publishing book-length manuscripts

[Maaike Verrips]

Virginia Valian wrote:
>
>2)  Are we doing students a good turn by advising them
>to publish their dissertations as book-length manuscripts?
>Although an occasional dissertation-turned-into-book
>gets read, most do not.  Most students would be better
>off publishing articles.  There is the possible benefit
>for tenure of having a book, but many of these books
>do not look like "real" books and, I believe, are
>discounted.
>
>
Dear all,

Virginia’s posting points to a serious issue, I think.

Partly in response to exactly this problem, Frank Wijnen, Lynn Santelmann
and myself have just started a yearly journal, the  Annual Review of
Language Acquisition. The journal will come out once a year,  and contains
a number of 30-page summaries-by-the-author of outstanding dissertations in
our field in any one year. The first issue is planned to cover 1999,
deadline March 2000. The papers will be thoroughly reviewed, and they count
as journal articles. The price of each volume will be  around 150 NLG/ 75 USD.

We have proposed this concept to John Bejamins publishing Company, because
we believe this is both a sensible and fruitful way for young scholars to
present their theses to the field, and an affordable way for senior
scholars to keep up with the movements of the younger generations.

More information about ARLA is available at the John Benjamins website,
under the rubric of New projects, or directly from us.

Maaike Verrips




Maaike Verrips
Utrechts Instituut voor Linguistiek OTS
Trans 10
3512 JK Utrecht
030 253 6081 tel
030 253 6000 fax