr 15 13:05:14 2010 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:05:14 +0300 Subject: peer reviewing Message-ID: Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. Esa . Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From amnfn at well.com Thu Apr 15 13:14:09 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:14:09 -0700 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Esa, I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something has been "scientifically proven" or not. What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') > > When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. > > The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. > > In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. > > Esa > . > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > > From hopper at cmu.edu Thu Apr 15 13:31:56 2010 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:31:56 -0400 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Let's not forget, too, that the misunderstood geniuses of our field are themselves perfectly capable of wielding their gate-keeping privileges when the opportunity comes their way. It's largely a question of, as the saying goes, whose ox is being gored. Paul On Thu, April 15, 2010 09:14, A. Katz wrote: > Esa, > > > I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. > > > But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond > the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and > everything that goes into deciding whether something has been > "scientifically proven" or not. > > > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? > > > --Aya > > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > > >> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' >> discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine more or >> less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 >> years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= >> 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >> >> >> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more >> interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, >> and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) >> have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, >> the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, >> because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >> >> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >> published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not this >> has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has >> quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors >> privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been >> the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or >> antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >> >> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to >> understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only >> mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. >> people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start >> claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >> >> Esa >> . >> >> >> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >> >> >> -- Paul J. Hopper Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities Department of English Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Thu Apr 15 13:37:17 2010 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:37:17 +0200 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A. Katz wrote: > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? The simple answer is: defend pluralism. If there are several different journals (conferences, employers, etc.), I can submit my work to the next one if I'm rejected. I think this has worked fairly well in the past, and it works even better nowadays, when it's so easy to submit to journals all over the world. So I'm all for peer review, but with one caveat: Peer reviewers should help editors select the best papers, and make suggestions for how to improve them. Peer reviewers (and editors) should NOT force authors to rework their papers. In an earlier post, someone said that "very few articles are publishable in their original form". I find this a very strange statement -- as if there were an absolute threshold of "publishability". All this is extremely subjective, so pluralism is absolutely vital. I think one of the most important functions of editorial selection is typically underestimated: The prior self-selection by the authors. Authors typically send only their best work to the best journals. So high-quality journals tend to publish high-quality papers because they tend to get high-quality submissions, not because the reviewing process adds significantly to the quality. So let's keep peer review, "accept" and "reject", but let's get rid of "revise and resubmit". The result will be much faster publication, a higher percentage of journal papers among linguists' publications (making linguistics look more respectable), and equal quality. Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 From mark at polymathix.com Thu Apr 15 17:57:43 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:57:43 -0500 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A. Katz wrote: > > But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond > the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and > everything that goes into deciding whether something has been > "scientifically proven" or not. > > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? I have a technocratic answer to your question, but first the non-technocratic part: If you step back and take the meaning of "peer review" at face value (instead of taking the conventional sense -- part of a scholarly journal's quality control process), we find that peers review each other's work in various ways. Serving as a reviewer for a journal is one of those ways. Choosing to publish a rebuttal or commentary to a peer's paper is another way. Evaluating a peer's papers to support hiring, tenure, promotion and firing decisions is another way (you know you've been "reviewed" by your peers if you don't get tenure). Although publishing companies may be interested in quality control for whatever business reasons they might have, the community of peers is interested in quality control because it's synonymous with the scientific method. I think Tom's and Esa's comments boil down to the observation that the peer review process in the conventional sense is not really supporting the community's need for quality control -- it doesn't really contribute to the advancement of our science. Both would probably agree that it has in fact worked against the advancement of our science in many cases. We can fix that sad state of affairs by minimizing the impact of the peer review process on the fine-grained content of what gets published. Martin's suggestion would accomplish that, but it could only be implemented if the publishing companies went along with the change in policy. I might be wrong, but I think that's either unlikely, or else likely to be a very long time in coming. That's why I've suggested that the community might consider taking the matter into its own capable hands -- which brings us to the technocratic part of my comment: I have to wonder what would happen if this community of thinkers went ahead and built its own Web 2.0 platform for the submission, review and dissemination of papers. "Peer review" could be an ongoing, potentially never-ending process if submissions were published after relatively minimal screening (Martin's accept/reject with no revise/resubmit), perhaps by a rotating selection of peers. If successful, the platform itself would become a research tool for the community. I think we're all used to relegating these kinds of ideas to the sort of futuristic pie-in-the-sky fiction you'd find in a Neal Stephenson novel. But to a large extent, that future is already here. There are no remaining technical barriers to this kind of thing, only ideological ones. So if we built it, would they come (as the phrase goes)? More importantly, would the community use the contents of such a platform in its hiring and tenure decisions? -- Mark Mark P. Line > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > >> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, >> Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine more or less >> redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years >> that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur >> Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >> >> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more >> interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, >> and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have >> written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the >> referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, >> because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >> >> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >> published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not this >> has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has >> quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors >> privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been >> the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or >> antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >> >> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to >> understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only >> mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. >> people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming >> 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >> >> Esa >> . >> >> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >> >> -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From yutamb at mail.ru Thu Apr 15 19:03:37 2010 From: yutamb at mail.ru (Yuri Tambovtsev) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:03:37 +0700 Subject: Peer Reviewing should be "revise and resubmit". Message-ID: Dear Funknet colleagues, I am quite happy that the problem of Peer Reviewing in general and in particular "revise and resubmit" process caused many answers. As Aya correctly pointed out "What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it?". When I wrote about this burning question to the Typologists net, the owners just kicked me out. I mean they banned me from this typologists' net of the LinguistList. This is also a sort of a solution, but not for the "thinking people". Of cause, it is easier to let everything stay as it is. I really enjoyed the ideas that were expressed by "our community of thinkers". Why should anybody else correct my ideas in my article? I agree that my broken and clumsy English should be improved, but nothing else. If I write someting I answer by it by my good name. Reviewers never improved my articles for all 40 years. So I ask after Aya: "What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it?" I am sure the author of the article should receive the reviewers answers with their names for him/her to know who said this or that. Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk From keithjohnson at berkeley.edu Fri Apr 16 05:44:01 2010 From: keithjohnson at berkeley.edu (Keith Johnson) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:44:01 -0700 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or small- minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and resubmit like this: minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make a few changes." major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see the whole story to be convinced." I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that help me make a better case. respectfully submitted, Keith Johnson On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: > Esa, > > I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. > > But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, > beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, > tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something > has been "scientifically proven" or not. > > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > >> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' >> discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine >> more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings >> from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my >> first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >> >> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and >> more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is >> the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, >> rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for >> publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this >> just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >> >> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >> published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not >> this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who >> has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that >> editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there >> has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong >> convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has >> rejected the article. >> >> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not >> to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can >> only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status >> quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, >> and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds >> of change. >> >> Esa >> . >> >> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >> From dlevere at ilstu.edu Fri Apr 16 16:41:03 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:41:03 -0400 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <441F61AB-01B0-431B-9FDF-4A6BEB3073C7@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: While on the subject of scientific 'proof', one of the best guides I know of for infusing linguistics with more scientific rigor is Keith's own 2008 book, Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. Everyone reading this list should own a copy. Dan On 16 Apr 2010, at 01:44, Keith Johnson wrote: > When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or small-minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. > > On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and resubmit like this: > > minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make a few changes." > > major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see the whole story to be convinced." > > I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that help me make a better case. > > respectfully submitted, > > Keith Johnson > > > > On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: > >> Esa, >> >> I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. >> >> But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something has been "scientifically proven" or not. >> >> What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? >> >> --Aya >> >> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >> >> >> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: >> >>> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >>> >>> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >>> >>> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >>> >>> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >>> >>> Esa >>> . >>> >>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >>> > From bkbergen at cogsci.ucsd.edu Fri Apr 16 16:47:05 2010 From: bkbergen at cogsci.ucsd.edu (Benjamin Bergen) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:47:05 -0700 Subject: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: joint meeting of CSDL and ESLP Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS Joint meeting of: The Conceptual Structure Discourse, and Language Conference (CSDL) and The Embodied and Situated Language Processing Workshop (ESLP) San Diego, California September 16-19, 2010. http://embodiedlanguage.org/csdl_eslp.html Keynote Speakers: Michael Arbib, USC Lera Boroditsky, Stanford University Craig Chambers, UTM Matthew Crocker, U Saarbruecken Vic Ferreira, UC San Diego Adele Goldberg, Princeton George Lakoff, UC Berkeley Teenie Matlock, UC Merced Fey Parrill, Case Western Gabriella Vigliocco, University College London Rolf Zwaan, University of Rotterdam Submissions: We welcome submissions of abstracts for oral or poster presentations on topics related to language and cognition, including but not limited to embodiment, situatedness, language use, figurative language, grammatical constructions, gesture, comprehension, production, and learning. Successful submissions will address theoretically important issues using appropriate empirical methods, such as linguistic analysis, corpus analysis, computational modeling, behavioral experimentation, electrophysiology, and brain imaging. Abstracts can now be submitted electronically, and must be submitted by the deadline of April 30, 2010. They will be reviewed anonymously by expert reviewers, and authors will be notified with decisions by early June, 2010. Support for students: Through National Science Foundation support, the meeting is able to provide up to $250 in funding to support travel costs and registration fees for 25 students participating in this meeting. Students may request to be considered for support using the form to appear on the meeting's website. Reviews of abstract submissions will be entirely independent of and unaffected by requests for support. Schedule: The goal of this joint meeting is to foster interdisciplinary interactions. To this end, the first day of the meeting (September 16th) will feature tutorials on "Experimental and Computational Research Methods for Cognitive Linguists" and "Cognitive Linguistics Research for Experimentalists". These will be taught by the invited speakers and are intended to provide basic familiarity with the tools, vocabulary, and practices of the relevant disciplines. More details on the tutorial topics will become available on the website. Research presentations will start on the afternoon of September 16th and run through the afternoon of September 19th in a single-session format. Aside from the keynote speakers, there will be competitive slots for 20-minute oral presentations as well as poster sessions. About the meeting: CSDL, the biennial meeting of the North American branch of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, was first held in San Diego in 1994. Cognitive Linguistics is the cover term for a collection of approaches to language that focus heavily on the "embodiment" of language. Under the rubric of embodiment, cognitive linguists investigate the extent to which form depends on meaning, function, and use, as well as ways in which language use depends on non-linguistic neurocognitive systems. (For more on previous CSDLs: http://www.cogling.org/csdlconfs.shtml) ESLP 2010 is the third event in a workshop series that started in 2007. The first goal of the conference is to bring together researchers working on the interaction of language and visual/motor processing in embodied, situated, and language-for-action research traditions. A further focus is on uniting converging and complementary evidence from three different methods (behavioral, neuropsychological, and computational). The first meeting led to the publication of a special issue on embodied language processing in Brain and Language (to appear in March 2010). ESLP took place again in June, 2009 in Rotterdam, in association with the international Cognitive Science Society Conference in Amsterdam (see http://embodiedlanguage.org/). This meeting brings together two populations of researchers - cognitive linguists on the one hand and psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists studying embodied and situated language processing on the other. There are substantial gains to be made by bringing these two communities together. They share an interest in investigating how language and its structure depend upon situated use and embodied cognition, but differ in their methods and many of their assumptions. Cognitive linguists typically use traditional methods of linguistic analysis (corpus methods, elicitation, native speaker judgments) to develop nuanced and theoretically sophisticated accounts of how language is embodied how language structure depends upon constraints imposed by known properties of the human brain and body. They additionally focus on how language use affects language structure and language change. The ESLP community (psycholinguists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists) typically use experimental and computational methods to ask questions about the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying linguistic embodiment, and about the neural and cognitive mechanisms when language is processed in its grounded physical and social contexts situatedness. For more information, please consult the meeting website: http://embodiedlanguage.org/csdl_eslp.html. If you have further questions, please contact the conference organizers, Ben Bergen (UCSD) and Pia Knoeferle (Bielefeld University), at csdl.eslp at gmail.com. +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ Benjamin K. Bergen Associate Professor, Department of Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego bkbergen at ucsd.edu http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~bkbergen/ Director, Language and Cognition Lab http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/lcl/ Associate Editor, Cognitive Linguistics http://www.cogling.group.shef.ac.uk/ +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ From amnfn at well.com Fri Apr 16 17:52:16 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:52:16 -0700 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dan, Thanks for recommending Keith's book. I would very much like to read it. I'll sse if I can't get access to a copy. Besides quantitative methods of verifying something to be true, I wonder if there might not be also valid qualitative tests. I'm not just talking about a single counter-example falsifying a hypothesis. I'm also thinking in terms of positive proof. I think that when the probability that something could happen entirely by chance is low, then even a single occurrence of it may be ascribed probative significance. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > While on the subject of scientific 'proof', one of the best guides I know of for infusing linguistics with more scientific rigor is Keith's own 2008 book, Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. Everyone reading this list should own a copy. > > Dan > > > On 16 Apr 2010, at 01:44, Keith Johnson wrote: > >> When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or small-minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. >> >> On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and resubmit like this: >> >> minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make a few changes." >> >> major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see the whole story to be convinced." >> >> I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that help me make a better case. >> >> respectfully submitted, >> >> Keith Johnson >> >> >> >> On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: >> >>> Esa, >>> >>> I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. >>> >>> But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something has been "scientifically proven" or not. >>> >>> What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? >>> >>> --Aya >>> >>> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >>> >>> >>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: >>> >>>> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >>>> >>>> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >>>> >>>> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >>>> >>>> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >>>> >>>> Esa >>>> . >>>> >>>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >>>> >> > > From Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU Fri Apr 16 17:58:02 2010 From: Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:58:02 -0600 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Aya - yes, of course. Single observations matter - if something happened, it happened, and it's counter-evidence to any theory that says it could not possibly have happened. It may be possible to show that it's not relevant to that theory, but it may also be an entering wedge - similar observations may come along. Lise On Apr 16, 2010, at 11:52 AM, A. Katz wrote: > Dan, > > Thanks for recommending Keith's book. I would very much like to read > it. I'll sse if I can't get access to a copy. > > Besides quantitative methods of verifying something to be true, I > wonder if there might not be also valid qualitative tests. > > I'm not just talking about a single counter-example falsifying a > hypothesis. I'm also thinking in terms of positive proof. I think > that when the probability that something could happen entirely by > chance is low, then even a single occurrence of it may be ascribed > probative significance. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > >> While on the subject of scientific 'proof', one of the best guides >> I know of for infusing linguistics with more scientific rigor is >> Keith's own 2008 book, Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. >> Everyone reading this list should own a copy. >> >> Dan >> >> >> On 16 Apr 2010, at 01:44, Keith Johnson wrote: >> >>> When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to >>> say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific >>> community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare >>> a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves >>> of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me >>> to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of >>> course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or >>> small-minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. >>> >>> On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and >>> resubmit like this: >>> >>> minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are >>> on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who >>> isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make >>> a few changes." >>> >>> major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've >>> left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see >>> the whole story to be convinced." >>> >>> I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making >>> a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that >>> help me make a better case. >>> >>> respectfully submitted, >>> >>> Keith Johnson >>> >>> >>> >>> On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: >>> >>>> Esa, >>>> >>>> I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. >>>> >>>> But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, >>>> beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, >>>> tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something >>>> has been "scientifically proven" or not. >>>> >>>> What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? >>>> >>>> --Aya >>>> >>>> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: >>>> >>>>> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' >>>>> discussion, Tom Givón sent in his contribution which made mine >>>>> more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings >>>>> from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of >>>>> my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >>>>> >>>>> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >>>>> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and >>>>> more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that >>>>> is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you >>>>> (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer >>>>> it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming >>>>> that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the >>>>> case. >>>>> >>>>> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >>>>> published, then (just as in Tom Givón's case) more often than >>>>> not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in >>>>> question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also >>>>> happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good >>>>> measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a >>>>> man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling >>>>> the referees, has rejected the article. >>>>> >>>>> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not >>>>> to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this >>>>> can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the >>>>> status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody >>>>> does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so >>>>> by the winds of change. >>>>> >>>>> Esa >>>>> . >>>>> >>>>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >>>>> >>> >> >> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017 Boulder CO 80302 http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/index.html Professor Emerita of Linguistics Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science University of Colorado Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics] Fellow, Linguistic Society of America Campus Mail Address: UCB 594, Institute for Cognitive Science Campus Physical Address: CINC 234 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder From bischoff.st at gmail.com Sat Apr 17 17:31:43 2010 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:31:43 -0400 Subject: IJAL accept, reject, resubmit figures Message-ID: Hi all, In the latest SSILA news letter Keren Rice has a very nice piece on the editorship of IJAL. I've taken the numbers she provides regarding submissions, acceptance, rejection and revise and resubmit and pasted them below. I thought they might be interesting in light on the recent discussions regarding such issues. The bold below is mine. Cheers, Shannon The year in review: 2009: 35 submissions 17 are on languages of North America; 16 on languages of Latin America; two mixed At year’s end: 8 accepted, 9 rejected (of these 4 rejected; *5 revise and resubmit*); rest in review process phonetics and phonology: 5 morphology, syntax, semantics: 25 historical: other topics: 5 (A submission may be counted in more than one category.) 2008: 33 submissions (including individual papers in the issue) more than half are on languages of Latin America At year end: 9 accepted, 5 rejected ( *1 revise and resubmit*; 4 reject), rest in review process phonetics and phonology: 6 morphology, syntax, semantics: 14 historical: 11 A comparison with previous years 2007: 27 submissions (year end: 4 accept; 11 reject (7 revise and resubmit; 4 reject)) 2006: 36 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) 2005: 40 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) From noel_houck at hotmail.com Sat Apr 17 19:07:44 2010 From: noel_houck at hotmail.com (Noel Houck) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:07:44 -0700 Subject: IJAL accept, reject, resubmit figures In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I agree. > Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:31:43 -0400 > From: bischoff.st at gmail.com > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Subject: [FUNKNET] IJAL accept, reject, resubmit figures > > Hi all, > > In the latest SSILA news letter Keren Rice has a very nice piece on the > editorship of IJAL. I've taken the numbers she provides regarding > submissions, acceptance, rejection and revise and resubmit and pasted them > below. I thought they might be interesting in light on the recent > discussions regarding such issues. The bold below is mine. > > Cheers, > Shannon > > The year in review: > 2009: 35 submissions 17 are on languages of North America; 16 on languages > of Latin America; two mixed At year’s end: 8 accepted, 9 rejected (of these > 4 rejected; *5 revise and resubmit*); rest in review process phonetics and > phonology: 5 morphology, syntax, semantics: 25 historical: other topics: 5 > (A submission may be counted in more than one category.) > > 2008: 33 submissions (including individual papers in the issue) more than > half are on languages of Latin America At year end: 9 accepted, 5 rejected ( > *1 revise and resubmit*; 4 reject), rest in review process phonetics and > phonology: 6 morphology, syntax, semantics: 14 historical: 11 > > A comparison with previous years > 2007: 27 submissions (year end: 4 accept; 11 reject (7 revise and resubmit; > 4 reject)) > 2006: 36 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) > 2005: 40 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) From tgivon at uoregon.edu Sun Apr 18 19:41:45 2010 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:41:45 -0600 Subject: etc. Message-ID: I thought maybe a PS would be worth pursuing. I think Paul Hopper was absolutely right in pointing out, if that is what he intended to do, that none of us are blameless. But of course, the point was even-more-eloquently made long ago by that inspired man who caution us "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". I would hope however, that in the tricky balance academics try to maintain between casting stones (power) and telling the 'truth' as they see it (science), we all strive as hard as we can to reduce the proportion of the former and enhance that of the latter. As fallible humans, that is really all we can do. The main thrust of my earlier note, leastwise as I understood it (tho of course hunting for hidden meanings is always possible), was that publications in science should not concentrate so much on being the Gate Keepers & Guardians of the True Faith, but rather should strive more toward disseminating new information and, God forbid, on occasion, new ideas. In particular, our young generation ought to be encouraged and cherished, not because they necessarily bear the ultimate truth, whatever that mythological beast may be, but because they might some day, when we are long gone, continue what we have been trying to do, and hopefully even improve upon it. This is where I think the much-maligned 'un-refereed' volumes have served, in my experience, an important tho admittedly 'permissive' function. To give a more updated example--I recently co-edited a volume that grouped together contributions from many eminent senior scholars, all of them pre-selected and none refereed (except by their peers around the table). But the two papers in the collection that, in my frail judgement, were by far the shiningest best in terms of both theory and methodology, were the joint contributions of the two lone grad students (now PhDs). I am sure they could have sent those papers to a journal, gotten feedback, and got them published. But I elected to publish them as submitted, no editorial interference. Not because I couldn't see places where the presentation could have been improved. But because I wanted the two young authors to have their say as THEY saw fit. Cheers, TG From eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Apr 19 15:32:59 2010 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:32:59 +0300 Subject: Experimental psychology as a model? Message-ID: Dear Dirk: It is interesting that you should mention the journals of experimental psychology as a model for linguists to imitate. Some of my best friends do experimental psycholinguistics, and for years I have been listening to what they have to say. Here it is, in a nutshell. Every major journal has its own very clearly defined profile. No psycholinguist who knows the ropes will ever submit an article to journal X that has not been calibrated to exactly meet the requirements of journal X. When they submit to journal Y, they recalibrate. Novices who do not know this, pay the price, but they learn quickly. This is the TRUTH, but there are always those who make anything to deny it. In this respect, I would say that the situation is better in linguistics. You are of course right that different people may have different views about what it means to prove that A, rather B, is the case. This is true often but not always. Suppose someone says e.g. that analogical relations among a set of sentences cannot be formalized; and suppose, furthermore, that it IS formalized (i.e. it is not just the case that it can be formalized but that it IS formalized); then every sane person accepts this as a proof (cf. Michael Kac's review in Studies in Language, Vol. 32:4). There are those who do not practice what they preach, and then there are those who do. When acting as a referee, I have always accepted generativist articles if (as is mostly the case) they are of high quality by their own standards. If you (whoever you may be) dislike my mentioning this elementary fact, it is not in my power to appease you. Esa Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From yutamb at mail.ru Wed Apr 21 18:20:03 2010 From: yutamb at mail.ru (Yuri Tambovtsev) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:20:03 +0700 Subject: peer review system substantiate complaints about this Message-ID: Dear Funknet colleagues, may be, it is not only I, who is not satisfied with the resilts of Peer Review. If what I received through the INternet is correct, then 92% of scholars are not satisfied either. Hope it is not somebody's joke. This is what I received: "As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organization of modern science.why not apply scientific [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001)." What is your own opinion? Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev From SHANLEY at bu.edu Fri Apr 23 13:21:50 2010 From: SHANLEY at bu.edu (Shanley Allen) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:21:50 -0400 Subject: Fwd: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing Message-ID: Given recent discussion on this board, I thought this conference announcement would be of interest. Shanley. Begin forwarded message: > From: "ISPR 2010" > Date: April 23, 2010 3:46:35 AM EDT > Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing > > Dear Shanley Allen: > > As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) > > "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) > > Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. > > But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organization of modern science…why not apply scientific [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001). > > This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized in the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th - July 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA. > > ======================================================= > Deadlines for ISPR 2010 > May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals > May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification > June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version. > ======================================================= > > ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have formal presentations first and informal conversations later. > > Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings. > > Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions. > > All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. > > Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions. > > Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. > > Best regards, > > ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee > > If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. > > References > > Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press. > > Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were accessed on February 1, 2010) > > Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000) > From amnfn at well.com Fri Apr 23 13:30:13 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:30:13 -0700 Subject: Fwd: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I got that too. Did everybody on Funknet receive an invitation? Who are the organizers? Is this a legitimate conference? --Aya http://www.well.com/user/amnfn/ On Fri, 23 Apr 2010, Shanley Allen wrote: > Given recent discussion on this board, I thought this conference announcement would be of interest. > Shanley. > > Begin forwarded message: > >> From: "ISPR 2010" >> Date: April 23, 2010 3:46:35 AM EDT >> Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing >> >> Dear Shanley Allen: >> >> As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) >> >> "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) >> >> Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. >> >> But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organization of modern science…why not apply scientific [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001). >> >> This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized in the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th - July 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA. >> >> ======================================================= >> Deadlines for ISPR 2010 >> May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals >> May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification >> June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version. >> ======================================================= >> >> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have formal presentations first and informal conversations later. >> >> Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings. >> >> Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions. >> >> All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. >> >> Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions. >> >> Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. >> >> Best regards, >> >> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee >> >> If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. >> >> References >> >> Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press. >> >> Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were accessed on February 1, 2010) >> >> Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000) >> > > > From mark at polymathix.com Fri Apr 23 18:40:18 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:40:18 -0500 Subject: Fwd: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The conference is running under the auspices of the IIIS (International Institute of Informatics and Systemics). Their gig is postmodernist systems philosophy and they publish a couple of, umm, peer-reviewed journals in English and Spanish. Looks like sort of an anti-establishment thing like LACUS. Maybe it's still hard to let your hair down as a postmodernist in systems science. So I think the short answer is that this conference is legitimate enough, but probably only within the postmodernist paradigm. -- Mark Mark P. Line A. Katz wrote: > I got that too. Did everybody on Funknet receive an invitation? > > Who are the organizers? Is this a legitimate conference? > > > --Aya > > http://www.well.com/user/amnfn/ > > On Fri, 23 Apr 2010, Shanley Allen wrote: > >> Given recent discussion on this board, I thought this conference >> announcement would be of interest. >> Shanley. >> >> Begin forwarded message: >> >>> From: "ISPR 2010" >>> Date: April 23, 2010 3:46:35 AM EDT >>> Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing >>> >>> Dear Shanley Allen: >>> >>> As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed >>> that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; >>> p.192) >>> >>> "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer >>> review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of >>> scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) >>> >>> Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose >>> processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, >>> 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing >>> number of journal editors. >>> >>> But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific >>> edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality >>> assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is >>> central to the organization of modern science why not apply scientific >>> [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001). >>> >>> This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer >>> Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized in >>> the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge >>> Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010 >>> (http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th - July >>> 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA. >>> >>> ======================================================>> Deadlines for >>> ISPR 2010 >>> May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions >>> Proposals >>> May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification >>> June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version. >>> ======================================================>> >>> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium >>> program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal >>> conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have >>> formal presentations first and informal conversations later. >>> >>> Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both >>> accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing >>> process and the accepted papers will be included in the same >>> proceedings. >>> >>> Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic >>> forums) will be held for each session included in the conference >>> program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and >>> authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week >>> before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in >>> peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions. >>> >>> All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing >>> processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, >>> and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will >>> support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be >>> accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to >>> be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. >>> >>> Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have >>> access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the >>> reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so >>> they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. >>> Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their >>> respective submissions. >>> >>> Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference >>> (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their >>> papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics >>> and Informatics. >>> >>> Best regards, >>> >>> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee >>> >>> If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email >>> to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject >>> line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de >>> Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. >>> >>> References >>> >>> Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review >>> and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press. >>> >>> Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends >>> in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at >>> http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and >>> http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were >>> accessed on February 1, 2010) >>> >>> Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary >>> Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000) >>> >> >> >> -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From timo.honkela at tkk.fi Mon Apr 26 08:14:05 2010 From: timo.honkela at tkk.fi (Timo Honkela) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:14:05 +0300 Subject: The most and the least typical Romance language In-Reply-To: <8A9729860AF144409E171EB9602024AC@ngufa28a6c2639> Message-ID: Our article "Complexity of European Union Languages: A comparative approach" in the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics" may be of some interest for you. The abstract is below, the paper is available at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a792160699. I can also send the paper by e-mail upon request. Best regards, Timo Honkela (timo.honkela at tkk.fi) - - Abstract In this article, we are studying the differences between the European Union languages using statistical and unsupervised methods. The analysis is conducted in the different levels of language: the lexical, morphological and syntactic. Our premise is that the difficulty of the translation could be perceived as differences or similarities in different levels of language. The results are compared to linguistic groupings. Two approaches are selected for the analysis. A Kolmogorov complexity-based approach is used to compare the language structure in syntactic and morphological levels. A morpheme-level comparison is conducted based on an automated segmentation of the languages into morpheme-like units. The way the languages convey information in these levels is taken as a measure of similarity or dissimilarity between languages and the results are compared to classical linguistic classifications. The results have a significant impact on the design of (statistical) machine translation systems. If the source language conveys information in the morphological level and the target language in the syntactic level, it is clear that the machine translation system must be able to transfer the information from one level to another. On Mon, 15 Mar 2010, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote: > The most and the least typical Romance language. We have computed six Romance languages to measure the phono-typological distances between them. It is possible to find the Romance language which has the shortest distance to all these Romance languages. It is Moldavian. The ordered series of the phono-typological distances to the centre of the Romance languages: > 17.30 Moldavian > 20.24 - Rumanian > 20.54 Italian > 21.73 -Spanish > 30.27 - Portuguese > 51.17 - French > The least typical Romance language is French. What ideas have you got to share with me about the most and the least typical Romance language from the phono-typological point of view? Looking forward to hearing about you to yutamb at mail.ru Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia. > > > -- Timo Honkela, Chief Research Scientist, PhD, Docent Adaptive Informatics Research Center Aalto University School of Science and Technology P.O.Box 5400, FI-02015 TKK, Finland timo.honkela at tkk.fi, http://www.cis.hut.fi/tho/ From sclancy at uchicago.edu Mon Apr 26 13:51:31 2010 From: sclancy at uchicago.edu (Steven Clancy) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:51:31 -0500 Subject: Extended Final Deadline for SCLC-2010 Conference at Brown University, October 9-11, 2010 Message-ID: Please note: Due to multiple requests, we have extended the final deadline for submission of abstracts until Monday, May 3, 2010. See below for details. ********************************************************************* The Department of Slavic Languages in collaboration with the Center for Language Studies and the Department of Cognitive Science and Linguistics presents THE TENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SLAVIC COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION (SCLC-2010) October 9-11, 2010 The Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA) announces the Call for Papers for the 2010 annual conference. The conference will be held on the campus of Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) on Saturday, October 9 through Monday, October 11, 2010. SCLC-2010 Keynote Speakers Eugene Charniak Brown University Adele E. Goldberg Princeton University Ronald W. Langacker University of California, San Diego CALL FOR PAPERS Abstracts are invited for presentations addressing issues of significance for cognitive linguistics with some bearing on data from the Slavic languages. As long as there is a cognitive orientation, papers may be on synchronic or diachronic topics in any of the traditional areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, or sociolinguistics. In addition to the Slavic Languages, relevant papers on other languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are also acceptable. Abstracts may be submitted up until the extended deadline of Monday, May 3, 2010 to Steven Clancy . Abstracts should be approximately 500 words, but strict word limits are not required. Notification of acceptance will be provided by May 31, 2010. Most presentations at SCLC are given in English, but may be in the native (Slavic) language of the presenter. However, if the presentation is not to be made in English we ask that you provide an abstract in English in addition to an abstract in any other SCLA language. MAIN SESSIONS (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) Each presentation for the main sessions will be given 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute discussion period. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE Saturday, October 9: conference panels beginning in the morning and continue throughout the day, evening reception, keynote address, and conference dinner Sunday, October 10: main sessions and keynote address throughout the day, lunch and dinner Monday, October 11: main sessions and keynote address with conclusion by noon REGISTRATION AND CONFERENCE FEES Registration Fee: Regular participants 60USD Graduate student participants 40USD Conference dinner: 50USD Please make your checks payable to “Brown University”. Registration deadline will be forthcoming. FURTHER INFORMATION Information on transportation, accommodations, and the conference venue will be forthcoming. Please see the conference website for further information. http://languages.uchicago.edu/scla Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island and is accessible from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS, 55 miles away) or T.F. Green Airport (PVD) in Providence. We hope you will be able to join us for SCLC-2010. Please forward this call for papers to your colleagues and graduate students who may be interested in presenting or attending. Sincerely, Steven Clancy Tore Nesset Masako Fidler President, SCLA Vice-President, SCLA Conference Organizer and Host, Brown University on behalf of the SCLA officers and the 2010 SCLA organizing committee From sn.listen at gmail.com Wed Apr 28 18:16:08 2010 From: sn.listen at gmail.com (Sebastian) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:16:08 +0200 Subject: Conference on Grammaticography, Leipzig, Germany Message-ID: *apologies for cross-postings* Full Title: Electronic Grammaticography Date: 11-Feb-2011 - 12-Feb-2011 Location: Leipzig, Germany Contact Person: Sebastian Nordhoff Meeting Email: sebastian_nordhoff at eva.mpg.de Web Site: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/11-grammaticography2011 == Meeting Description == This meeting wants to bring together field linguists, computer scientists,and publishers with the aim of exploring production and dissemination of grammatical descriptions in electronic/hypertextual format == Call for Papers == For long a step-child of lexicography, the domain of grammaticography has received growing interest in the recent past, especially in what concerns lesser studied languages. At least three volumes contain parts dealing with this question (Ameka et al. 2006, Gippert et al. 2006, Payne & Weber 2007). At the same time, advances in information technology mean that a number of techniques become available which can present linguistic information in novel ways. This holds true for multimedial content on the one hand (see e.g. Barwick & Thieberger 2007), but also so called content-management-systems (CMS) provide new possibilities to develop, structure and maintain linguistic information, which were unknown when the idea of an electronic grammar was first put to print in Zaefferer (1998). Recent publications in grammaticography often allude to the possibilities of hypertext grammars (Weber 2006, Evans & Dench 2006), but these possibilities are only starting to get explored theoretically (Good 2004, Nordhoff 2008) and in practice (Nordhoff 2007). This conference will bring together experts on grammar writing and information technology to discuss the theoretical and practical advantages hypertext grammars can offer. We invite papers dealing with the arts and crafts of grammar writing in a wide sense, preferably with an eye on electronic publishing. Topics of interest are: -general formal properties of all grammatical descriptions (GDs) in general, and hypertext GDs in particular -functional requirements for GDs and the responses of the traditional and the hypertext approach (cf. Nordhoff 2008) -discussion or presentation of implementations dealing with the media transition from book to electronic publication -opportunities and risks of hypertext grammars -integration with fieldwork or typological work -treatment of a particular linguistic subfield (phonology, syntax, ...) within a hypertext description Presentations will be 30 minutes + 15 minutes discussion. == Invited Speakers == Nick Evans (Australian National University) Christian Lehmann (Universität Erfurt) Jeff Good (University of Buffalo) == Submission of Abstracts == (a) Length: up to one page of text plus up to one page containing possible tables and references (b) Format: The abstract should include the title of the paper and the text of the abstract but not the author's name or affiliation. The e-mail message to which it is attached should list the title, the author's name, and the author's affiliation. Please send the message to the following address: sebastian_nordhoffeva.mpg.de (c) Deadline: The abstracts should reach us by FRIDAY, October 01. Submitters will be notified by MONDAY, November 01. == References == Ameka, F. K., A. Dench & N. Evans (eds.) (2006). Catching language -- The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Barwick, L. & N. Thieberger (eds.) (2006). Sustainable data from digital fieldwork. Sydney: University of Sydney. Gippert, J., N. Himmelmann & U. Mosel (eds.) (2006). Essentials of language documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Good, J. (2004). "The descriptive grammar as a (meta)database". Paper presented at the EMELD Language Digitization Project Conference 2004. [paper] Nordhoff, S. (2007). "Grammar writing in the Electronic Age". Paper presented at the ALT VII conference in Paris. Nordhoff, S. (2008). "Electronic reference grammars for typology -- challenges and solutions". Journal for Language Documentation and Conservation, 2(2):296-324. Payne, T. E. & D. Weber (eds.) (2007). Perspectives on grammar writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Zaefferer, D. (ed.) (1998). Deskriptive Grammatik und allgemeiner Sprachvergleich. Tübingen: Niemeyer. From nstern at ccny.cuny.edu Fri Apr 30 11:59:39 2010 From: nstern at ccny.cuny.edu (Nancy Stern) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:59:39 -0400 Subject: Call for Papers: Columbia School Linguistics Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS 10th International Columbia School Conference on the Interaction of Linguistic Form and Meaning with Human Behavior October 9-11, 2010 Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey Invited speakers: Flora Klein-Andreu (Stony Brook University) Andrea Tyler (Georgetown University) Conference theme: Grammatical analysis and the discovery of meaning Papers are invited which propose language-specific analyses of natural discourse data within any framework in which languages are viewed as semiotic systems. Particularly encouraged are submissions that advance semantic hypotheses to account for the distribution of linguistic form. The Columbia School is a group of linguists developing the theoretical framework originally established by the late William Diver. Language is seen as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its human users. Grammatical analyses account for the distribution of linguistic forms as an interaction between linguistic meaning and pragmatic and functional factors such as inference, ease of processing, and iconicity. Phonological analyses explain the syntagmatic and paradigmatic distribution of phonological units within signals, also drawing on both communicative function and human physiological and psychological characteristics. Abstracts should be sent as an email attachment to jdavis at ccny.cuny.edu, following these guidelines: *The subject of the email should be: CS Abstract 2010 *In the body of the email, please include: (1) Author name(s) and affiliation(s); (2) Title of the paper; (3) Email addresses and telephone numbers of all authors. *The abstract, containing only the title of the paper and the text of the abstract, should be sent as an attachment (RTF or Word) format. The abstract should be no more than 300 words, although references and/or data may be added to that limit. DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: 15 MAY 2010 The language of the conference is English. Papers delivered in languages other than English will be considered. * * * * * * * * The support of The Columbia School Linguistic Society is gratefully acknowledged www.csling.org * * * * * * * * Selected Columbia School bibliography: Contini-Morava, Ellen, Robert S. Kirsner, and Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller (eds.). 2005. Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Contini-Morava, Ellen, and Barbara Sussman Goldberg (eds.). 1995. Meaning as Explanation: Advances in Linguistic Sign Theory. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Davis, Joseph, Radmila Gorup, and Nancy Stern (eds.). 2006. Advances in Functional Linguistics: Columbia School beyond its origins. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffman, Alan. 1997. The Categories of Grammar: French lui and le. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffman, Alan. 2001. “The Linguistics of William Diver and the Columbia School.” WORD 52:1, 29-68. Reid, Wallis. 1991. Verb and Noun Number in English: A Functional Explanation. London: Longman. Reid, Wallis, Ricardo Otheguy, and Nancy Stern (eds.). 2002. Signal, Meaning, and Message: Perspectives on Sign-Based Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tobin, Yishai. 1997. Phonology as Human Behavior: Theoretical Implications and Clinical Applications. Durham: Duke U Press. For more information, please contact Joseph Davis at jdavis at ccny.cuny.edu Joseph Davis, Ph.D. Associate Professor School of Education, NAC 6207 The City College New York, NY 10031 From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Thu Apr 1 07:18:42 2010 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:18:42 +0200 Subject: peer review: selecting and helping vs. shaping In-Reply-To: <6EBD0725-4878-4C7C-8038-CD96F3896C77@ilstu.edu> Message-ID: I agree that "most editors and referees are competent and reasonable", but I am suggesting that the system can be improved. In particular, I think that "revise and resubmit" isn't very helpful, and I suspect that it is often used when an editor is undecided, not only when an editor is convinced that the paper can and should be improved along the lines proposed by the reviewers. Let's assume the following figures for an average linguistics journal (if they are way off, forget the rest of the message): 20%: "accepted (with recommended improvements)" 50%: "revise and resubmit (R&R)" 30%: "rejected" Now of those 50% with an R&R decision, let's assume that about two thirds are resubmitted, and that most of these are eventually accepted, i.e. 15%: not resubmitted 30%: accepted after rewriting 5%: rejected even after resubmission (This would thus lead to a final acceptance rate of 50% (20% immediately, 30% after rewriting), and an effective rejection rate of 50%.) Now compare this with a new system without R&R, where 50% are accepted with recommended improvements, and 50% are rejected without invitation to resubmit. It seems to me that everyone is better off in the new system: -- especially the 5% rejected even after rewriting -- also the 15% who don't resubmit, because many of the authors will spend a lot of time considering the option of resubmitting to the same journal or trying a different journal -- and also the 30% accepted after rewriting, because their papers come out with a considerable delay (often a year or more), and they come out with features that the authors aren't really happy with -- the editors and reviewers, because they have less work -- the field as a whole, because journal papers appear more quickly The only advantage of R&R that I can see is that most of the 30% of articles that are accepted after rewriting will be more to the reviewers' liking. But is that an advantage for science? Two or three individuals can never be representative of the field as a whole. I think that peer reviewers have very different roles from professors guiding immature students. They can suggest improvements and different directions to their colleagues, but it should not be their role to guide them. Martin Daniel L. Everett schrieb: > I agree, Lise. I am still not quite understanding the problem with 'revise and resubmit'. Seems like a perfectly sensible recommendation. > > I have occasionally decided to submit papers elsewhere because I disagreed with the recommendations of the reviewers. There are plenty of journals, after all (though this doesn't completely rule out the possibility that the same reviewer might get the same ms in succession from more than one journal). > > And on at least two occasions that I can remember, an article of mine that received a very negative review was nevertheless still published in the journal - without revision - (in one case in the most competitive theoretical journal at that time) because the editor thought that the referee had blown it. The editor said explicitly that he was setting aside the referee report (the paper fell within his area of expertise). > > My own impression is that most editors and referees are competent and reasonable and that the process still works well. > > But I also think that there are times when self-publishing can make more sense. Rarely. But not never. > > What am I missing, Martin? > > Dan > > > > On Mar 31, 2010, at 2:42 PM, Lise Menn wrote: > > >> I'm not sure about that, Martin. The author always has the option of seeking another journal if s/he gets a 'revise/resubmit'. I've been on both sides of that recommendation, and in all of my cases, the problem was not a matter of the theory, but of how much a single paper could accomplish and/or of needing restructuring in order to make a coherent argument. >> Lise >> >> On Mar 31, 2010, at 3:32 AM, Martin Haspelmath wrote: >> >> >>> Yes, peer review often has the effect of improving a paper, but in my experience, it is equally often the case that a paper changes in the direction desired by the reviewers, without really getting better. The author wants to publish the paper in the journal, so she goes out of her way to please the reviewers. >>> >>> I think this latter outcome, which is really unfortunate, could be avoided by giving authors just one of two decisions: "accept with recommended revisions" or "reject". >>> >>> If the paper is accepted with recommended revisions, the author can then make use of those suggestions from the reviewers that he finds helpful, while ignoring those that would lead into directions he doesn't want to take. >>> >>> So if we eliminate "revise and resubmit", we would retain the positive effects of peer review, while getting rid of the negative effects that arise from reviewers who feel they want to shape a paper. The task of reviewers should be to help authors improve the paper, and to advise the editor on which papers to select for publication. Their task should not be to shape the paper. >>> >>> Martin Haspelmath >>> >>> >>> > > From yutamb at mail.ru Thu Apr 1 09:10:41 2010 From: yutamb at mail.ru (Yuri Tambovtsev) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 16:10:41 +0700 Subject: I started this discussion on Peer Reviewing Message-ID: Dear Funknet colleagues, I started this discussion on Peer Reviewing and I am quite happy about it. It looks that it is a burning question in linguistics. I agree with those who say that Peer Reviewing results are not satisfactory. It usually forces the author to go along the way he does not like even if the article is published with changes. Peer Reviewing makes the article more primitive and common. One should remove all innovations and new theories. It makes the article more common and not so interesting. It also makes the waiting process too long while our life is so short= Can we afford it? I feel it is a waiste of time of your life. Recently I received two reviews from Linguistica Uralica. The first reviewer wrote that that article has too much new original information and therefore the readers shall not understand it. The other reviewer wrote that there was no new information and therefore it shall not be interesting for the readers. I wonder if the editor read these two contradictory statements before sending them to me? The edotors of the great linguistics journal LANGUAGE usually answered me that my articles are not in the scope of their journal as if I wrote my articles not about languages but about how to collect potatoes in the fields. It was always so. I think they had too many areticles to get published. So they had to reject 90% articles any way. Surely, I published my articles which were rejected in other journals. I am sure the peer reviewing process must be reconsidered. The reviewers must answer for what they wrote. The only way is to open the names of the reviewers. Why should I hide my name if I gave a negative review? If I think the article is bad, then I must say it openly. Otherwise, it is not logical. Otherwise, all the speakers at conferences should also cover their faces if they want to criticize other linguists. Now that the reviewers know that their names are under cover , they write what their LEFT LEG wants. They do not answer for what they write. In courts all judges and lawyers who want to condem a criminal must also cover their faces. But they do not do it. They have great risks, but still they do not hide their names, they sign the papers with their true names. Why should the reviewer cover their names? If they really believe in what they write, they should openly say so. So, I wonder if the general linguistic public support my preposal not to let the reviewers hide their names. Looking forward to hearing from you soon to yutamb at mail.ru Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev From lachlan_mackenzie at hotmail.com Thu Apr 1 11:18:21 2010 From: lachlan_mackenzie at hotmail.com (Lachlan Mackenzie) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:18:21 +0100 Subject: Peer reviewing Message-ID: Dear all, As one of the general editors of Functions of Language, my sense is that the discussion is lacking in realism. Peer reviewers are, to me, the salt of the earth, hard-pressed academics who are prepared to give up some of their precious time to perform an act of charity, a close study of an anonymous manuscript by a perfect stranger and to deliver detailed comments. In my experience, the comments that are given are overwhelmingly fair and constructive and are an essential element in the process of helping authors develop from their first submission through to the final, publishable version. Very few articles are publishable in their original form (10% at most), and the great majority of authors are genuinely grateful for the feedback they receive. This applies to both the ?revise and resubmit? (about 40%) and the ?reject? categories (about 50%). The essential point is the role of the general editors. They are ultimately responsible for the quality of the material that appears in their journal and for the quality of the process between submission and publication/rejection. General editors should therefore not simply farm out the responsibility for the fate of an article to the peer reviewers. They should be familiar with and have formed a preliminary judgement on each article submitted so that they are in a position to advise the author on the status of the recommendations of the reviewers. General editors should also be prepared to negotiate with the author about how the revision should be carried out: slavish implementation of reviewers' recommendations is not the goal, and reviewers will understand that too. What we want to achieve (and generally do) is a published article that is satisfactory to the author and to the general editors, and in which the reviewers can trace the impact of their suggestions for improvement; I reject the suggestion that the result is some kind of insipid compromise. Needless to day, good journal management means that every effort is made to keep the process, for all its valuable complexity, as quick as possible. As for anonymity (double-blind reviewing), I believe that anything that will help persuade highly qualified colleagues to do a review is welcome. There are other and better ways for linguists to criticize each other (for example in peer-reviewed articles!). Lachlan Prof. J. Lachlan Mackenzie Researcher at ILTEC -- Honorary Professor at VU University -- Editor of Functions of Language -- Research Manager of SCIMITAR ILTEC has a new address:Avenida Elias Garcia 147 - 5 dto1050-099 LisboaPortugal Visit my website! From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Apr 1 12:08:15 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:08:15 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Lachlan, Martin, and all, One of the best published pieces I know of on journals, their shortcomings, and what is still right about the process is an old NLLT Topic-Comment piece written by the master of irony and witty prose, Geoff Pullum. The article is: Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1984) Stalking the perfect journal. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2, 261-267. (TOPIC...COMMENT series.) In fact, while on the subtopic of GK Pullum, visit his website to see a list of his 250 publications, most of them in top journals: http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/pubs.html This just shows that the referee process need not overly slow one's academic output. OK. The last two lines were unnecessary. But I couldn't resist. Dan On 1 Apr 2010, at 07:18, Lachlan Mackenzie wrote: > > Dear all, > As one of the general editors of Functions of Language, my sense is that the discussion is lacking in realism. Peer reviewers are, to me, the salt of the earth, hard-pressed academics who are prepared to give up some of their precious time to perform an act of charity, a close study of an anonymous manuscript by a perfect stranger and to deliver detailed comments. In my experience, the comments that are given are overwhelmingly fair and constructive and are an essential element in the process of helping authors develop from their first submission through to the final, publishable version. Very few articles are publishable in their original form (10% at most), and the great majority of authors are genuinely grateful for the feedback they receive. This applies to both the ?revise and resubmit? (about 40%) and the ?reject? categories (about 50%). > The essential point is the role of the general editors. They are ultimately responsible for the quality of the material that appears in their journal and for the quality of the process between submission and publication/rejection. General editors should therefore not simply farm out the responsibility for the fate of an article to the peer reviewers. They should be familiar with and have formed a preliminary judgement on each article submitted so that they are in a position to advise the author on the status of the recommendations of the reviewers. General editors should also be prepared to negotiate with the author about how the revision should be carried out: slavish implementation of reviewers' recommendations is not the goal, and reviewers will understand that too. What we want to achieve (and generally do) is a published article that is satisfactory to the author and to the general editors, and in which the reviewers can trace the impact of their suggestions for improvement; I reject the suggestion that the result is some kind of insipid compromise. Needless to day, good journal management means that every effort is made to keep the process, for all its valuable complexity, as quick as possible. > As for anonymity (double-blind reviewing), I believe that anything that will help persuade highly qualified colleagues to do a review is welcome. There are other and better ways for linguists to criticize each other (for example in peer-reviewed articles!). > Lachlan > > > Prof. J. Lachlan Mackenzie > > > Researcher at ILTEC -- Honorary Professor at VU University -- Editor of Functions of Language -- Research Manager of SCIMITAR > ILTEC has a new address:Avenida Elias Garcia 147 - 5 dto1050-099 LisboaPortugal > Visit my website! From wcroft at unm.edu Thu Apr 1 14:42:21 2010 From: wcroft at unm.edu (Bill Croft) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:42:21 -0600 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear all, I endorse Lachlan's view about the role of the referee. I have not had the experience that Martin apparently has of being told to revise a paper in a direction I didn't want to take it. (Maybe it's because I submit to different journals.) As Dan said, even negative criticisms improve the manuscript in the end. And the author can always explain to the editor why certain recommendations were not followed - I have not had an editor challenge me in those circumstances. On the other hand, as a referee for many journals, there is value for "revise and resubmit". I have very rarely seen a manuscript that can be accepted in its original form (and editors have taken the same view of my own submissions as well). One should not recommend "revise and resubmit" unless one really thinks the paper could be accepted upon reasonable revision (if radical revision is believed necessary, then "reject" is a better recommendation - resubmission would really be a new submission). But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. But I do not know in advance which author will take the recommendations seriously and which will not. Bill >Dear all, >As one of the general editors of Functions of Language, my sense is >that the discussion is lacking in realism. Peer reviewers are, to >me, the salt of the earth, hard-pressed academics who are prepared >to give up some of their precious time to perform an act of charity, >a close study of an anonymous manuscript by a perfect stranger and >to deliver detailed comments. In my experience, the comments that >are given are overwhelmingly fair and constructive and are an >essential element in the process of helping authors develop from >their first submission through to the final, publishable version. >Very few articles are publishable in their original form (10% at >most), and the great majority of authors are genuinely grateful for >the feedback they receive. This applies to both the "revise and >resubmit" (about 40%) and the "reject" categories (about 50%). >The essential point is the role of the general editors. They are >ultimately responsible for the quality of the material that appears >in their journal and for the quality of the process between >submission and publication/rejection. General editors should >therefore not simply farm out the responsibility for the fate of an >article to the peer reviewers. They should be familiar with and have >formed a preliminary judgement on each article submitted so that >they are in a position to advise the author on the status of the >recommendations of the reviewers. General editors should also be >prepared to negotiate with the author about how the revision should >be carried out: slavish implementation of reviewers' recommendations >is not the goal, and reviewers will understand that too. What we >want to achieve (and generally do) is a published article that is >satisfactory to the author and to the general editors, and in which >the reviewers can trace the impact of their suggestions for >improvement; I reject the suggestion that the result is some kind of >insipid compromise. Needless to day, good journal management means >that every effort is made to keep the process, for all its valuable >complexity, as quick as possible. >As for anonymity (double-blind reviewing), I believe that anything >that will help persuade highly qualified colleagues to do a review >is welcome. There are other and better ways for linguists to >criticize each other (for example in peer-reviewed articles!). >Lachlan > > >Prof. J. Lachlan Mackenzie > > >Researcher at ILTEC -- Honorary Professor at VU University -- Editor >of Functions of Language -- Research Manager of SCIMITAR >ILTEC has a new address:Avenida Elias Garcia 147 - 5 dto1050-099 >LisboaPortugal >Visit my website! From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Thu Apr 1 15:00:14 2010 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 17:00:14 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bill Croft wrote: > But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know > how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not > infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant > problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the > original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my > precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my view. In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the author. But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different journal? So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make everybody's lives easier. Martin From wcroft at unm.edu Thu Apr 1 15:21:40 2010 From: wcroft at unm.edu (Bill Croft) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:21:40 -0600 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4B4FE.5030208@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. Bill >Bill Croft wrote: >>But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't >>know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not >>infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant >>problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the >>original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted >>my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend >>rejection. >What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, >in my view. > >In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the >reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often >the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more >knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less >about the paper's topic than the author. > >But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not >is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely >tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at >a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy >with, or try a different journal? > >So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would >make everybody's lives easier. > >Martin From wilcox at unm.edu Thu Apr 1 15:28:12 2010 From: wilcox at unm.edu (Sherman Wilcox) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 09:28:12 -0600 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <12228_1270135313_4BB4BA11_12228_23_1_a06240803c7da680bd84d@[71.228.126.8]> Message-ID: I'm with Bill on this one. I feel that most of the revisions suggested to me by reviewers have improved my papers. For those that were off-base, or that I felt I didn't want to implement, I've always found that when I explain my reasons to the editor, they have been accepted (i.e., I didn't make the changes, and that was accepted by the editor). But as Bill says, maybe this is a reflection of which journals I submit to. -- Sherman Wilcox On 4/1/10 9:21 AM, Bill Croft wrote: > I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in > effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are > always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, > as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers > are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after > "revise and resubmit". > > But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see > the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them > on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the > weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' > perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing > "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors > nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he > revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as > well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. > > Bill > > >> Bill Croft wrote: >>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't >>> know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not >>> infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant >>> problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the >>> original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my >>> precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, >> in my view. >> >> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >> adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the >> reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often >> the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more >> knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less >> about the paper's topic than the author. >> >> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not >> is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely >> tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at >> a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, >> or try a different journal? >> >> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would >> make everybody's lives easier. >> >> Martin From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Apr 1 15:33:27 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:33:27 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I completely agree with Bill here. And as I said earlier, I have editors take their role seriously and not merely pass along referee reports. Having reviewed many articles and book ms over the years, I can say that there are always (!) places that the article needs to be *improved*, not merely changed. More than that, in most cases in my experience, including my own submitted pieces, the author almost always needs help, whether famous or beginning. If two people read your point and don't get it, then *you*, not they, are at fault. And that doesn't even include points about style and clarity of writing. Science writing is by and large clunky and in need of some aesthetic improvement as well as more substantive advice on content. Another example I like to give students is this. Back when I was a beginning graduate student in Brazil, I submitted articles to a couple of journals. Both editors, Dell Hymes and David Rood, wrote back polite messages that insinuated that I either wrote terribly or had little to say. The accompanying referee reports made these points even more forcefully. David (then editor of IJAL) said in his letter that I clearly wasn't very good at writing, but that he was willing to help. And he did. And a few years later, I was on the Editorial Board of IJAL. I learned a lot about writing from referees. I learned a lot about linguistics from them. And about my own shortcomings. These are lessons everybody needs and it is wrong to communicate in any way to students that their professors somehow just started generating major articles one day and that when referees disagree, the author is probably right. It is not a matter of the referees being better linguists or writers. It is a matter of their expertise coupled with their viewing of the ms as a stand-alone object, without access to the author's implicit information about what he/she intended to say or knows about the subject that they didn't say. I also tell students that they should get used to taking exams if they want to be academics because every journal submission entails a thorough examination by one's peers. Dan On 1 Apr 2010, at 11:21, Bill Croft wrote: > I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". > > But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. > > Bill > > >> Bill Croft wrote: >>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my view. >> >> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the author. >> >> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different journal? >> >> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make everybody's lives easier. >> >> Martin > From autotype at uni-leipzig.de Thu Apr 1 15:39:11 2010 From: autotype at uni-leipzig.de (Balthasar Bickel) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 17:39:11 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I fully agree with what Lachlan and Bill have said. The task of editors or editorial board members is precisely to evaluate both the paper *and* the reviews and to communicate the conclusions to the author. And yes, authors do need to explain how they respond to reviews. If one provides good arguments, it is perfectly possible not to follow a referee's suggestions, and this happens quite often in my experience (both as an editor and as an author). Balthasar. On Apr 1, 2010, at 5:21 PM, Bill Croft wrote: > I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". > > But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions are sufficient. > > Bill > > >> Bill Croft wrote: >>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my view. >> >> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the author. >> >> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different journal? >> >> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make everybody's lives easier. >> >> Martin > From amnfn at well.com Thu Apr 1 15:39:31 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:39:31 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4BB8C.50601@unm.edu> Message-ID: Many suggestions from reviewers do improve our papers, and we are happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to implement them. Other suggestions make the paper less coherent. There is probably more involved here than which publications we submit to. There is also the question of how similar our theoretical approach is to that of the reviewer. That's why authors who are practitioners within more established theoretical frameworks find they have better rapport with their reviewers. It isn't so much personal, as theoretical... --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > I'm with Bill on this one. I feel that most of the revisions suggested to me > by reviewers have improved my papers. For those that were off-base, or that I > felt I didn't want to implement, I've always found that when I explain my > reasons to the editor, they have been accepted (i.e., I didn't make the > changes, and that was accepted by the editor). But as Bill says, maybe this > is a reflection of which journals I submit to. > > -- > Sherman Wilcox > > > > > > > On 4/1/10 9:21 AM, Bill Croft wrote: >> I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in >> effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are >> always wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as >> Martin has been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are >> right. I have always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and >> resubmit". >> >> But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the >> reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At >> that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the >> evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and >> communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or >> "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the >> author to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon >> resubmission. That allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge >> whether the revisions are sufficient. >> >> Bill >> >> >>> Bill Croft wrote: >>>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know how >>>> much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I >>>> receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the >>>> author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In >>>> those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan >>>> puts it, and I will recommend rejection. >>> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in my >>> view. >>> >>> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >>> adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer >>> that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is >>> right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than >>> authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic >>> than the author. >>> >>> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is >>> very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, >>> and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what >>> to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a >>> different journal? >>> >>> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make >>> everybody's lives easier. >>> >>> Martin > > From anggarrgoon at gmail.com Thu Apr 1 15:46:59 2010 From: anggarrgoon at gmail.com (Claire Bowern) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:46:59 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Economics is a field with "revise and resubmit" as a minor category and the vast majority of decisions being "reject" for the top journals. The results of that is that papers are often submitted and rejected from 5 or more journals before being published (or being given up on). Each time there are two or three new referee reports. That may not be a problem in a field 10 times the size of ours but if the net effect of abolishing A"revise and resubmit" is to have papers going to more journals, that doesn't seem a particularly good use of the limited time and goodwill of referees. (oh yeah, also in economics, referees usually get paid for their reports if they're submitted on time...) Claire On 1 April 2010 11:39, A. Katz wrote: > Many suggestions from reviewers do improve our papers, and we are happy and > grateful to be given the opportunity to implement them. Other suggestions > make the paper less coherent. > > There is probably more involved here than which publications we submit to. > There is also the question of how similar our theoretical approach is to > that of the reviewer. That's why authors who are practitioners within more > established theoretical frameworks find they have better rapport with their > reviewers. It isn't so much personal, as theoretical... > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > > On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Sherman Wilcox wrote: > > I'm with Bill on this one. I feel that most of the revisions suggested to >> me by reviewers have improved my papers. For those that were off-base, or >> that I felt I didn't want to implement, I've always found that when I >> explain my reasons to the editor, they have been accepted (i.e., I didn't >> make the changes, and that was accepted by the editor). But as Bill says, >> maybe this is a reflection of which journals I submit to. >> >> -- >> Sherman Wilcox >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On 4/1/10 9:21 AM, Bill Croft wrote: >> >>> I think that eliminating the category of "revise and resubmit" is, in >>> effect, saying that the author is always right, and the reviewers are always >>> wrong. I don't share that view. Sometimes the author is right, as Martin has >>> been saying in his messages, but sometimes the reviewers are right. I have >>> always felt that my papers were improved after "revise and resubmit". >>> >>> But this is where the editor's role comes in. The author doesn't see the >>> reviewers' reports until the editor receives them and passes them on. At >>> that point the editor may judge whether, in his/her view, the weight of the >>> evidence supports the author's or the reviewers' perspective, and >>> communicate this to the author (partly by choosing "revise and resubmit" or >>> "accept upon revision"). Also, editors nowadays almost always ask the author >>> to explain how and why s/he revised the manuscript upon resubmission. That >>> allows the reviewers as well as the editor to judge whether the revisions >>> are sufficient. >>> >>> Bill >>> >>> >>> Bill Croft wrote: >>>> >>>>> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know >>>>> how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not infrequently, I >>>>> receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant problems where the >>>>> author has merely added a few footnotes to the original submission. In those >>>>> cases, I do feel that I have wasted my precious time, as Lachlan puts it, >>>>> and I will recommend rejection. >>>>> >>>> What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in >>>> my view. >>>> >>>> In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to >>>> adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer >>>> that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is >>>> right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than authors; >>>> in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic than the >>>> author. >>>> >>>> But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is >>>> very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, and >>>> I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what to do: >>>> Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a different >>>> journal? >>>> >>>> So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make >>>> everybody's lives easier. >>>> >>>> Martin >>>> >>> >> >> From amnfn at well.com Thu Apr 1 15:48:50 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 08:48:50 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > > If two people read your point and don't get it, then *you*, not they, are at fault. > The above statement can't possibly be univerally true. I'm sure we've all had the experience of making a point, and stating it very clearly, and having two other people not understand. It's not the number of people who understand a statement that determines ultimately whether it is well drafted, falsifiable or true. I think the number of people who will not understand a point goes up in direct relation to how novel the assertion is. We have trouble parsing sentences we've never seen before. Best, --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz From dlevere at ilstu.edu Thu Apr 1 15:52:38 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:52:38 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 1 Apr 2010, at 11:48, A. Katz wrote: > > > On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > >> If two people read your point and don't get it, then *you*, not they, are at fault. >> > > The above statement can't possibly be univerally true. I'm sure we've all had the experience of making a point, and stating it very clearly, and having two other people not understand. Of course. I cannot think of anything that would be universally true, or even True, except by definition. But by and large it is a good rule of thumb. Dan From mark at polymathix.com Thu Apr 1 16:56:43 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:56:43 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4B4FE.5030208@eva.mpg.de> Message-ID: I've been following this thread from the sidelines but with great interest. On the specific topic of this thread, I would point out that today, we have journals covering many theoretical camps, and good articles can almost always get published in an established journal. That was not always the case, and in those days the peer review process was abusive. Other things being equal, I'm with Martin on this one simply to minimize the probability of future abuse. (For that, in fact, Martin's proposal probably doesn't go far enough.) But that said, I think the discussion seems to be skirting a much larger issue: Why do people go through all the delays and rigamarole to publish articles in old, established, expensive print journals in this age of Web 2.0, feed aggregators, tweets and iPhone apps? The answer, I think, is *prestige*. But prestige evolves over a catastrophe surface, and the academic community can confer prestige on, or deny prestige from, any publishing vehicle that it chooses. If, say, all the academic linguists who are subscribed to FUNKNET decided to get together and start an online, peer-reviewed journal or two, it wouldn't be that hard (compared to, say, arguing about how many phonemes there are in Tok Pisin). The community could confer prestige on these online journals by using them in their hiring and tenure decisions (which is, I think, how the prestige of established print journals is manifested). At the same time, the community could deny prestige from the old, inefficient print journals by failing to use them in their hiring and tenure decisions. Sometimes we forget that it's really just one academic community -- one community that does all the research, all the thinking, all the writing, all the reviewing, all the accepting and rejecting and all the general editing. Everything except the printing and distribution: That's still done by publishing companies that really have nothing at all to do with the academic community. So at the end of the day, it's all one community and it can do whatever the hell it wants. -- Mark Mark P. Line Polymathix Martin Haspelmath wrote: > Bill Croft wrote: >> But the main value for "revise and resubmit" is that one doesn't know >> how much an author really will revise the manuscript. Not >> infrequently, I receive "revised" manuscripts which had significant >> problems where the author has merely added a few footnotes to the >> original submission. In those cases, I do feel that I have wasted my >> precious time, as Lachlan puts it, and I will recommend rejection. > What Bill describes as "the main value" of R&R is the main problem, in > my view. > > In the cases mentioned above, the author probably limited herself to > adding a few footnotes because she simply didn't agree with the reviewer > that "the manuscript had significant problems". And often the author is > right, not the reviewer. Reviewers are not more knowledgeable than > authors; in fact, they generally know much less about the paper's topic > than the author. > > But predicting whether the editor will overrule the reviewers or not is > very difficult, so should the author resubmit? This is extremely tricky, > and I think many papers are delayed because the author is at a loss what > to do: Follow a reviewer's proposals she is unhappy with, or try a > different journal? > > So I think a new approach that only has "accept" and "reject" would make > everybody's lives easier. > > Martin From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Thu Apr 1 17:01:02 2010 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 19:01:02 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB4BB8C.50601@unm.edu> Message-ID: A tricky problem, indeed! I think that the R&R problem is only part of a major problem that is linked to peer reviewing as such. From an economical/commercial point of view, peer reviewing is absolutely necessary to secure the role a journal plays on the market and to maintain its economic 'value' (surplus). This value guarantees that the journal is constantly sold to those who expect a certain profile represented by the individual articles. Here, the reviewers have to keep the balance between contents that are both in line with the general expectations of the journal's readership /and/ include modestly formulated innovations. Basically, this is the same 'function' that subeditors of any commercial journal or newspaper have to observe. The problem is that these commercial aspects are mixed with scientific evaluation. Nowadays, the paradigm of humanities is much more oriented towards maintaining a certain mainstream than say 100 to 150 years ago. Authors who submit papers not in line with this paradigm / mainstream will hardly ever have the chance to get their papers published, not because they tell stupid things (that may happen, too), but because their arguments, analyses, or theoremes do not fall into what is currently mainstream. I guess that much of what we currently 'think' in linguistics is grounded in papers and books the manuscripts of which would never have had the chance to get published if they were written (two/tree)hundred years later (that is today) [just recall the New Grammarian controversy, Herders' text on the origins of language, Rousseau's reference towards 'primitive' societies and their way of communicating, just to name a few]. The difference naturally also is that today, linguistics s a (payed) profession, controlled by those who offer employment and who set up certain rules which have to be obeyed and to be internalized by those who want to get such a job. Freedom of public (!) thinking becomes more and more replaced by self-constraints and the internalization of public 'rules', a process that is reinforced by the way 'publicity' is expected to be achieved by the researcher. The many regulations that are currently practiced (citation index, number of publications in peer reviewed journals etc.) essentially contribute to the 'linearization' (or: harmonization) of linguistic thinking. This is what Jean-Louis Calvet refers to when saying : "./.. la fa?on dont on analyse l'ensemble des langues et les rapports qu'elles entretiennent est profond?ment d?termin?e par l'organisation sociale du sein de laquelle on ?crit et par les conflits qui opposent la communaut? de l'?crivain ? d'autres communaut?s/" Calvet, Louis-Jean 1979 [1974] /Linguistique et colonialisme, petit trait? de glottophagie./ 2e ?dition. Paris: Petite Biblioth?que Payot, p.21). 'Public Linguistics' is thus strongly governed by commercial and social features that again are embodied in the overall 'philosophic paradigm' we have to live with. Calvet continues: "/'Chaque si?cle a la grammaire de sa philosophie', ?crivait Antoine Meillet. Cette proposition, on l'aura compris, nous para?t tr?s incompl?te et, par souci de simplification, c'est par la suivante que nous la remplacerons pour conclure : chaque soci?t? a la linguistique de ses rapports de productio/n" (p.39). Peer reviewing thus is an important tool to safeguard the type of linguistics we're used to nowadays - we cannot escape from it. It's another question whether it really promotes the development of linguistics or whether it pulls it back to what is currently 'correct'. Sure, this also is a problem of ethics - and all of us should rely on the fact that the peer reviewers meet these the ethical standards that include the readiness to consider hypotheses, arguments, and theoremes they are not used to (unfortunately, I sometimes made the experience that this is not always the case: I once had an article rejected with the simple note of one the reviewers saying: "Don't publish! I don't understand the paper!"). And many reviewers really help to improve the quality of a paper by simply taking the perspective of the potential readership. Likewise, reviewing is essential for eliminating flaws, faults, wrong data etc. But often enough, papers seem to be rejected just because they do not meet the interest of the reviewer, their self-profiling attitude, or global perspective (OK, then you would say: Try another journal. But imagine that you deal in your paper with data from a language for which there are only few experts. The chance to meet the same reviewer again is rather high). Linguistics, just as any other type of sciences that is strongly grounded in the dimension of 'interpretation' and 'modeling' always wavers between four tendencies: Conversation (and confirmation) of a given paradigm, evolution (or modification), reactionary draw-back, and revolution. Presently, much seems to be allowed as long as it tries to find its way between conservation and modest evolution (and sometimes to comfort reviewers). In this sense, public 'linguistic revolutions' won't have any chance any more..... Let's wait and see what linguists will say about all this when writing a history of linguistics in say 500 years.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- -- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Ludwigstra?e 25 Postanschrift / Postal address: Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-16567 // 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.ats.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professoren/schulze/index.html http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistik? Fakulta humanitn?ch vied Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica Tajovsk?ho 40 SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze From dryer at buffalo.edu Fri Apr 2 23:20:15 2010 From: dryer at buffalo.edu (dryer at buffalo.edu) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 19:20:15 -0400 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for online journals. Matthew From amnfn at well.com Fri Apr 2 23:27:14 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2010 16:27:14 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1270236015@cast-dryerm2.caset.buffalo.edu> Message-ID: Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly > in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of > peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited > volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the > reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications > tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why > they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the > peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed > journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the > availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money > that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it > is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will > always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From jose.deulofeu at wanadoo.fr Sat Apr 3 07:34:52 2010 From: jose.deulofeu at wanadoo.fr (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?henri_jos=E9_deulofeu?=) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 09:34:52 +0200 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear All, One point that is missed in this discussion is the fact that English is a dominant language in scientific publications. A lot of valuable papers remain confidential because they are not written in English. And even if the author tries to write in English, the problem is that the English accepted by journals is not the kind of scientific lingua franca people generally think it is. The stylistic requirements of the editorial boards go far beyond mere readability. As a consequence, it is very difficult for non natives or non specialists of academic English to meet them (as you can see from the ongoing text ). And further, to forecast their ideas to large audiences. One way to overcome this shortcoming could be to put the money saved by extending the use of web journals into translation programs of "bests of" papers originally not written in English and/or linguistic assistance to non native writers during the peer review process. Best Jos? DEULOFEU Universit? de Provence (France) http://jose.deulofeu.free.fr Le 3 avr. 10 ? 01:27, A. Katz a ?crit : > > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is > limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can > make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites > online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, > some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not > accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > >> >> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made >> explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) >> is that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for >> journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far >> higher chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. >> And this is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense >> to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are >> justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. >> >> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry >> is that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as >> it is for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 >> here. While on the one hand the availability of electronic >> publishing renders the cost of publishers as "middle-men" >> unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money >> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means >> that it is almost inevitable that the peer review process for >> printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for >> online journals. >> >> Matthew >> >> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Orange vous informe que cet e-mail a ete controle par l'anti-virus > mail. Aucun virus connu a ce jour par nos services n'a ete detecte. > > Henri-Jos? Deulofeu UNIVERSIT? AIX-MARSEILLE I DEPT. LINGUISTIQUE FRANCAISE 29 AV. Robert Schuman 13621 Aix-en-Provence CEDEX +33442953569 From tthornes at uca.edu Sun Apr 4 00:19:19 2010 From: tthornes at uca.edu (Tim Thornes) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 19:19:19 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing Message-ID: Hello, I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? Best, Tim Tim Thornes, PhD Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly > in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of > peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited > volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the > reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications > tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why > they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the > peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed > journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the > availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money > that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it > is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will > always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From amnfn at well.com Sun Apr 4 01:04:07 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 18:04:07 -0700 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB794BF020000870007A8D6@GWIA1.uca.edu> Message-ID: Tim, Both creative writers and linguists are self-selected. Many of us not in an academic position submit to both trade publishers and to linguistic journals. Some of us fancy ourselves to be both novelists and linguists. We get rejected more often than not. But only time will tell. ;-> Among those on Funknet, T. Givon has published both linguistics books and trade novels. Short term prestige may lie in the prestige of the publisher. But surely in the long run, it's the contribution to the field that really counts! --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Sat, 3 Apr 2010, Tim Thornes wrote: > Hello, > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? > > Best, Tim > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > Department of Writing > University of Central Arkansas > Conway, AR 72035 > (501)450-5613 > >>>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > >> >> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made explicitly >> in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the process of >> peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for edited >> volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the >> reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal publications >> tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why >> they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. >> >> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that the >> peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed >> journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand the >> availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as >> "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money >> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that it >> is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals will >> always be taken more seriously than for online journals. >> >> Matthew >> >> > > From tpayne at uoregon.edu Sun Apr 4 09:15:41 2010 From: tpayne at uoregon.edu (Thomas E. Payne) Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 12:15:41 +0300 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <4BB794BF020000870007A8D6@GWIA1.uca.edu> Message-ID: I think that, in general, journal publication should be given more weight than publication in edited collections for the following reasons: 1. As you mention, Tim, contributors to edited collections are often invited by the editors. This may make it more difficult for an editor to "reject" a paper that turns out not to meet expectations -- it may seem ungracious to invite someone to submit a paper, and then reject their contribution. 2. Being the editor of a collection is itself a significant entry on a CV, so editors are motivated to collect papers and get them published. A journal editor, on the other hand, probably already has tenure, and in any case already has the CV entry as a journal editor, so the motivation is more toward enriching the quality and reputation of the journal, rather than in simply getting something published. 3. Journal editors are editing professionals. If they have been doing the job for any length of time, they have extensive knowledge of the field, including who are good reviewers for which topics, etc. Editors of collections are likely to lack this breadth of experience, and are more likely to tap into a comparatively smaller circle of reviewers. 4. A journal has a reputation to build on, whereas edited collections do not. Not all journals are created equal, of course. But we have a "sense" of what the quality and significance of a publication in a particular journal is likely to be. (Similar to how one has a "sense" of the likely academic preparation of a graduate of a particular graduate program). For edited collections, unless the editor is well-known and/or has a series of previous collections, one has no such history on which to base one's expectations. None of this is absolute, of course. There are particular cases in which some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. This is just my attempt to "flesh out" my intuition that journal publications tend to be more substantive than publications in edited collections. Tom Payne -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Thornes Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 03:19 To: dryer at buffalo.edu; amnfn at well.com Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing Hello, I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? Best, Tim Tim Thornes, PhD Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is > that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for > journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher > chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this > is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth > more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is > for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While > on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the > cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that > there are companies making money that they will not make if they do > not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the > peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From bischoff.st at gmail.com Mon Apr 5 00:01:03 2010 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 19:31:03 -0430 Subject: FUNKNET Digest, Vol 79, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: As a graduate student in a generative program at an R1 institution I was told by a few faculty members that the only publications that count are those in a "tier 1" journals when it came to hiring (e.g. members of the higher committee at this particular institution looked for publications in these journals when considering a candidate)...for the department the following were often cited as "tier 1" journals in no particular order: Language Linguistic Inquiry International Journal of American Linguistics Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Having published in different subfields I've learned that different journals have different weight, in fact different publications have different weight (e.g. some conferences in computational linguistics are extremely difficult to get accepted into and the post proceedings go through a second round of review...so those are considered rather "prestigious" publications for folks in that area). I wonder what journals FUNKETers consider "prestige" journals? I also wonder if in general, for those that have served on hiring committees, how much weight prestige journal publications really have. Cheers, Shannon On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 12:30 PM, wrote: > Send FUNKNET mailing list submissions to > funknet at mailman.rice.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/funknet > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > funknet-request at mailman.rice.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > funknet-owner at mailman.rice.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of FUNKNET digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Peer reviewing (Tim Thornes) > 2. Re: Peer reviewing (A. Katz) > 3. Re: Peer reviewing (Thomas E. Payne) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2010 19:19:19 -0500 > From: "Tim Thornes" > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > To: , > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: <4BB794BF020000870007A8D6 at GWIA1.uca.edu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > Hello, > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of > equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and > tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited > volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant > contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other > possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an > edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as > well? > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over > the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point > out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a > self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics > journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to > publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors > play a role? > > Best, Tim > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > Department of Writing > University of Central Arkansas > Conway, AR 72035 > (501)450-5613 > > >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > > > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly > > in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the > process of > > peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for > edited > > volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often the > > reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal > publications > > tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and > why > > they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion > decisions. > > > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that > the > > peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for printed > > journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand > the > > availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > > "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making > money > > that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that > it > > is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals > will > > always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > > > Matthew > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 18:04:07 -0700 (PDT) > From: "A. Katz" > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > To: Tim Thornes > Cc: dryer at buffalo.edu, funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed > > Tim, > > Both creative writers and linguists are self-selected. Many of us not in > an academic position submit to both trade publishers and to linguistic > journals. Some of us fancy ourselves to be both novelists and linguists. > We get rejected more often than not. But only time will tell. ;-> > > Among those on Funknet, T. Givon has published both linguistics books and > trade novels. > > Short term prestige may lie in the prestige of the publisher. But surely > in the long run, it's the contribution to the field that really counts! > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Sat, 3 Apr 2010, Tim Thornes wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of > equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and > tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited > volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant > contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other > possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an > edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as > well? > > > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy > over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to > point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a > self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics > journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to > publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors > play a role? > > > > Best, Tim > > > > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > > Department of Writing > > University of Central Arkansas > > Conway, AR 72035 > > (501)450-5613 > > > >>>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > > Matthew, > > > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > > and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > > > --Aya > > > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > > >> > >> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly > >> in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that the > process of > >> peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than it is for > edited > >> volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection and often > the > >> reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why journal > publications > >> tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and > why > >> they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion > decisions. > >> > >> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > that the > >> peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for > printed > >> journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the one hand > the > >> availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of publishers as > >> "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making > money > >> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means that > it > >> is almost inevitable that the peer review process for printed journals > will > >> always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > >> > >> Matthew > >> > >> > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 12:15:41 +0300 > From: "Thomas E. Payne" > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > To: "'Tim Thornes'" > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Message-ID: <7AFAFC95AC1148119AE5ABE08FB8A66F at TEPAYNEPC> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > I think that, in general, journal publication should be given more weight > than publication in edited collections for the following reasons: > > 1. As you mention, Tim, contributors to edited collections are often > invited > by the editors. This may make it more difficult for an editor to "reject" a > paper that turns out not to meet expectations -- it may seem ungracious to > invite someone to submit a paper, and then reject their contribution. > > 2. Being the editor of a collection is itself a significant entry on a CV, > so editors are motivated to collect papers and get them published. A > journal > editor, on the other hand, probably already has tenure, and in any case > already has the CV entry as a journal editor, so the motivation is more > toward enriching the quality and reputation of the journal, rather than in > simply getting something published. > > 3. Journal editors are editing professionals. If they have been doing the > job for any length of time, they have extensive knowledge of the field, > including who are good reviewers for which topics, etc. Editors of > collections are likely to lack this breadth of experience, and are more > likely to tap into a comparatively smaller circle of reviewers. > > 4. A journal has a reputation to build on, whereas edited collections do > not. Not all journals are created equal, of course. But we have a "sense" > of > what the quality and significance of a publication in a particular journal > is likely to be. (Similar to how one has a "sense" of the likely academic > preparation of a graduate of a particular graduate program). For edited > collections, unless the editor is well-known and/or has a series of > previous > collections, one has no such history on which to base one's expectations. > > None of this is absolute, of course. There are particular cases in which > some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. This is just my attempt > to "flesh out" my intuition that journal publications tend to be more > substantive than publications in edited collections. > > Tom Payne > > > -----Original Message----- > From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu > [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Thornes > Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 03:19 > To: dryer at buffalo.edu; amnfn at well.com > Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing > > Hello, > > I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of > equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion > and > tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited > volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant > contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other > possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an > edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as > well? > > I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over > the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point > out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a > self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics > journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to > publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors > play a role? > > Best, Tim > > > Tim Thornes, PhD > Assistant Professor of Linguistics > Department of Writing > University of Central Arkansas > Conway, AR 72035 > (501)450-5613 > > >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> > Matthew, > > These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited > that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, > and > there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. > > Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of > the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > > > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is > > that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for > > journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher > > chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this > > is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth > > more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated > as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > > that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is > > for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While > > on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the > > cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that > > there are companies making money that they will not make if they do > > not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the > > peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more > seriously than for online journals. > > > > Matthew > > > > > > > > End of FUNKNET Digest, Vol 79, Issue 4 > ************************************** > From bischoff.st at gmail.com Mon Apr 5 13:22:21 2010 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 08:52:21 -0430 Subject: Journal Rankings Message-ID: Hi all, Sorry if this is a double post....I didn't read the posting instructions before my first attempt and it may have made its way to the listserve. The conversation on "peer reviewing" led me to wonder what journals, or publications in general, funkneters consider "prestige". As a graduate student, in a Generative program, the following journals were touted as "the tier 1" journals that we should all aspire to publish in if we wanted a job (in no particular order): Language Linguistic Inquiry International Journal of American Linguistics Natural Language and Linguistic Theory Personally, I find that my interests often lead me to some different journals, for example Morphology and especially The Linguistic Review which both seem to be exceptional journals and of "teir 1" status. Cheers, Shannon From langconf at bu.edu Mon Apr 5 13:37:01 2010 From: langconf at bu.edu (langconf at bu.edu) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 09:37:01 -0400 Subject: BUCLD 35 Call for Papers Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS THE 35th ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT NOVEMBER 5-7, 2010 Keynote Speaker: Rachel Mayberry, University of California at San Diego "Nurture and biology in language acquisition: What the hands say" Plenary Speaker: William Snyder, University of Connecticut "Children's grammatical conservatism: Implications for syntactic theory" Lunch Symposium: "The acquisition of number words: Integrating formal and developmental perspectives" Susan Carey, Harvard University Justin Halberda, Johns Hopkins University Jeff Lidz, University of Maryland Julien Musolino, Rutgers University Submissions that present research on any topic in the fields of first and second language acquisition from any theoretical perspectives will be fully considered, including: Bilingualism, Cognition & Language, Creoles & Pidgins, Dialects, Discourse and Narrative, Gesture, Hearing Impairment and Deafness, Input & Interaction, Language Disorders, Linguistic Theory, Neurolinguistics, Pragmatics, Pre-linguistic Development, Reading and Literacy, Signed Languages, Sociolinguistics, and Speech Perception & Production. A suggested format and style for abstracts is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD/template.html We will begin accepting abstract submissions on April 15. Please check http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD for a link to the submission form and any important updates. DEADLINE: All submissions must be received by 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2010. FURTHER INFORMATION General conference information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/BUCLD/ Boston University Conference on Language Development 96 Cummington Street, Room 244 Boston, MA 02215 U.S.A. Telephone: (617) 353-3085 Questions about abstracts should be sent to abstract at bu.edu From mark at polymathix.com Mon Apr 5 19:17:14 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 14:17:14 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1270236015@cast-dryerm2.caset.buffalo.edu> Message-ID: The term "peer" is not a misnomer: As I was saying, it's the same community of researchers who do the writing as well as the reviewing as well as the hiring, firing and promoting (departmental pecking orders notwithstanding). In other words, quality control is and should be a function of the community of peers -- a publishing company's business process must support that function, not the other way around. So I don't think we're limited to profit-making companies for the dissemination of high-quality literature. -- Mark Mark P. Line dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is that > the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for journals than > it > is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher chance of rejection > and often the reviews are more helpful. And this is the reason why > journal > publications tend in some sense to be worth more than chapters in edited > volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and > promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is that > the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is for > printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While on the > one > hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the cost of > publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that there are > companies making money that they will not make if they do not provide a > good product means that it is almost inevitable that the peer review > process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for > online journals. > > Matthew > > > -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From mark at polymathix.com Mon Apr 5 19:24:04 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 14:24:04 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <95390057-1820-45CC-BBC8-48A11F7BD4C3@wanadoo.fr> Message-ID: Absolutely agree 100%. Some of my best "finds" have been in something like Hungarian or Indonesian where I could barely make out enough of the title and abstract to know I needed to get it translated or summarized. Who knows how much I've missed seeing because it was in a language that I didn't even have a leg up on. -- Mark Mark P. Line henri jos? deulofeu wrote: > Dear All, > One point that is missed in this discussion is the fact that English > is a dominant language in scientific publications. A lot of valuable > papers remain confidential because they are not written in English. > And even if the author tries to write in English, the problem is that > the English accepted by journals is not the kind of scientific lingua > franca people generally think it is. The stylistic requirements of the > editorial boards go far beyond mere readability. As a consequence, it > is very difficult for non natives or non specialists of academic > English to meet them (as you can see from the ongoing text ). And > further, to forecast their ideas to large audiences. One way to > overcome this shortcoming could be to put the money saved by extending > the use of web journals into translation programs of "bests of" papers > originally not written in English and/or linguistic assistance to non > native writers during the peer review process. > Best > Jos? DEULOFEU > Universit? de Provence (France) > http://jose.deulofeu.free.fr > Le 3 avr. 10 ? 01:27, A. Katz a ?crit : > >> >> Matthew, >> >> These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is >> limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can >> make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites >> online, too. >> >> Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, >> some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not >> accessible. >> >> --Aya >> >> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >> >> >> >> On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: >> >>> >>> One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made >>> explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) >>> is that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for >>> journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far >>> higher chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. >>> And this is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense >>> to be worth more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are >>> justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. >>> >>> While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry >>> is that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as >>> it is for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 >>> here. While on the one hand the availability of electronic >>> publishing renders the cost of publishers as "middle-men" >>> unnecessary, the very fact that there are companies making money >>> that they will not make if they do not provide a good product means >>> that it is almost inevitable that the peer review process for >>> printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for >>> online journals. >>> >>> Matthew >>> >>> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Orange vous informe que cet e-mail a ete controle par l'anti-virus >> mail. Aucun virus connu a ce jour par nos services n'a ete detecte. >> >> > > Henri-Jos? Deulofeu > UNIVERSIT? AIX-MARSEILLE I > DEPT. LINGUISTIQUE FRANCAISE > 29 AV. Robert Schuman > 13621 Aix-en-Provence CEDEX > +33442953569 > > > > > > > -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From tgivon at uoregon.edu Thu Apr 8 21:48:35 2010 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 15:48:35 -0600 Subject: etc. Message-ID: Dear FUNK people, I have been following the recent exchange with some interest. There seem to be a number of constituencies here, whose interests do not always coincide. We have first our young generation, struggling to get a tenure-track position and then secure a lifetime license to practice with impunity. We then have the universities, with their departmental search committees, deans and their advisory committees, provosts and theirs--all anxious to follow clear criteria for evaluating candidates. We then have the old professional alpha males, determined to keep their control of the process via journals, refereeing and resounding academic posts. And we have, lastly, the perennial orphan, the one that tends to fall between the cracks--the interest of advancing our lurching discipline toward some semblance of a real science--of human language, culture, society, mind and brain. The old establishment bulls and the universities have always co-existed in close symbiosis, sharing their preference for ranked journals, exhaustive refereeing, downgrading edited collections and the quantification of quality judgements. In this, they have striven to perpetuate the pretense that, somehow, quality emerges--Deus ex machina--out of rigid criteria and rigorous quantification. Here I thought my own life experience may be of some value. I have always found the editorial review process of journals a closed door for my work. In this I am in full sympathy with Martin Haspelmath's original note--by the time you are finished revising to the referees' specs, it is their work, not yours. As far as I could determine, the editorial review process enshrined the gate-keepers, those in charge of conserving the status quo and slapping down the upstarts who came out of nowhere. The typical referee's world-view has always seemed narrow, defensive, preservationist and process-oriented. They seemed to champions playing the by the rules as a core value. And their view of the coming generation appeared to be: Slow down, tread with caution, let us squeeze the creative marrow out of you till you produce tiny square pegs that fit our tiny square holes. I might as well confess--the very few journal articles I did publish were let into the inner sanctum by editors who bent the rules for me, who brazenly bypassed their own reviewers, editors who just happened to consider my perspective worthwhile. They are long gone now, so I hope they will forgive me--from whatever elevated perch they may occupy now--for revealing their unprincipled violations of the established canons of refereed professionalism. I might as well say something about the much-maligned edited collections. In the early 1970's, Charles Li organized three consecutive symposia, which came out in three successive edited-- brazenly-unrefereed --volumes: "Word-Order and Word-Order Change" (1975), "Subject and Topic" (1976), and "Mechanism for Syntactic Change" (1977). As far as I can see, if these three unrefereed volumes had not appeared, the subsequent rise of the functionalist-typological-diachronic-acquisitional ground-swell we have all been part of would have never taken place. Carol Justus' functionalist-typological-diachronic LSA Summer in Oswego (1976) was a direct outcome of the Charles Li symposia. The TSL edited--and proudly unrefereed--series was a direct, explicit continuation of Charles Li's three volumes, beginning with Hopper (ed. 1982) "Tense and Aspect" and counting ca. 90-odd volumes now. The transformation of Studies in Language into ?our' journal was a direct outcome of the three moves noted above. This transformation was done in collusion with a visionary editor--Jon Verhaar, RIP--who decided to flaunt the rules, and damn the torpedoes. So when someone tells you that ?unrefereed' volumes do not count as much as ranked, strictly-refereed journals, perhaps you should ask yourselves, and them: Who are the rankers? Who are the referees? And what is their underlying interest, conscious or not, in this convoluted enterprise? We can steer our younger generation into safe, conservative, slow-and-sluggish careers designed to preserve the prevailing disciplinary order, and to embellish the current paradigms with unthreateningly-small increments. This is certainly one way careers and status are constructed. If it were up to me, tho, I would caution our y'all as follows: Those authoritative referees are after you hide. They want to chop your ideas down to their size and in the process diminish them--and you. They want to squeeze you into their mould, so that you may emerge as carbon copies of them. So that whatever juice of adventure, discovery and innovation flows in your veins would be curdled and denatured and made palatable--to them. So that you may gain the whole world but lose your soul. This is, lastly, not only about your nascent careers. It is also about the future of linguistics as a credible field of inquiry. That future is in your hands. It is up to you to move this contentious would-be science off the dime, so that we may all quit our perennial regurgitation of old pablums and move on. Y'all be good, TG From tthornes at uca.edu Fri Apr 9 03:01:24 2010 From: tthornes at uca.edu (Tim Thornes) Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 22:01:24 -0500 Subject: Peer reviewing Message-ID: Thanks to Aya and Tom for your comments. I find myself wanting to wax a bit rhetorical here. Please know that my motives are not "why are my chapters not worth as much as my articles?" particularly since in total, they amount to very very little relative to the contributions of many members of this list, especially those who have been leading this discussion. I honestly had no inkling I would even be interested in contributing to it, but now have come to find it an interesting exercise and a very revealing discussion about the relative value not only of the peer review--whose benefits seem obvious to me--but of the judgments of those same peers post-publication. The advantage of any publication is, of course, exposure. The advantage of any particular venue for publication, I would say, is prestige. I'm only interested in tossing a wrench into the works to question the relative value of prestige over exposure and to reiterate an old adage "It's not what you know, it's who you know," in the hope that the discipline I've hitched my rickety old wagon to is honest enough to own that there is a bit of exorcism involved in the process. I know that edited volumes generally involve invitation and that rejection is less likely, unless one simply refuses to make the revisions suggested by the editors or external reviewers, for whatever reasons, or decides to pull one's participation in the process. No doubt there are at least an equal number of folks who do not "revise and resubmit" either, tantamount, in my view, to turning down an invitation to contribute to an edited volume. I don't, however, believe that most publishers are so short sighted that they would agree to publish an edited volume just because someone took the trouble to collect the papers for it. Which brings me back to my rhetorical interest in this discussion. How do we "justify" (in Matthew Dryer's words) the relative value (or prestige) of a publication? The work of William Jacobsen, Jr. comes immediately to mind here, and his incredibly influential papers "Noun and Verb in Nootka,? "Switch-reference in Hokan-Coahuiltecan," ?The Heterogeneity of Evidentials in Makah,? and "Bi-partite Stems in Washo," the latter three of which appeared in edited volumes, as I recall, and the other, perhaps the most cited of all, in a conference proceedings--the seeming bottom of the barrel, as far as publications are concerned. I sincerely appreciate this interesting and enlightening discussion. All the best, Tim Thornes Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "Thomas E. Payne" 04/04/10 4:16 AM >>> I think that, in general, journal publication should be given more weight than publication in edited collections for the following reasons: 1. As you mention, Tim, contributors to edited collections are often invited by the editors. This may make it more difficult for an editor to "reject" a paper that turns out not to meet expectations -- it may seem ungracious to invite someone to submit a paper, and then reject their contribution. 2. Being the editor of a collection is itself a significant entry on a CV, so editors are motivated to collect papers and get them published. A journal editor, on the other hand, probably already has tenure, and in any case already has the CV entry as a journal editor, so the motivation is more toward enriching the quality and reputation of the journal, rather than in simply getting something published. 3. Journal editors are editing professionals. If they have been doing the job for any length of time, they have extensive knowledge of the field, including who are good reviewers for which topics, etc. Editors of collections are likely to lack this breadth of experience, and are more likely to tap into a comparatively smaller circle of reviewers. 4. A journal has a reputation to build on, whereas edited collections do not. Not all journawhat the quality and significance of a publication in a particular journal is likely to be. (Similar to how one has a "sense" of the likely academic preparation of a graduate of a particular graduate program). For edited collections, unless the editor is well-known and/or has a series of previous collections, one has no such history on which to base one's expectations. None of this is absolute, of course. There are particular cases in which some or all of these considerations are irrelevant. This is just my attempt to "flesh out" my intuition that journal publications tend to be more substantive than publications in edited collections. Tom Payne -----Original Message----- From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Thornes Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 03:19 To: dryer at buffalo.edu; amnfn at well.com Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Peer reviewing Hello, I wonder if you or someone else could expound on the "justifiability" of equating "higher chance of rejection" with "more valuable" for promotion and tenure. Typically, one is an invited contributor to an edited volume--meaning, someone(s), somewhere thinks you have a significant contribution to make to a particular theme (in one sense, "rejecting" other possible contributors a priori). Granted, the level of peer review for an edited volume varies widely, but is that not true for print journals as well? I have friends and colleagues who are creative writers who feign envy over the mere idea of 10-20% rejection rates. I always feel compelled to point out to them that lots of people fancy themselves writers, but only a self-selected few would go to the trouble of submitting to a linguistics journal. Given that, how, exactly, is prestige measured with regard to publication in our field? Do relative statuses of reviewers and/or editors play a role? Best, Tim Tim Thornes, PhD Assistant Professor of Linguistics Department of Writing University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 (501)450-5613 >>> "A. Katz" 04/02/10 6:28 PM >>> Matthew, These are some valid points. It is the fact that journal space is limited that helps to shape prestige. However, online publishers can make money, and there are high prestige sites and low prestige sites online, too. Unfortunately, for those of us without institutional affiliation, some of the high prestige sites for reading journals online are not accessible. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, dryer at buffalo.edu wrote: > > One point that I think is worth mentioning that has not been made > explicitly in this discussion (although I may have overlooked it) is > that the process of peer review is taken far more seriously for > journals than it is for edited volumes. There is usually a far higher > chance of rejection and often the reviews are more helpful. And this > is the reason why journal publications tend in some sense to be worth > more than chapters in edited volumes and why they are justifiably treated as worth more in tenure and promotion decisions. > > While I believe that the future lies in online journals, my worry is > that the peer review process will never be taken as seriously as it is > for printed journals. There is something of a Catch-22 here. While > on the one hand the availability of electronic publishing renders the > cost of publishers as "middle-men" unnecessary, the very fact that > there are companies making money that they will not make if they do > not provide a good product means that it is almost inevitable that the > peer review process for printed journals will always be taken more seriously than for online journals. > > Matthew > > From sclancy at uchicago.edu Sat Apr 10 21:34:52 2010 From: sclancy at uchicago.edu (Steven Clancy) Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2010 16:34:52 -0500 Subject: Final CFP for SCLC-2010 Conference at Brown University, October 9-11, 2010 Message-ID: Please note: The deadline for submission of abstracts is in one week: Friday, April 16, 2010. See below for details. ********************************************************************* The Department of Slavic Languages and the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Brown University present THE TENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SLAVIC COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION (SCLC-2010) October 9-11, 2010 The Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA) announces the Call for Papers for the 2010 annual conference. The conference will be held on the campus of Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) on Saturday, October 9 through Monday, October 11, 2010. SCLC-2010 Keynote Speakers Eugene Charniak Brown University Adele E. Goldberg Princeton University Ronald W. Langacker University of California, San Diego CALL FOR PAPERS Abstracts are invited for presentations addressing issues of significance for cognitive linguistics with some bearing on data from the Slavic languages. As long as there is a cognitive orientation, papers may be on synchronic or diachronic topics in any of the traditional areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, or sociolinguistics. In addition to the Slavic Languages, relevant papers on other languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are also acceptable. Abstracts may be submitted up until the deadline of April 16, 2010 to Steven Clancy . Abstracts should be approximately 500 words, but strict word limits are not required. Notification of acceptance will be provided by May 31, 2010. Most presentations at SCLC are given in English, but may be in the native (Slavic) language of the presenter. However, if the presentation is not to be made in English we ask that you provide an abstract in English in addition to an abstract in any other SCLA language. MAIN SESSIONS (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) Each presentation for the main sessions will be given 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute discussion period. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE Saturday, October 9: conference panels beginning in the morning and continue throughout the day, evening reception, keynote address, and conference dinner Sunday, October 10: main sessions and keynote address throughout the day, lunch and dinner Monday, October 11: main sessions and keynote address with conclusion by noon REGISTRATION AND CONFERENCE FEES Registration Fee: Regular participants 60USD Graduate student participants 40USD Conference dinner: 50USD Please make your checks payable to ?Brown University?. Registration deadline will be forthcoming. FURTHER INFORMATION Information on transportation, accommodations, and the conference venue will be forthcoming. Please see the conference website for further information. http://languages.uchicago.edu/scla Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island and is accessible from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS, 55 miles away) or T.F. Green Airport (PVD) in Providence. We hope you will be able to join us for SCLC-2010. Please forward this call for papers to your colleagues and graduate students who may be interested in presenting or attending. Sincerely, Steven Clancy Tore Nesset Masako Fidler President, SCLA Vice-President, SCLA Conference Organizer and Host, Brown University on behalf of the SCLA officers and the 2010 SCLA organizing committee From pedprax at terra.com.br Thu Apr 15 02:03:48 2010 From: pedprax at terra.com.br (Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho) Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:03:48 -0300 Subject: VI ALSFAL / Chamada de trabalhos / Llamada de trabajos / Call for papers Message-ID: (PARA ESPA?OL, POR FAVOR VER M?S ABAJO / FOR ENGLISH, PLEASE SEE BELOW): PORTUGU?S: Prezados Colegas, Temos o prazer de fazer o an?ncio oficial da chamada de trabalhos para o VI Congresso da Associa??o de Lingu?stica Sist?mico-Funcional da Am?rica Latina-ALSFAL, que ser? anfitrionado pelo Programa de P?s-Gradua??o em Lingu?stica Aplicada do Centro de Humanidades da Universidade Estadual do Cear? (Fortaleza - Cear? - Nordeste do Brasil) e realizado no Hotel Ponta Mar (****) de 05 a 09 de outubro de 2010. O tema do VI ALSFAL ?: 'A Lingu?stica Sist?mico-Funcional e seu potencial de empoderamento semi?tico-discursivo'. Para detalhes sobre o tema, a programa??o, os pesquisadores convidados, as comiss?es, a inscri??o no congresso e nos minicursos pr?-congresso, a hospedagem, os parceiros, etc, por favor visitem a p?gina do VI ALSFAL em http://www.6alsfal-uece.com.br/ (contato: info at 6alsfal-uece.com.br). Ser?o aceitos trabalhos nas ?reas abaixo, vistas necessariamente da perspectiva da Lingu?stica Sist?mico-Funcional, mas de modo n?o necessariamente exclusivo: ? ESTUDOS DISCURSIVOS: AN?LISE DE DISCURSO CR?TICA / ESTRAT?GICA / POSITIVA - ADC / ADE / ADP ? ESTUDOS CULTURAIS ? ESTUDOS SOBRE G?NERO/REGISTRO E INTERTEXTUALIDADE ? COES?O E COER?NCIA ? LINGU?STICA ART?STICA ? LINGU?STICA DA M?DIA ? LINGU?STICA ORGANIZACIONAL/ADMINISTRATIVA: A LINGUAGEM NO AMBIENTE DE TRABALHO ? ECOLINGU?STICA E POL?TICA LINGU?STICA: ESTUDOS SOBRE PLANEJAMENTO LINGU?STICO, DIREITOS HUMANOS LINGU?STICOS, L?NGUAS DE MIGRANTES, LINGUICISMO E IMPERIALISMO LINGU?STICO ? LINGU?STICA EDUCACIONAL: CONSCI?NCIA CR?TICA DA LINGUAGEM, ENSINO DOS G?NEROS DO PODER, LETRAMENTO CR?TICO ? ESTUDOS SOBRE LINGUAGENS T?CNICAS E COMUNICA??O INTERCULTURAL ? LINGU?STICA CL?NICA ? LINGU?STICA FORENSE ? ONTOG?NESE LINGU?STICA ? DESCRI??O DE L?NGUAS INDIVIDUAIS ? ESTUDOS MULTILINGU?STICOS: DESCRI??O, COMPARA??O E TIPOLOGIA DE L?NGUAS, TRADU??O E INTERPRETA??O, ENSINO E APRENDIZAGEM DE L2 ? ESTUDOS MULTISEMI?TICOS: MULTIMODALIDADE NOS MEIOS ORAL, ESCRITO, VISUAL E DE SINAIS E MULTIMODALIDADE NO CANAL WEB ? TEORIA DA AVALIATIVIDADE ? LINGU?STICA DE CORPUS ? LINGU?STICA COMPUTACIONAL: PROCESSAMENTO DE L?NGUAS NATURAIS O estudo de cada uma dessas ?reas pode resultar em um meio potencial de disponibilizar recursos semi?tico-discursivos individuais e coletivos e abrir oportunidades para que as pessoas, em situa??es de desvantagem, fortale?am sua autodetermina??o, desenvolvam suas habilidades, leiam o mundo criticamente para nele viverem tamb?m criticamente ou, em outras palavras, se empoderem como construtores do seu ?xito cotidiano e como autores da sua pr?pria biografia. Desejamos dialogar com e refletir sobre a LSF sob a perspectiva do empoderamento. Mas desejamos faz?-lo com pesquisadore(a)s, professore(a)s e estudantes que trabalham nessas ?reas na Am?rica Latina e ao redor do mundo, sendo essa a raz?o pela qual todo(a)s voc?s s?o sinceramente convidado(a)s a virem a Fortaleza a fim de compartilharem conosco as suas vis?es sobre esses assuntos. Quanto ?s inscri??es: INSCRI??ES Modalidades de participa??o: Minicursos - instrutore(a)s convidado(a)s. Sess?es plen?rias - participantes convidado(a)s. Mesas redondas - participantes convidado(a)s. (NOTA: O(a)s plenaristas, o(a)s participantes das mesas redondas e o(a)s instrutore(a)s de minicursos devem tamb?m fazer sua inscri??o, com exce??o do pagamento da taxa. O(a)s participantes das mesas redondas devem se inscrever individualmente, mas o(a) coordenador(a) deve inscrever, al?m do seu trabalho individual, o resumo geral da mesa). Comunica??es coordenadas - participantes em geral, com doutorado ou mestrado ou estudantes de p?s-gradua??o: Dura??o da sess?o: 2 horas. N?mero de participantes: at? 4, incluindo o coordenador. Tempo por participante: 20 minutos + 10 minutos para discuss?o. Comunica??es individuais - participantes em geral, com doutorado ou mestrado ou estudantes de p?s-gradua??o: Dura??o da sess?o: 2 horas. N?mero de participantes: 4 ou 5. Tempo por participante: 25 minutos + 5 minutos para discuss?o (4 participantes) ou 20 minutos + 4 minutos para discuss?o (5 participantes). P?steres - participantes em geral, incluindo estudantes de gradua??o: Formato: 90 x 90 cm. Em rela??o ?s comunica??es coordenadas e individuais e aos p?steres: Datas: Submiss?o de resumos: 12 de abril a 06 de junho. Carta de aceite: a partir de 28 de junho tanto na p?gina do congresso como atrav?s de mensagem autom?tica de e-mail. NOTA: Os participantes de comunica??es coordenadas devem se inscrever individualmente. Resumos: L?ngua: portugu?s, espanhol ou ingl?s. Tamanho: at? 2.200 caracteres com espa?o. Formato: t?tulo, resumo e 3 palavras-chave. Estrutura do resumo: tema, justificativa/relev?ncia, objetivo(s), referencial te?rico, metodologia, resultado(s) ou resultado(s) preliminar(es) e conclus?o(?es) ou conclus?o(?es) preliminar(es). As palavras-chave devem ser separadas por ponto e v?rgula. NOTA: A inscri??o de trabalhos em coautoria deve seguir os seguintes passos: 1. Cada coautor/a que pretenda estar na sess?o de apresenta??o do trabalho registra login (endere?o eletr?nico) e senha e preenche a ficha de inscri??o. 2. Somente um/a coautor/a preenche o formul?rio de resumo e inclui o(s) nome(s) do/a(s) outro/a (s). Um/a coautor/a n?o inscrito/a n?o receber? certificado, mas sua coautoria ser? devidamente registrada nos anais do congresso. Taxas de inscri??o: Datas Tipos de participantes at? 15 de julho a partir de 16 julho a partir de 15 setembro Professore(a)s-pesquisadore(a)s Congresso R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Minicurso R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Estudantes de p?s-gradua??o Congresso R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Estudantes de gradua??o Congresso R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Minicurso R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participantes sem trabalho Congresso R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Pagamento: Dep?sito no Banco do Brasil: Conta corrente: 23.108-8 Ag?ncia: 3296-4 Em nome de: Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho e/ou Antonia Dilamar Ara?jo O comprovante de pagamento deve ser escaneado e enviado, em forma de anexo, para o endere?o de e-mail: inscr at 6alsfal-uece.com.br. O(a)s estudantes precisam escanear tamb?m um documento oficial que comprove seu status de estudante e anexar o arquivo ? mesma mensagem. O assunto da mensagem deve ser o nome completo do participante e o corpo da mensagem deve ser deixado em branco. Devido aos custos das e ?s dificuldades com as transfer?ncias banc?rias vindas do exterior, os participantes estrangeiros pagar?o as taxas de inscri??o para o congresso e/ou o(s) minicurso(s) no primeiro dia de comparecimento ao evento. O(s) valor(es) a ser(em) pago(s) s?o o(s) correspondente(s) ao segundo per?odo de tempo na tabela acima (do dia 16 de julho ao dia 14 de setembro de 2010), em conformidade com a categoria de cada um. Ser?o aceitos exclusivamente pagamentos em moeda nacional brasileira (real). Os estudantes dever?o apresentar um documento oficial que comprove a sua categoria. Estamos esperando por voc?s aqui em Fortaleza a fim de que possamos ter um grande evento acad?mico sist?mico-funcional. Um abra?o, Dr. Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho (UECE) Dra. Antonia Dilamar Ara?jo (UECE) Presidente e Vice-Presidente ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ESPA?OL: Estimados Colegas, Tenemos el placer de hacer el anuncio oficial de la llamada de trabajos para el VI Congreso de la Asociaci?n de Ling??stica Sist?mico-Funcional de Am?rica Latina-ALSFAL, que est? siendo organizado por el Programa de Postgrado en Ling??stica Aplicada del Centro de Humanidades de la Universidade Estadual do Cear? (Fortaleza - Cear? - Nordeste de Brasil) y tendr? lugar en el Hotel Ponta Mar (****), 05 al 09 de octubre de 2010. El tema del VI ALSFAL es: 'La Ling??stica Sist?mico-Funcional y su potencial para el empoderamiento semi?tico-discursivo'. Para obtener m?s informaci?n sobre el tema, el programa, los investigadores invitados, los comit?s, la inscripci?n para el congreso y para los minicursos pre-congreso, el alojamiento, los patrocinadores, etc, por favor visite la p?gina del VI ALSFAL en http://www.6alsfal-uece.com.br/ (contacto: info at 6alsfal-uece.com.br). Se aceptar?n trabajos en las ?reas abajo, vistas necesariamente, mas no exclusivamente, desde la perspectiva de la LSF: ? ESTUDIOS DISCURSIVOS: AN?LIS CR?TICO / ESTRAT?GICO / POSITIVO DEL DISCURSO - ACD / AED / APD ? ESTUDIOS CULTURALES ? ESTUDIOS SOBRE G?NERO/REGISTRO E INTERTEXTUALIDAD ? COHESI?N Y COHERENCIA ? LING??STICA ART?STICA ? LING??STICA DE LOS MEDIOS MASIVOS ? LING??STICA ORGANIZACIONAL/ADMINISTRATIVA: EL LENGUAJE EN EL AMBIENTE DEL TRABAJO ? ECOLING??STICA Y POL?TICA LING??STICA: ESTUDIOS SOBRE PLANIFICACI?N LING??STICA, DERECHOS HUMANOS LING??STICOS, LENGUAS DE MIGRANTES, LINGUICISMO Y IMPERIALISMO LING??STICO ? LING??STICA EDUCATIVA: CONCIENCIA CR?TICA DEL LENGUAJE, ENSE?ANZA DE LOS G?NEROS DEL PODER, ALFABETIZACI?N CR?TICA ? ESTUDIOS SOBRE LENGUAJES T?CNICAS Y COMUNICACI?N INTERCULTURAL ? LING??STICA CL?NICA ? LING??STICA FORENSE ? ONTOG?NESIS LING??STICA ? DESCRIPCI?N DE LENGUAS INDIVIDUALES ? ESTUDIOS MULTILING??STICOS: DESCRIPCI?N, COMPARACI?N Y TIPOLOG?A DE LENGUAS; TRADUCCI?N Y INTERPRETACI?N; ENSE?ANZA Y APRENDIZAJE DE L2 ? ESTUDIOS MULTISEMI?TICOS: MULTIMODALIDAD EN LOS MEDIOS ORAL, ESCRITO, VISUAL Y DE SE?AS Y MULTIMODALIDAD EN LA WEB ? TEORIA DE LA VALORACI?N ? LING??STICA DE CORPUS ? LING??STICA COMPUTACIONAL: PROCESAMENTO DE LENGUAS NATURALES El estudio de cada una de estas ?reas puede convertirse en un medio potencial para facilitar el acceso a recursos semi?tico-discursivos individuales y colectivos y abrir oportunidades para que las personas, en situaciones de desventaja, fortalezcan su autodeterminaci?n, desarrollen sus habilidades, lean el mundo cr?ticamente para que en ?l vivan tambi?n cr?ticamente o, en otras palabras, se empoderen como constructores de su ?xito cotidiano y como autores de su propia biograf?a. Deseamos dialogar con y reflexionar sobre la LSF desde la perspectiva del empoderamiento. Mas deseamos hacerlo con investigadore(a)s, profesore(a)s y estudiantes que trabajan en estas ?reas en Am?rica Latina y alrededor del mundo; por este motivo, todo(a)s ustedes est?n cordialmente invitado(a)s a venir a Fortaleza para compartir con nosotros sus puntos de vista sobre estos asuntos. En cuanto a las inscripciones: INSCRIPCI?N Modalidades de participaci?n: Minicursos - instructores/as invitados/as. Sesiones plenarias - participantes invitados/as. Mesas redondas - participantes invitados/as. (NOTA: Los/las plenaristas, los/las participantes en las mesas redondas y los/las instructores/as de minicursos deben tambi?n hacer su inscripci?n, excepto el pago de la tasa. Los/las participantes en las mesas redondas deben inscribirse individualmente, pero el/la coordinador/a debe inscribir, adem?s de su trabajo individual, el resumen general de la mesa). Ponencias coordinadas - participantes en general, con doctorado o maestr?a o estudiantes de postgrado: Duraci?n de la sesi?n: 2 horas. N?mero de participantes: hasta 4, incluyendo el/la coordinador/a. Tiempo por participante: 20 minutos + 10 minutos para discusi?n. (NOTA: Los participantes de ponencias coordinadas deben inscribirse individualmente). Ponencias individuales - participantes en general, con doctorado o maestr?a o estudiantes de postgrado: Duraci?n de la sesi?n: 2 horas. N?mero de participantes: 4 o 5. Tiempo por participante: 25 minutos + 5 minutos para discusi?n (4 participantes) o 20 minutos + 4 minutos para discusi?n (5 participantes). P?steres - participantes en general, incluyendo estudiantes de pregrado: Formato: 90 x 90 cm. Con relaci?n a las ponencias coordinadas e individuales y a los p?steres: Fechas: Env?o de res?menes: 12 de abril a 06 de junio de 2010. Carta de aceptaci?n: a partir del 28 de junio de 2010 en el sitio del congreso y por medio de un mensaje autom?tico de e-mail. Res?menes: Lengua: portugu?s, espa?ol o ingl?s. Tama?o: hasta 2.200 caracteres con espacios. Formato: t?tulo, resumen y 3 palabras-clave. Estructura del resumen: tema, justificaci?n/pertinencia, objetivo(s), marco te?rico, metodolog?a, resultado(s) o resultado(s) preliminar(es) y conclusi?n(ones) o conclusi?n(ones) preliminar(es). Las palabras-clave deben estar separadas por punto y coma. NOTA: La inscripci?n de trabajos en co-autor?a debe seguir los siguientes pasos: 1. Cada co-autor/a que desee estar en la sesi?n de presentaci?n del trabajo registra login (direcci?n electr?nica) y contrase?a y completa la ficha de inscripci?n. 2. S?lo uno/a co-autor/a completa el formulario de resumen y incluye el(los) nombre(s) del(de los) otro(s) o de la(s) otra(s). Un/a co-autor/a no inscrito/a no recibir? certificado, pero su co-autor?a ser? debidamente registrada en los anales del congreso. Tasas de inscripci?n: Fechas Tipos de participantes hasta el 15 de julio a partir del 16 julio a partir del 15 septiembre Profesores/ras-investigadores/ras Congreso R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Minicurso R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Estudiantes de postgrado Congreso R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Estudiantes de pregrado Congreso R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Minicurso R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participantes sin trabajo Congreso R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Forma de pago: Dep?sito en el Banco do Brasil: Cuenta corriente: 23.108-8 Agencia bancaria: 3296-4 A nombre de: Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho e/ou Antonia Dilamar Ara?jo Se debe escanear y enviar el volante de consignaci?n, adjunt?ndolo a la direcci?n de correo electr?nico: inscr at 6alsfal-uece.com.br. Los/las estudiantes necesitan escanear tambi?n un documento oficial que certifique su condici?n de estudiante y adjuntar el archivo a la misma mensaje. El asunto del mensaje debe consistir en el nombre completo del participante y se debe dejar en blanco el cuerpo del mensaje. Debido a los costos y las dificultades en cuanto a las transferencias bancarias desde el extranjero, los participantes extranjeros pagar?n las tasas de inscripci?n para el congreso y/o lo(s) minicurso(s) en el primer d?a de asistencia en el evento. El/los importe(s) a pagar es/son el/los que coincide(n) con el segundo per?odo de tiempo en el cuadro arriba (del 16 de julio al 14 de septiembre 2010), de acuerdo con la categor?a de cada uno. S?lo los pagos en moneda brasile?a (real) ser?n aceptados. Los estudiantes deben mostrar un documento oficial que certifique su condici?n de estudiante. Estamos esperando por ustedes aqu? en Fortaleza para que podamos tener un gran evento acad?mico sist?mico-funcional. Un cordial saludo, Dr. Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho (UECE) Dra. Antonia Dilamar Ara?jo (UECE) Presidente y Vicepresidente ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENGLISH: Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to make the official announcement of the call for papers for the VI Conference of the Latin American Systemic-Functional Linguistics Association-ALSFAL, which will be hosted by the Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics - Center of Humanities / Universidade Estadual do Cear? (Fortaleza - Cear? - Northeastern Brazil) and held at Ponta Mar Hotel (****) from the 5th to the 9th of October, 2010. The theme of the VI ALSFAL is: 'Systemic-Functional Linguistics ans its potential for semiotic-discursive empowerment'. For further information on the theme, the program, the invited researchers, the committees, the registration for the conference and for the pre-conference workshops, the accommodation, the sponsors, etc, please visit the VI ALSFAL page at http://www.6alsfal-uece.com.br/ (contact: info at 6alsfal-uece.com.br). Papers may be submitted in the areas below, viewed necessarily from an SFL perspective, but not necessarily in an exclusive way: ? DISCOURSE STUDIES: CRITICAL / STRATEGIC / POSITIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS - CDA / SDA / PDA ? CULTURAL STUDIES ? GENRE/REGISTER STUDIES AND INTERTEXTUALITY ? COHESION AND COHERENCE ? ARTISTIC LINGUISTICS ? MEDIA LINGUISTICS ? ORGANIZATIONAL/ADMINISTRATIVE LINGUISTICS: LANGUAGE IN THE WORKPLACE ? ECOLINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE POLICY: STUDIES ON LINGUISTIC PLANNING, LINGUISTIC HUMAN RIGHTS, MIGRANTS' LANGUAGES, LINGUICISM, AND LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM ? EDUCATIONAL LINGUISTICS: CRITICAL LANGUAGE AWARENESS, TEACHING OF THE POWER-RELATED GENRES, CRITICAL LITERACY ? STUDIES ON TECHNICAL LANGUAGES AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION ? CLINICAL LINGUISTICS ? FORENSIC LINGUISTICS ? LINGUISTIC ONTOGENESIS ? DESCRIPTION OF INDIVIDUAL LANGUAGES ? MULTILINGUAL STUDIES: DESCRIPTION, COMPARISON AND TYPOLOGY OF LANGUAGES; TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING; L2 TEACHING AND LEARNING ? MULTISEMIOTIC STUDIES: MULTIMODALITY IN THE SPOKEN, WRITTEN, VISUAL, AND SIGNED MEDIA, AND MULTIMODALITY IN THE WEB CHANNEL ? APPRAISAL THEORY ? CORPUS LINGUISTICS ? COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS: NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING The study of each of these may result in a potential means of making available individual and collective semiotic-discursive resources and opening opportunities for disadvantaged people to strengthen their self-determination, to develop their abilities, to read the world critically and live in it also critically or, in other words, to empower themselves as constructors of their daily success and as authors of their own biography. We wish to dialog with and reflect on SFL from the viewpoint of empowerment. But we wish to do so with researchers, teachers, and students working on these areas in Latin America and world-wide, which is the reason why all of you are warmly invited to Fortaleza to share with us your views on these matters. As for the registration: REGISTRATION Participation modalities: Workshops - invited instructors. Plenary sessions - invited participants. Roundtables - invited participants. (NOTE: Plenarists, roundtable participants, and workshop instructors must also go through the registration steps, except for fee payment. Roundtable participants must register individually, but the coordinator must register, besides her/his individual paper, the table's general abstract). Coordinated paper sessions - participants in general, with a Ph.D. or an MA degree or graduate students: Session duration: 2 hours. Number of participants: up to 4, including the coordinator. Time per participant: 20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion. Individual paper sessions - participants in general, with a Ph.D. or an MA degree or graduate students: Session duration: 2 hours. Number of participants: 4 or 5. Time per participant: 20 minutes + 5 minutes for discussion (4 participants) or 20 minutes + 4 minutes for discussion (5 participants). Posters - participants in general, including undergraduate students. Format: 90 x 90 cm. As regards the coordinated and individual paper sessions as well as the posters: Dates: Abstract submission: April 12 through June 06. Acceptance letter: from June 28 onwards both on the conference page and by automatic e-mail message. NOTE: Participants of coordinated paper sessions must register individually. Abstracts: Language: Portuguese, Spanish, or English. Size: up to 2,200 characters with spaces. Format: title, abstract, and 3 key words. Structure of the abstract: theme, relevance, objective(s), theoretical framework, methodology, result(s) or preliminary result(s), and conclusion(s) or preliminary conclusion(s). The keywords must be separated by semicolons. NOTE: The registration of papers with co-authorship must be made as follows: 1. Each co-author that intends to be at the paper's presentation session registers login (e-mail address) and password and fills out the registration form. 2. Only one co-author fills out the abstract form and includes the name(s) of the other(s). A non-registered co-author will not receive a certificate, but her/his authorship will be duly recorded in the conference proceedings. Registration fees: Dates Types of participants up to July 15 from July 16 from September 15 onwards Professors-researchers Conference R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Workshop R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Graduate students Conference R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Workshop R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Undergraduate students Conference R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Workshop R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participants without paper or poster presentation Conference R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Workshop R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Payment: Deposit in Banco do Brasil: Checking account: 23.108-8 Branch: 3296-4 In favor of: Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho e/ou Antonia Dilamar Ara?jo The payment receipt must be scanned and sent, as an attachment, to the e-mail address: inscr at 6alsfal-uece.com.br. Students must also scan an official document that certifies their student status and attach the file to the same message. The message subject must be the participant's full name, and the body of the message must be left blank. Due to the costs and the difficulties as regards bank transfers from abroad, foreign participants will pay the registration fees for the conference and/or workshop(s) on the first day of attendance at the event. The amount(s) to be paid is/are that/those relative to the second time range within the above table (from July 16th through September 14th, 2010), according to each one's category. Only payments in Brazilian currency (real) will be accepted. Students must show an official document that certifies their student status. We will be waiting for you here in fortaleza so that we can have a great systemic-functional academic event. Our best regards, Dr. Pedro Henrique Lima Praxedes Filho (UECE) Dr. Antonia Dilamar Ara?jo (UECE) Convenors Datas Tipos de participantes at? 15 de julho a partir de 16 julho a partir de 15 setembro Professore(a)s-pesquisadore(a)s Congresso R$ 120. R$ 180 R$ 220. Minicurso R$ 50 R$ 70 R$ 90 Estudantes de p?s-gradua??o Congresso R$ 100. R$ 160 R$200. Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 Estudantes de gradua??o Congresso R$ 50. R$ 70 R$ 90 Minicurso R$ 20 R$ 30 R$ 40 Participantes sem trabalho Congresso R$ 100 R$ 160 R$ 200 Minicurso R$ 40 R$ 60 R$ 80 From eitkonen at utu.fi Thu Apr 15 13:05:14 2010 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:05:14 +0300 Subject: peer reviewing Message-ID: Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. Esa . Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From amnfn at well.com Thu Apr 15 13:14:09 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:14:09 -0700 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Esa, I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something has been "scientifically proven" or not. What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') > > When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. > > The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. > > In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. > > Esa > . > > Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen > > From hopper at cmu.edu Thu Apr 15 13:31:56 2010 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:31:56 -0400 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Let's not forget, too, that the misunderstood geniuses of our field are themselves perfectly capable of wielding their gate-keeping privileges when the opportunity comes their way. It's largely a question of, as the saying goes, whose ox is being gored. Paul On Thu, April 15, 2010 09:14, A. Katz wrote: > Esa, > > > I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. > > > But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond > the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and > everything that goes into deciding whether something has been > "scientifically proven" or not. > > > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? > > > --Aya > > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > > >> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' >> discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine more or >> less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 >> years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= >> 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >> >> >> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more >> interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, >> and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) >> have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, >> the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, >> because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >> >> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >> published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not this >> has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has >> quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors >> privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been >> the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or >> antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >> >> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to >> understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only >> mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. >> people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start >> claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >> >> Esa >> . >> >> >> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >> >> >> -- Paul J. Hopper Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities Department of English Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 From haspelmath at eva.mpg.de Thu Apr 15 13:37:17 2010 From: haspelmath at eva.mpg.de (Martin Haspelmath) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:37:17 +0200 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A. Katz wrote: > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? The simple answer is: defend pluralism. If there are several different journals (conferences, employers, etc.), I can submit my work to the next one if I'm rejected. I think this has worked fairly well in the past, and it works even better nowadays, when it's so easy to submit to journals all over the world. So I'm all for peer review, but with one caveat: Peer reviewers should help editors select the best papers, and make suggestions for how to improve them. Peer reviewers (and editors) should NOT force authors to rework their papers. In an earlier post, someone said that "very few articles are publishable in their original form". I find this a very strange statement -- as if there were an absolute threshold of "publishability". All this is extremely subjective, so pluralism is absolutely vital. I think one of the most important functions of editorial selection is typically underestimated: The prior self-selection by the authors. Authors typically send only their best work to the best journals. So high-quality journals tend to publish high-quality papers because they tend to get high-quality submissions, not because the reviewing process adds significantly to the quality. So let's keep peer review, "accept" and "reject", but let's get rid of "revise and resubmit". The result will be much faster publication, a higher percentage of journal papers among linguists' publications (making linguistics look more respectable), and equal quality. Martin -- Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de) Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616 From mark at polymathix.com Thu Apr 15 17:57:43 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:57:43 -0500 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A. Katz wrote: > > But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond > the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and > everything that goes into deciding whether something has been > "scientifically proven" or not. > > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? I have a technocratic answer to your question, but first the non-technocratic part: If you step back and take the meaning of "peer review" at face value (instead of taking the conventional sense -- part of a scholarly journal's quality control process), we find that peers review each other's work in various ways. Serving as a reviewer for a journal is one of those ways. Choosing to publish a rebuttal or commentary to a peer's paper is another way. Evaluating a peer's papers to support hiring, tenure, promotion and firing decisions is another way (you know you've been "reviewed" by your peers if you don't get tenure). Although publishing companies may be interested in quality control for whatever business reasons they might have, the community of peers is interested in quality control because it's synonymous with the scientific method. I think Tom's and Esa's comments boil down to the observation that the peer review process in the conventional sense is not really supporting the community's need for quality control -- it doesn't really contribute to the advancement of our science. Both would probably agree that it has in fact worked against the advancement of our science in many cases. We can fix that sad state of affairs by minimizing the impact of the peer review process on the fine-grained content of what gets published. Martin's suggestion would accomplish that, but it could only be implemented if the publishing companies went along with the change in policy. I might be wrong, but I think that's either unlikely, or else likely to be a very long time in coming. That's why I've suggested that the community might consider taking the matter into its own capable hands -- which brings us to the technocratic part of my comment: I have to wonder what would happen if this community of thinkers went ahead and built its own Web 2.0 platform for the submission, review and dissemination of papers. "Peer review" could be an ongoing, potentially never-ending process if submissions were published after relatively minimal screening (Martin's accept/reject with no revise/resubmit), perhaps by a rotating selection of peers. If successful, the platform itself would become a research tool for the community. I think we're all used to relegating these kinds of ideas to the sort of futuristic pie-in-the-sky fiction you'd find in a Neal Stephenson novel. But to a large extent, that future is already here. There are no remaining technical barriers to this kind of thing, only ideological ones. So if we built it, would they come (as the phrase goes)? More importantly, would the community use the contents of such a platform in its hiring and tenure decisions? -- Mark Mark P. Line > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > >> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, >> Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine more or less >> redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years >> that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur >> Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >> >> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more >> interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, >> and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have >> written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the >> referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, >> because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >> >> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >> published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not this >> has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has >> quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors >> privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been >> the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or >> antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >> >> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to >> understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only >> mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. >> people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming >> 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >> >> Esa >> . >> >> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >> >> -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From yutamb at mail.ru Thu Apr 15 19:03:37 2010 From: yutamb at mail.ru (Yuri Tambovtsev) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:03:37 +0700 Subject: Peer Reviewing should be "revise and resubmit". Message-ID: Dear Funknet colleagues, I am quite happy that the problem of Peer Reviewing in general and in particular "revise and resubmit" process caused many answers. As Aya correctly pointed out "What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it?". When I wrote about this burning question to the Typologists net, the owners just kicked me out. I mean they banned me from this typologists' net of the LinguistList. This is also a sort of a solution, but not for the "thinking people". Of cause, it is easier to let everything stay as it is. I really enjoyed the ideas that were expressed by "our community of thinkers". Why should anybody else correct my ideas in my article? I agree that my broken and clumsy English should be improved, but nothing else. If I write someting I answer by it by my good name. Reviewers never improved my articles for all 40 years. So I ask after Aya: "What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it?" I am sure the author of the article should receive the reviewers answers with their names for him/her to know who said this or that. Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk From keithjohnson at berkeley.edu Fri Apr 16 05:44:01 2010 From: keithjohnson at berkeley.edu (Keith Johnson) Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:44:01 -0700 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or small- minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and resubmit like this: minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make a few changes." major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see the whole story to be convinced." I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that help me make a better case. respectfully submitted, Keith Johnson On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: > Esa, > > I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. > > But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, > beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, > tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something > has been "scientifically proven" or not. > > What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: > >> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' >> discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine >> more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings >> from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my >> first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >> >> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and >> more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is >> the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, >> rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for >> publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this >> just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >> >> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >> published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not >> this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who >> has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that >> editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there >> has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong >> convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has >> rejected the article. >> >> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not >> to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can >> only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status >> quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, >> and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds >> of change. >> >> Esa >> . >> >> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >> From dlevere at ilstu.edu Fri Apr 16 16:41:03 2010 From: dlevere at ilstu.edu (Daniel Everett) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:41:03 -0400 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: <441F61AB-01B0-431B-9FDF-4A6BEB3073C7@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: While on the subject of scientific 'proof', one of the best guides I know of for infusing linguistics with more scientific rigor is Keith's own 2008 book, Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. Everyone reading this list should own a copy. Dan On 16 Apr 2010, at 01:44, Keith Johnson wrote: > When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or small-minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. > > On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and resubmit like this: > > minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make a few changes." > > major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see the whole story to be convinced." > > I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that help me make a better case. > > respectfully submitted, > > Keith Johnson > > > > On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: > >> Esa, >> >> I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. >> >> But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something has been "scientifically proven" or not. >> >> What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? >> >> --Aya >> >> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >> >> >> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: >> >>> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >>> >>> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >>> >>> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >>> >>> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >>> >>> Esa >>> . >>> >>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >>> > From bkbergen at cogsci.ucsd.edu Fri Apr 16 16:47:05 2010 From: bkbergen at cogsci.ucsd.edu (Benjamin Bergen) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:47:05 -0700 Subject: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS: joint meeting of CSDL and ESLP Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS Joint meeting of: The Conceptual Structure Discourse, and Language Conference (CSDL) and The Embodied and Situated Language Processing Workshop (ESLP) San Diego, California September 16-19, 2010. http://embodiedlanguage.org/csdl_eslp.html Keynote Speakers: Michael Arbib, USC Lera Boroditsky, Stanford University Craig Chambers, UTM Matthew Crocker, U Saarbruecken Vic Ferreira, UC San Diego Adele Goldberg, Princeton George Lakoff, UC Berkeley Teenie Matlock, UC Merced Fey Parrill, Case Western Gabriella Vigliocco, University College London Rolf Zwaan, University of Rotterdam Submissions: We welcome submissions of abstracts for oral or poster presentations on topics related to language and cognition, including but not limited to embodiment, situatedness, language use, figurative language, grammatical constructions, gesture, comprehension, production, and learning. Successful submissions will address theoretically important issues using appropriate empirical methods, such as linguistic analysis, corpus analysis, computational modeling, behavioral experimentation, electrophysiology, and brain imaging. Abstracts can now be submitted electronically, and must be submitted by the deadline of April 30, 2010. They will be reviewed anonymously by expert reviewers, and authors will be notified with decisions by early June, 2010. Support for students: Through National Science Foundation support, the meeting is able to provide up to $250 in funding to support travel costs and registration fees for 25 students participating in this meeting. Students may request to be considered for support using the form to appear on the meeting's website. Reviews of abstract submissions will be entirely independent of and unaffected by requests for support. Schedule: The goal of this joint meeting is to foster interdisciplinary interactions. To this end, the first day of the meeting (September 16th) will feature tutorials on "Experimental and Computational Research Methods for Cognitive Linguists" and "Cognitive Linguistics Research for Experimentalists". These will be taught by the invited speakers and are intended to provide basic familiarity with the tools, vocabulary, and practices of the relevant disciplines. More details on the tutorial topics will become available on the website. Research presentations will start on the afternoon of September 16th and run through the afternoon of September 19th in a single-session format. Aside from the keynote speakers, there will be competitive slots for 20-minute oral presentations as well as poster sessions. About the meeting: CSDL, the biennial meeting of the North American branch of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, was first held in San Diego in 1994. Cognitive Linguistics is the cover term for a collection of approaches to language that focus heavily on the "embodiment" of language. Under the rubric of embodiment, cognitive linguists investigate the extent to which form depends on meaning, function, and use, as well as ways in which language use depends on non-linguistic neurocognitive systems. (For more on previous CSDLs: http://www.cogling.org/csdlconfs.shtml) ESLP 2010 is the third event in a workshop series that started in 2007. The first goal of the conference is to bring together researchers working on the interaction of language and visual/motor processing in embodied, situated, and language-for-action research traditions. A further focus is on uniting converging and complementary evidence from three different methods (behavioral, neuropsychological, and computational). The first meeting led to the publication of a special issue on embodied language processing in Brain and Language (to appear in March 2010). ESLP took place again in June, 2009 in Rotterdam, in association with the international Cognitive Science Society Conference in Amsterdam (see http://embodiedlanguage.org/). This meeting brings together two populations of researchers - cognitive linguists on the one hand and psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists studying embodied and situated language processing on the other. There are substantial gains to be made by bringing these two communities together. They share an interest in investigating how language and its structure depend upon situated use and embodied cognition, but differ in their methods and many of their assumptions. Cognitive linguists typically use traditional methods of linguistic analysis (corpus methods, elicitation, native speaker judgments) to develop nuanced and theoretically sophisticated accounts of how language is embodied how language structure depends upon constraints imposed by known properties of the human brain and body. They additionally focus on how language use affects language structure and language change. The ESLP community (psycholinguists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists) typically use experimental and computational methods to ask questions about the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying linguistic embodiment, and about the neural and cognitive mechanisms when language is processed in its grounded physical and social contexts situatedness. For more information, please consult the meeting website: http://embodiedlanguage.org/csdl_eslp.html. If you have further questions, please contact the conference organizers, Ben Bergen (UCSD) and Pia Knoeferle (Bielefeld University), at csdl.eslp at gmail.com. +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ Benjamin K. Bergen Associate Professor, Department of Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego bkbergen at ucsd.edu http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~bkbergen/ Director, Language and Cognition Lab http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/lcl/ Associate Editor, Cognitive Linguistics http://www.cogling.group.shef.ac.uk/ +=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+ From amnfn at well.com Fri Apr 16 17:52:16 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:52:16 -0700 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dan, Thanks for recommending Keith's book. I would very much like to read it. I'll sse if I can't get access to a copy. Besides quantitative methods of verifying something to be true, I wonder if there might not be also valid qualitative tests. I'm not just talking about a single counter-example falsifying a hypothesis. I'm also thinking in terms of positive proof. I think that when the probability that something could happen entirely by chance is low, then even a single occurrence of it may be ascribed probative significance. --Aya http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > While on the subject of scientific 'proof', one of the best guides I know of for infusing linguistics with more scientific rigor is Keith's own 2008 book, Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. Everyone reading this list should own a copy. > > Dan > > > On 16 Apr 2010, at 01:44, Keith Johnson wrote: > >> When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or small-minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. >> >> On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and resubmit like this: >> >> minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make a few changes." >> >> major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see the whole story to be convinced." >> >> I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that help me make a better case. >> >> respectfully submitted, >> >> Keith Johnson >> >> >> >> On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: >> >>> Esa, >>> >>> I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. >>> >>> But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something has been "scientifically proven" or not. >>> >>> What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? >>> >>> --Aya >>> >>> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >>> >>> >>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: >>> >>>> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >>>> >>>> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the case. >>>> >>>> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling the referees, has rejected the article. >>>> >>>> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so by the winds of change. >>>> >>>> Esa >>>> . >>>> >>>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >>>> >> > > From Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU Fri Apr 16 17:58:02 2010 From: Lise.Menn at Colorado.EDU (Lise Menn) Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:58:02 -0600 Subject: peer reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Aya - yes, of course. Single observations matter - if something happened, it happened, and it's counter-evidence to any theory that says it could not possibly have happened. It may be possible to show that it's not relevant to that theory, but it may also be an entering wedge - similar observations may come along. Lise On Apr 16, 2010, at 11:52 AM, A. Katz wrote: > Dan, > > Thanks for recommending Keith's book. I would very much like to read > it. I'll sse if I can't get access to a copy. > > Besides quantitative methods of verifying something to be true, I > wonder if there might not be also valid qualitative tests. > > I'm not just talking about a single counter-example falsifying a > hypothesis. I'm also thinking in terms of positive proof. I think > that when the probability that something could happen entirely by > chance is low, then even a single occurrence of it may be ascribed > probative significance. > > --Aya > > http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz > > On Fri, 16 Apr 2010, Daniel Everett wrote: > >> While on the subject of scientific 'proof', one of the best guides >> I know of for infusing linguistics with more scientific rigor is >> Keith's own 2008 book, Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. >> Everyone reading this list should own a copy. >> >> Dan >> >> >> On 16 Apr 2010, at 01:44, Keith Johnson wrote: >> >>> When it comes to "scientific proof", maybe the best approach is to >>> say that a result is scientifically proven when the scientific >>> community becomes convinced of it. No one person gets to declare >>> a finding proven because we humans too easily convince ourselves >>> of all sorts of crazy ideas. So, convincing reviewers seems to me >>> to be a good first step in the process of scientific proof. Of >>> course, reviewers are human too and can be lazy, or distracted, or >>> small-minded. Fortunately there is more than one journal. >>> >>> On revise and resubmit. When I'm reviewing I think of revise and >>> resubmit like this: >>> >>> minor revision: "Okay, I think I get it, and I'm convinced you are >>> on to something, but I think if you want the average reader (who >>> isn't going to work as hard as me) to be convinced you should make >>> a few changes." >>> >>> major revision: "I can see how this may well be right, but you've >>> left out some crucial details or logical steps, and I need to see >>> the whole story to be convinced." >>> >>> I don't get as much out of suggestions that have to do with making >>> a paper more artful, but I do very much appreciate comments that >>> help me make a better case. >>> >>> respectfully submitted, >>> >>> Keith Johnson >>> >>> >>> >>> On Apr 15, 2010, at 6:14 AM, A. Katz wrote: >>> >>>> Esa, >>>> >>>> I fully understand what you said, and it makes perfect sense. >>>> >>>> But this problem that you've pointed out extends, it seems to me, >>>> beyond the issue of peer reviewing and directly into hiring, >>>> tenure, and everything that goes into deciding whether something >>>> has been "scientifically proven" or not. >>>> >>>> What can we, as a community of thinkers, do about it? >>>> >>>> --Aya >>>> >>>> http://hubpages.com/profile/Aya+Katz >>>> >>>> >>>> On Thu, 15 Apr 2010, Esa Itkonen wrote: >>>> >>>>> Just when I was about to participate at the 'peer reviewing' >>>>> discussion, Tom Giv?n sent in his contribution which made mine >>>>> more or less redundant. Still, here is a summary of some musings >>>>> from those 42 years that have elapsed since the publication of >>>>> my first article (= 'Zur Charakterisierung der Glossemantik') >>>>> >>>>> When (nearly) everybody agrees that A is the case, it seems less >>>>> interesting to echo this view and bolster it with more data, and >>>>> more interesting to try to find out if, after all, it is B that >>>>> is the case, and once having found it out, to prove it. Once you >>>>> (or, rather, I) have written an article in this spirit and offer >>>>> it for publication, the referees invariably respond by claiming >>>>> that this just cannot be, because (as everybody knows) A is the >>>>> case. >>>>> >>>>> The end result has been that if (and when) my article has been >>>>> published, then (just as in Tom Giv?n's case) more often than >>>>> not this has been thanks to the editor of the journal in >>>>> question, who has quietly overruled the referees. (It has also >>>>> happened that editors privately solicit an article.) For a good >>>>> measure, there has also been the occasional editor (= clearly a >>>>> man of strong convictions and/or antipathies) who, overruling >>>>> the referees, has rejected the article. >>>>> >>>>> In this discussion, there have been those who have confessed not >>>>> to understand Martin Haspelmath's original point. For me, this >>>>> can only mean that they are people intrinsically happy with the >>>>> status quo, i.e. people who claim 'A' when (nearly) everybody >>>>> does so, and start claiming 'B' only when nudged into doing so >>>>> by the winds of change. >>>>> >>>>> Esa >>>>> . >>>>> >>>>> Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen >>>>> >>> >> >> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017 Boulder CO 80302 http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/index.html Professor Emerita of Linguistics Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science University of Colorado Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics] Fellow, Linguistic Society of America Campus Mail Address: UCB 594, Institute for Cognitive Science Campus Physical Address: CINC 234 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder From bischoff.st at gmail.com Sat Apr 17 17:31:43 2010 From: bischoff.st at gmail.com (s.t. bischoff) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:31:43 -0400 Subject: IJAL accept, reject, resubmit figures Message-ID: Hi all, In the latest SSILA news letter Keren Rice has a very nice piece on the editorship of IJAL. I've taken the numbers she provides regarding submissions, acceptance, rejection and revise and resubmit and pasted them below. I thought they might be interesting in light on the recent discussions regarding such issues. The bold below is mine. Cheers, Shannon The year in review: 2009: 35 submissions 17 are on languages of North America; 16 on languages of Latin America; two mixed At year?s end: 8 accepted, 9 rejected (of these 4 rejected; *5 revise and resubmit*); rest in review process phonetics and phonology: 5 morphology, syntax, semantics: 25 historical: other topics: 5 (A submission may be counted in more than one category.) 2008: 33 submissions (including individual papers in the issue) more than half are on languages of Latin America At year end: 9 accepted, 5 rejected ( *1 revise and resubmit*; 4 reject), rest in review process phonetics and phonology: 6 morphology, syntax, semantics: 14 historical: 11 A comparison with previous years 2007: 27 submissions (year end: 4 accept; 11 reject (7 revise and resubmit; 4 reject)) 2006: 36 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) 2005: 40 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) From noel_houck at hotmail.com Sat Apr 17 19:07:44 2010 From: noel_houck at hotmail.com (Noel Houck) Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:07:44 -0700 Subject: IJAL accept, reject, resubmit figures In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I agree. > Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:31:43 -0400 > From: bischoff.st at gmail.com > To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu > Subject: [FUNKNET] IJAL accept, reject, resubmit figures > > Hi all, > > In the latest SSILA news letter Keren Rice has a very nice piece on the > editorship of IJAL. I've taken the numbers she provides regarding > submissions, acceptance, rejection and revise and resubmit and pasted them > below. I thought they might be interesting in light on the recent > discussions regarding such issues. The bold below is mine. > > Cheers, > Shannon > > The year in review: > 2009: 35 submissions 17 are on languages of North America; 16 on languages > of Latin America; two mixed At year?s end: 8 accepted, 9 rejected (of these > 4 rejected; *5 revise and resubmit*); rest in review process phonetics and > phonology: 5 morphology, syntax, semantics: 25 historical: other topics: 5 > (A submission may be counted in more than one category.) > > 2008: 33 submissions (including individual papers in the issue) more than > half are on languages of Latin America At year end: 9 accepted, 5 rejected ( > *1 revise and resubmit*; 4 reject), rest in review process phonetics and > phonology: 6 morphology, syntax, semantics: 14 historical: 11 > > A comparison with previous years > 2007: 27 submissions (year end: 4 accept; 11 reject (7 revise and resubmit; > 4 reject)) > 2006: 36 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) > 2005: 40 submissions (including individual papers in theme issue) From tgivon at uoregon.edu Sun Apr 18 19:41:45 2010 From: tgivon at uoregon.edu (Tom Givon) Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:41:45 -0600 Subject: etc. Message-ID: I thought maybe a PS would be worth pursuing. I think Paul Hopper was absolutely right in pointing out, if that is what he intended to do, that none of us are blameless. But of course, the point was even-more-eloquently made long ago by that inspired man who caution us "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". I would hope however, that in the tricky balance academics try to maintain between casting stones (power) and telling the 'truth' as they see it (science), we all strive as hard as we can to reduce the proportion of the former and enhance that of the latter. As fallible humans, that is really all we can do. The main thrust of my earlier note, leastwise as I understood it (tho of course hunting for hidden meanings is always possible), was that publications in science should not concentrate so much on being the Gate Keepers & Guardians of the True Faith, but rather should strive more toward disseminating new information and, God forbid, on occasion, new ideas. In particular, our young generation ought to be encouraged and cherished, not because they necessarily bear the ultimate truth, whatever that mythological beast may be, but because they might some day, when we are long gone, continue what we have been trying to do, and hopefully even improve upon it. This is where I think the much-maligned 'un-refereed' volumes have served, in my experience, an important tho admittedly 'permissive' function. To give a more updated example--I recently co-edited a volume that grouped together contributions from many eminent senior scholars, all of them pre-selected and none refereed (except by their peers around the table). But the two papers in the collection that, in my frail judgement, were by far the shiningest best in terms of both theory and methodology, were the joint contributions of the two lone grad students (now PhDs). I am sure they could have sent those papers to a journal, gotten feedback, and got them published. But I elected to publish them as submitted, no editorial interference. Not because I couldn't see places where the presentation could have been improved. But because I wanted the two young authors to have their say as THEY saw fit. Cheers, TG From eitkonen at utu.fi Mon Apr 19 15:32:59 2010 From: eitkonen at utu.fi (Esa Itkonen) Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:32:59 +0300 Subject: Experimental psychology as a model? Message-ID: Dear Dirk: It is interesting that you should mention the journals of experimental psychology as a model for linguists to imitate. Some of my best friends do experimental psycholinguistics, and for years I have been listening to what they have to say. Here it is, in a nutshell. Every major journal has its own very clearly defined profile. No psycholinguist who knows the ropes will ever submit an article to journal X that has not been calibrated to exactly meet the requirements of journal X. When they submit to journal Y, they recalibrate. Novices who do not know this, pay the price, but they learn quickly. This is the TRUTH, but there are always those who make anything to deny it. In this respect, I would say that the situation is better in linguistics. You are of course right that different people may have different views about what it means to prove that A, rather B, is the case. This is true often but not always. Suppose someone says e.g. that analogical relations among a set of sentences cannot be formalized; and suppose, furthermore, that it IS formalized (i.e. it is not just the case that it can be formalized but that it IS formalized); then every sane person accepts this as a proof (cf. Michael Kac's review in Studies in Language, Vol. 32:4). There are those who do not practice what they preach, and then there are those who do. When acting as a referee, I have always accepted generativist articles if (as is mostly the case) they are of high quality by their own standards. If you (whoever you may be) dislike my mentioning this elementary fact, it is not in my power to appease you. Esa Homepage: http://users.utu.fi/eitkonen From yutamb at mail.ru Wed Apr 21 18:20:03 2010 From: yutamb at mail.ru (Yuri Tambovtsev) Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:20:03 +0700 Subject: peer review system substantiate complaints about this Message-ID: Dear Funknet colleagues, may be, it is not only I, who is not satisfied with the resilts of Peer Review. If what I received through the INternet is correct, then 92% of scholars are not satisfied either. Hope it is not somebody's joke. This is what I received: "As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organization of modern science.why not apply scientific [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001)." What is your own opinion? Be well, Yuri Tambovtsev From SHANLEY at bu.edu Fri Apr 23 13:21:50 2010 From: SHANLEY at bu.edu (Shanley Allen) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 09:21:50 -0400 Subject: Fwd: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing Message-ID: Given recent discussion on this board, I thought this conference announcement would be of interest. Shanley. Begin forwarded message: > From: "ISPR 2010" > Date: April 23, 2010 3:46:35 AM EDT > Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing > > Dear Shanley Allen: > > As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) > > "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) > > Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. > > But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organization of modern science?why not apply scientific [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001). > > This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized in the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th - July 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA. > > ======================================================= > Deadlines for ISPR 2010 > May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals > May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification > June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version. > ======================================================= > > ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have formal presentations first and informal conversations later. > > Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings. > > Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions. > > All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. > > Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions. > > Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. > > Best regards, > > ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee > > If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. > > References > > Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press. > > Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were accessed on February 1, 2010) > > Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000) > From amnfn at well.com Fri Apr 23 13:30:13 2010 From: amnfn at well.com (A. Katz) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:30:13 -0700 Subject: Fwd: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I got that too. Did everybody on Funknet receive an invitation? Who are the organizers? Is this a legitimate conference? --Aya http://www.well.com/user/amnfn/ On Fri, 23 Apr 2010, Shanley Allen wrote: > Given recent discussion on this board, I thought this conference announcement would be of interest. > Shanley. > > Begin forwarded message: > >> From: "ISPR 2010" >> Date: April 23, 2010 3:46:35 AM EDT >> Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing >> >> Dear Shanley Allen: >> >> As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; p.192) >> >> "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) >> >> Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing number of journal editors. >> >> But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is central to the organization of modern science?why not apply scientific [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001). >> >> This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized in the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th - July 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA. >> >> ======================================================= >> Deadlines for ISPR 2010 >> May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals >> May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification >> June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version. >> ======================================================= >> >> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have formal presentations first and informal conversations later. >> >> Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings. >> >> Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions. >> >> All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. >> >> Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions. >> >> Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. >> >> Best regards, >> >> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee >> >> If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. >> >> References >> >> Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press. >> >> Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were accessed on February 1, 2010) >> >> Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000) >> > > > From mark at polymathix.com Fri Apr 23 18:40:18 2010 From: mark at polymathix.com (Mark P. Line) Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:40:18 -0500 Subject: Fwd: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The conference is running under the auspices of the IIIS (International Institute of Informatics and Systemics). Their gig is postmodernist systems philosophy and they publish a couple of, umm, peer-reviewed journals in English and Spanish. Looks like sort of an anti-establishment thing like LACUS. Maybe it's still hard to let your hair down as a postmodernist in systems science. So I think the short answer is that this conference is legitimate enough, but probably only within the postmodernist paradigm. -- Mark Mark P. Line A. Katz wrote: > I got that too. Did everybody on Funknet receive an invitation? > > Who are the organizers? Is this a legitimate conference? > > > --Aya > > http://www.well.com/user/amnfn/ > > On Fri, 23 Apr 2010, Shanley Allen wrote: > >> Given recent discussion on this board, I thought this conference >> announcement would be of interest. >> Shanley. >> >> Begin forwarded message: >> >>> From: "ISPR 2010" >>> Date: April 23, 2010 3:46:35 AM EDT >>> Subject: CFP - Symposium on Peer Reviewing >>> >>> Dear Shanley Allen: >>> >>> As you know, only 8% members of the Scientific Research Society agreed >>> that 'peer review works well as it is.' (Chubin and Hackett, 1990; >>> p.192) >>> >>> "A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and an analysis of the peer >>> review system substantiate complaints about this fundamental aspect of >>> scientific research." (Horrobin, 2001) >>> >>> Horrobin concludes that peer review "is a non-validated charade whose >>> processes generate results little better than does chance." (Horrobin, >>> 2001) This has been statistically proven and reported by an increasing >>> number of journal editors. >>> >>> But, "Peer Review is one of the sacred pillars of the scientific >>> edifice" (Goodstein, 2000), it is a necessary condition in quality >>> assurance for Scientific/Engineering publications, and "Peer Review is >>> central to the organization of modern science why not apply scientific >>> [and engineering] methods to the peer review process" (Horrobin, 2001). >>> >>> This is the purpose of The 2nd International Symposium on Peer >>> Reviewing: ISPR 2010 (http://www.sysconfer.org/ispr) being organized in >>> the context of The SUMMER 4th International Conference on Knowledge >>> Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2010 >>> (http://www.sysconfer.org/kgcm), which will be held on June 29th - July >>> 2nd, in Orlando, Florida, USA. >>> >>> ======================================================>> Deadlines for >>> ISPR 2010 >>> May 4th, 2010, for papers/abstracts submissions and Invited Sessions >>> Proposals >>> May 18th, 2010: Authors Notification >>> June 1st, 2010: Camera ready, final version. >>> ======================================================>> >>> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee is planning to include in the symposium >>> program 1) sessions with formal presentations, and/or 2) informal >>> conversational sessions, and/or 3) hybrid sessions, which will have >>> formal presentations first and informal conversations later. >>> >>> Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both >>> accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing >>> process and the accepted papers will be included in the same >>> proceedings. >>> >>> Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic >>> forums) will be held for each session included in the conference >>> program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and >>> authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week >>> before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in >>> peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions. >>> >>> All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing >>> processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, >>> and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will >>> support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be >>> accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to >>> be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. >>> >>> Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have >>> access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the >>> reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so >>> they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. >>> Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their >>> respective submissions. >>> >>> Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference >>> (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their >>> papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics >>> and Informatics. >>> >>> Best regards, >>> >>> ISPR 2010 Organizing Committee >>> >>> If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please send an email >>> to remove at mail.sysconfer.org with REMOVE MLCONFERENCES in the subject >>> line. Address: Torre Profesional La California, Av. Francisco de >>> Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela. >>> >>> References >>> >>> Chubin, D. R. and Hackett E. J., 1990, Peerless Science, Peer Review >>> and U.S. Science Policy; New York, State University of New York Press. >>> >>> Horrobin, D., 2001, "Something Rotten at the Core of Science?" Trends >>> in Pharmacological Sciences, Vol. 22, No. 2, February 2001. Also at >>> http://www.whale.to/vaccine/sci.html and >>> http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/peerrev4.htm (both Web pages were >>> accessed on February 1, 2010) >>> >>> Goodstein, D., 2000, "How Science Works", U.S. Federal Judiciary >>> Reference Manual on Evidence, pp. 66-72 (referenced in Hoorobin, 2000) >>> >> >> >> -- Mark Mark P. Line Bartlesville, OK From timo.honkela at tkk.fi Mon Apr 26 08:14:05 2010 From: timo.honkela at tkk.fi (Timo Honkela) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:14:05 +0300 Subject: The most and the least typical Romance language In-Reply-To: <8A9729860AF144409E171EB9602024AC@ngufa28a6c2639> Message-ID: Our article "Complexity of European Union Languages: A comparative approach" in the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics" may be of some interest for you. The abstract is below, the paper is available at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a792160699. I can also send the paper by e-mail upon request. Best regards, Timo Honkela (timo.honkela at tkk.fi) - - Abstract In this article, we are studying the differences between the European Union languages using statistical and unsupervised methods. The analysis is conducted in the different levels of language: the lexical, morphological and syntactic. Our premise is that the difficulty of the translation could be perceived as differences or similarities in different levels of language. The results are compared to linguistic groupings. Two approaches are selected for the analysis. A Kolmogorov complexity-based approach is used to compare the language structure in syntactic and morphological levels. A morpheme-level comparison is conducted based on an automated segmentation of the languages into morpheme-like units. The way the languages convey information in these levels is taken as a measure of similarity or dissimilarity between languages and the results are compared to classical linguistic classifications. The results have a significant impact on the design of (statistical) machine translation systems. If the source language conveys information in the morphological level and the target language in the syntactic level, it is clear that the machine translation system must be able to transfer the information from one level to another. On Mon, 15 Mar 2010, Yuri Tambovtsev wrote: > The most and the least typical Romance language. We have computed six Romance languages to measure the phono-typological distances between them. It is possible to find the Romance language which has the shortest distance to all these Romance languages. It is Moldavian. The ordered series of the phono-typological distances to the centre of the Romance languages: > 17.30 Moldavian > 20.24 - Rumanian > 20.54 Italian > 21.73 -Spanish > 30.27 - Portuguese > 51.17 - French > The least typical Romance language is French. What ideas have you got to share with me about the most and the least typical Romance language from the phono-typological point of view? Looking forward to hearing about you to yutamb at mail.ru Yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia. > > > -- Timo Honkela, Chief Research Scientist, PhD, Docent Adaptive Informatics Research Center Aalto University School of Science and Technology P.O.Box 5400, FI-02015 TKK, Finland timo.honkela at tkk.fi, http://www.cis.hut.fi/tho/ From sclancy at uchicago.edu Mon Apr 26 13:51:31 2010 From: sclancy at uchicago.edu (Steven Clancy) Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:51:31 -0500 Subject: Extended Final Deadline for SCLC-2010 Conference at Brown University, October 9-11, 2010 Message-ID: Please note: Due to multiple requests, we have extended the final deadline for submission of abstracts until Monday, May 3, 2010. See below for details. ********************************************************************* The Department of Slavic Languages in collaboration with the Center for Language Studies and the Department of Cognitive Science and Linguistics presents THE TENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE SLAVIC COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS ASSOCIATION (SCLC-2010) October 9-11, 2010 The Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLA) announces the Call for Papers for the 2010 annual conference. The conference will be held on the campus of Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island) on Saturday, October 9 through Monday, October 11, 2010. SCLC-2010 Keynote Speakers Eugene Charniak Brown University Adele E. Goldberg Princeton University Ronald W. Langacker University of California, San Diego CALL FOR PAPERS Abstracts are invited for presentations addressing issues of significance for cognitive linguistics with some bearing on data from the Slavic languages. As long as there is a cognitive orientation, papers may be on synchronic or diachronic topics in any of the traditional areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, or sociolinguistics. In addition to the Slavic Languages, relevant papers on other languages of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are also acceptable. Abstracts may be submitted up until the extended deadline of Monday, May 3, 2010 to Steven Clancy . Abstracts should be approximately 500 words, but strict word limits are not required. Notification of acceptance will be provided by May 31, 2010. Most presentations at SCLC are given in English, but may be in the native (Slavic) language of the presenter. However, if the presentation is not to be made in English we ask that you provide an abstract in English in addition to an abstract in any other SCLA language. MAIN SESSIONS (Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) Each presentation for the main sessions will be given 20 minutes and will be followed by a 10-minute discussion period. PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE Saturday, October 9: conference panels beginning in the morning and continue throughout the day, evening reception, keynote address, and conference dinner Sunday, October 10: main sessions and keynote address throughout the day, lunch and dinner Monday, October 11: main sessions and keynote address with conclusion by noon REGISTRATION AND CONFERENCE FEES Registration Fee: Regular participants 60USD Graduate student participants 40USD Conference dinner: 50USD Please make your checks payable to ?Brown University?. Registration deadline will be forthcoming. FURTHER INFORMATION Information on transportation, accommodations, and the conference venue will be forthcoming. Please see the conference website for further information. http://languages.uchicago.edu/scla Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island and is accessible from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS, 55 miles away) or T.F. Green Airport (PVD) in Providence. We hope you will be able to join us for SCLC-2010. Please forward this call for papers to your colleagues and graduate students who may be interested in presenting or attending. Sincerely, Steven Clancy Tore Nesset Masako Fidler President, SCLA Vice-President, SCLA Conference Organizer and Host, Brown University on behalf of the SCLA officers and the 2010 SCLA organizing committee From sn.listen at gmail.com Wed Apr 28 18:16:08 2010 From: sn.listen at gmail.com (Sebastian) Date: Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:16:08 +0200 Subject: Conference on Grammaticography, Leipzig, Germany Message-ID: *apologies for cross-postings* Full Title: Electronic Grammaticography Date: 11-Feb-2011 - 12-Feb-2011 Location: Leipzig, Germany Contact Person: Sebastian Nordhoff Meeting Email: sebastian_nordhoff at eva.mpg.de Web Site: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/11-grammaticography2011 == Meeting Description == This meeting wants to bring together field linguists, computer scientists,and publishers with the aim of exploring production and dissemination of grammatical descriptions in electronic/hypertextual format == Call for Papers == For long a step-child of lexicography, the domain of grammaticography has received growing interest in the recent past, especially in what concerns lesser studied languages. At least three volumes contain parts dealing with this question (Ameka et al. 2006, Gippert et al. 2006, Payne & Weber 2007). At the same time, advances in information technology mean that a number of techniques become available which can present linguistic information in novel ways. This holds true for multimedial content on the one hand (see e.g. Barwick & Thieberger 2007), but also so called content-management-systems (CMS) provide new possibilities to develop, structure and maintain linguistic information, which were unknown when the idea of an electronic grammar was first put to print in Zaefferer (1998). Recent publications in grammaticography often allude to the possibilities of hypertext grammars (Weber 2006, Evans & Dench 2006), but these possibilities are only starting to get explored theoretically (Good 2004, Nordhoff 2008) and in practice (Nordhoff 2007). This conference will bring together experts on grammar writing and information technology to discuss the theoretical and practical advantages hypertext grammars can offer. We invite papers dealing with the arts and crafts of grammar writing in a wide sense, preferably with an eye on electronic publishing. Topics of interest are: -general formal properties of all grammatical descriptions (GDs) in general, and hypertext GDs in particular -functional requirements for GDs and the responses of the traditional and the hypertext approach (cf. Nordhoff 2008) -discussion or presentation of implementations dealing with the media transition from book to electronic publication -opportunities and risks of hypertext grammars -integration with fieldwork or typological work -treatment of a particular linguistic subfield (phonology, syntax, ...) within a hypertext description Presentations will be 30 minutes + 15 minutes discussion. == Invited Speakers == Nick Evans (Australian National University) Christian Lehmann (Universit?t Erfurt) Jeff Good (University of Buffalo) == Submission of Abstracts == (a) Length: up to one page of text plus up to one page containing possible tables and references (b) Format: The abstract should include the title of the paper and the text of the abstract but not the author's name or affiliation. The e-mail message to which it is attached should list the title, the author's name, and the author's affiliation. Please send the message to the following address: sebastian_nordhoffeva.mpg.de (c) Deadline: The abstracts should reach us by FRIDAY, October 01. Submitters will be notified by MONDAY, November 01. == References == Ameka, F. K., A. Dench & N. Evans (eds.) (2006). Catching language -- The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Barwick, L. & N. Thieberger (eds.) (2006). Sustainable data from digital fieldwork. Sydney: University of Sydney. Gippert, J., N. Himmelmann & U. Mosel (eds.) (2006). Essentials of language documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Good, J. (2004). "The descriptive grammar as a (meta)database". Paper presented at the EMELD Language Digitization Project Conference 2004. [paper] Nordhoff, S. (2007). "Grammar writing in the Electronic Age". Paper presented at the ALT VII conference in Paris. Nordhoff, S. (2008). "Electronic reference grammars for typology -- challenges and solutions". Journal for Language Documentation and Conservation, 2(2):296-324. Payne, T. E. & D. Weber (eds.) (2007). Perspectives on grammar writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Zaefferer, D. (ed.) (1998). Deskriptive Grammatik und allgemeiner Sprachvergleich. T?bingen: Niemeyer. From nstern at ccny.cuny.edu Fri Apr 30 11:59:39 2010 From: nstern at ccny.cuny.edu (Nancy Stern) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 07:59:39 -0400 Subject: Call for Papers: Columbia School Linguistics Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS 10th International Columbia School Conference on the Interaction of Linguistic Form and Meaning with Human Behavior October 9-11, 2010 Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey Invited speakers: Flora Klein-Andreu (Stony Brook University) Andrea Tyler (Georgetown University) Conference theme: Grammatical analysis and the discovery of meaning Papers are invited which propose language-specific analyses of natural discourse data within any framework in which languages are viewed as semiotic systems. Particularly encouraged are submissions that advance semantic hypotheses to account for the distribution of linguistic form. The Columbia School is a group of linguists developing the theoretical framework originally established by the late William Diver. Language is seen as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its human users. Grammatical analyses account for the distribution of linguistic forms as an interaction between linguistic meaning and pragmatic and functional factors such as inference, ease of processing, and iconicity. Phonological analyses explain the syntagmatic and paradigmatic distribution of phonological units within signals, also drawing on both communicative function and human physiological and psychological characteristics. Abstracts should be sent as an email attachment to jdavis at ccny.cuny.edu, following these guidelines: *The subject of the email should be: CS Abstract 2010 *In the body of the email, please include: (1) Author name(s) and affiliation(s); (2) Title of the paper; (3) Email addresses and telephone numbers of all authors. *The abstract, containing only the title of the paper and the text of the abstract, should be sent as an attachment (RTF or Word) format. The abstract should be no more than 300 words, although references and/or data may be added to that limit. DEADLINE FOR RECEIPT OF ABSTRACTS: 15 MAY 2010 The language of the conference is English. Papers delivered in languages other than English will be considered. * * * * * * * * The support of The Columbia School Linguistic Society is gratefully acknowledged www.csling.org * * * * * * * * Selected Columbia School bibliography: Contini-Morava, Ellen, Robert S. Kirsner, and Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller (eds.). 2005. Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Contini-Morava, Ellen, and Barbara Sussman Goldberg (eds.). 1995. Meaning as Explanation: Advances in Linguistic Sign Theory. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Davis, Joseph, Radmila Gorup, and Nancy Stern (eds.). 2006. Advances in Functional Linguistics: Columbia School beyond its origins. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffman, Alan. 1997. The Categories of Grammar: French lui and le. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Huffman, Alan. 2001. ?The Linguistics of William Diver and the Columbia School.? WORD 52:1, 29-68. Reid, Wallis. 1991. Verb and Noun Number in English: A Functional Explanation. London: Longman. Reid, Wallis, Ricardo Otheguy, and Nancy Stern (eds.). 2002. Signal, Meaning, and Message: Perspectives on Sign-Based Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Tobin, Yishai. 1997. Phonology as Human Behavior: Theoretical Implications and Clinical Applications. Durham: Duke U Press. For more information, please contact Joseph Davis at jdavis at ccny.cuny.edu Joseph Davis, Ph.D. Associate Professor School of Education, NAC 6207 The City College New York, NY 10031