[Lingtyp] ALT and Linguistic Typology publishing practices

[Good, Jeff]

Dear all,

I am just writing a brief message with respect to the recent discussions about Linguistic Typology, and ALT’s publishing programs more generally, to note that the ALT officers (myself, Kristine Hildebrandt, and Dmitry Idiatov) have read the discussion with interest.

Normally, matters like these would be discussed at the business meeting of the biennial meeting of ALT, scheduled for this December in Canberra, and I hope to see many of you there. Of course, since many ALT members will not be able to attend, we can share the report of the Association via this list as well and establish a system to gather comments on it. This report will outline current membership, income streams, etc., of the Association.

With respect to this particular mailing list, an informal practice of allowing it to be open to anyone with an interest in typology, rather than just ALT members, was made more formal last year. It would be good for those posting to it to bear this in mind since some individuals have let us know that they subscribed to the list to stay up-to-date about typology rather than to participate in discussions about ALT publishing practices. Of course, there is overlap between the two, and I mention this so that everyone can be more aware of who is on this list, not to suggest arbitrary limits topics of discussion (or that it is even appropriate for me to suggest such limits!).

If you an ALT member and feel that it is also important to have a separate list to specifically discuss ALT issues, please let me know, and, based on the number of requests, we can look into establishing a separate list for this or some other means to allow for communication among the members. The current membership list on the ALT website is not, in fact, a list of members who are up-to-date on their membership payments, but we have chosen to keep it inclusive so that the field as a whole has a sense of those individuals who have been a part of the Association at some point.

Please feel free to contact me or the other officers with any questions or comments about the Association.

Best,
Jeff