New journal on Computational Linguistics, in Russian and English

[Grant Barrett]

[Forwarded Message]

Dear colleague,

[This is to ask you whether you or your library would subscribe to this
Journal.]

Soon we will start publishing a new journal on Computational
Linguistics.
It will be published in Russia (in Russian and English, with summaries
in the other language); see description below.

To plan its printing and readership, we need to know whether you, or
your
University's library, would subscribe to this journal. Especially
important are subscriptions outside ex-USSR, otherwise the project is
just
not financially viable.

Please let us know [Gelbukh at Gelbukh.com] if you plan to subscribe (how
many copies can your library afford?), to count your help in. The price
will be similar to that of existing journals, such as Computational
Linguistics. We plan to issue monthly volumes of some 100 pages (A4
size).

-----------------------------------------------------
IS RUSSIAN SCIENCE STILL ALIVE?
-----------------------------------------------------

Yes. Recent annual conferences Dialogue (www.dialog-21.ru) have
gathered hundreds of Russian linguists, computational linguists, and
business representatives. About 150 best papers were selected for
publication in a 1250-page Proceedings volume of Dialogue-2002.
Dialogue conferences have more than 25 years of history.

In 2001, Russian Association for Computational Linguistics and
Intelligent
Technologies (COLINT) was founded by several leading Russian research
institutes, software companies, and university groups, to promote the
full spectrum of activity in this domain, from fundamental research
to commercial product development.

The new journal will be oriented mostly to the vast community formed
around Dialogue and COLINT and will exploit its huge potential for
high quality novel publications.

-----------------------------------------------------
WHY READ RUSSIAN PUBLICATIONS?
-----------------------------------------------------

1. Russian science has earned excellent reputation in the past. Even
    though Russia has lost its military and financial strength, its
    scientists are the same and the quality of their research keeps
    the same.

2. Russian Computational Linguistics tradition, for historical reasons,
    is different from the Western mainstream. It's good news and bad
news.

    Bad news because Western scientists sometimes have difficulties in
    understanding Russian papers, and it takes some effort to map the
    terminology and the basic assumptions to those traditional in the
West.

    Good news because this gives a new (or just non-traditional)
    perspective, fresh (or just different) ideas, and thus enriches your
    horizon. Combining these new (different) ideas with the mainstream
    research directions would give you an advantage over your colleagues
    who do not have access to this source, not to mention the advantage
    for the science.

3. Many of these publications will deal with Russian as the object of
the
    research. Taking into account the potentially huge Russian market and
    integration of Russia into world culture and economics, many
companies
    and thus research institutes, conferences, publishers, etc. show
    constantly growing interest in Russian-related lingware, such as
    translation software, OCR, style checkers, text mining, etc. Russian
    as object might become (if not already is) a promising research
    direction for your group, too!

4. If you live outside of ex-USSR, know that with few dollars or euros
you
    will help to save Russian science and to give access to scientific
    literature to thousands of Russian scientists who just do not have
    money to subscribe to existing computational linguistics journals.

5. If Russian is your native or second language, just enjoy reading in
    Russian! And hearing from your old friends and colleagues.

-----------------------------------------------------
WHAT IF I DON'T KNOW RUSSIAN?
-----------------------------------------------------

1. Each paper will be supplied with a sufficiently detailed English
    summary.

2. Ask your colleagues and students -- you will be surprised with that
    some of them do read in Russian (if it is not their native
language!).

-----------------------------------------------------
CONVINCED, WHAT TO DO?
-----------------------------------------------------

1. Ask your librarian if they would subscribe for such a journal, and
    let us know [Gelbukh at Gelbukh.com] how many copies they can afford.

2. Pass this message on to your colleagues who might be interested, to
    mailing lists, etc.

3. Accept our most cordial thanks! We will contact you when the first
    issue is ready.

Thank you!
Alexander (www.Gelbukh.com)
=====================================
Welcome to CICLing-2003 conf: www.CICLing.org
Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics
February 2003, Mexico
=====================================
Prof. Dr. Alexander Gelbukh (Alexandre Guelboukh Kahn),
Research Professor, head of NLP Lab,
Centro de Investigacion en Computacion (CIC),
Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN), Mexico.
gelbukh at cic.ipn.mx, gelbukh at gelbukh.com, www.Gelbukh.com
=====================================
I send you this message because I found your address at a webpage
related
to the topic of this journal. If you do not want to receive my messages,
please let me know at gelbukh at Gelbukh.com. I apologize for
inconvenience.