34.1456, Survey Results Summary

Wed May 10 04:05:04 UTC 2023

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-1456. Wed May 10 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.1456, Survey Results Summary

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar, Francis Tyers (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Lauren Perkins
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Steven Franks, Everett Green, Joshua Sims, Daniel Swanson, Matthew Fort, Maria Lucero Guillen Puon, Zackary Leech, Lynzie Coburn
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Daniel Swanson <daniel at linguistlist.org>
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Date: 10-May-2023
From: Malgosia Cavar [gosia at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Survey Results Summary

Dear Linguists,

As you may have noticed, the LINGUIST List has recently implemented a
lot of changes. The process was pretty dramatic, but I think we are
now close to the happy ending. We would like to find out what our
readership thinks about the results. Over 350 respondents have taken
part in our survey as of today. If you want to tell us your opinion
about the services of the LINGUIST List, share your ideas or just give
your feedback, you can still respond to our survey
(https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ebcFof6jA22c2hg).

The most popular area is conference announcements. 43% of respondents
said they read conference announcements more often than the other
areas. In general, conference announcements are read by the highest
percentage of respondents – 18%, followed closely by jobs (15%), books
(14%) and summer schools (12% of readers). All other areas were all
approaching or above 10%. This will not be a huge surprise then that
our conference database is also the most used service on our website.
You told us that all of the big areas we publish you consider
important. One of the respondents said: “All [areas] are important.
But job announcements and conference announcements are indispensable,
and this is the only reliable source for having all of that
information in one place. Journal TOCs are a close second, and book
announcements are useful too but not complete so other sources like
Google Scholar must already be consulted for any books missed here.”
Thank you, linguists. I hope you feel well informed.

Most of our respondents (close to 70%) read us daily and we want to
thank our faithful readers. We are there for you!

We asked our readers what other features they would want to see on the
LINGUIST List. People asked for:
- A funding database. We do publish calls from funding agencies under
the FYI section.
- Stories about individual linguists. Interviews, podcasts, featured
linguist contributions. Of course! Tell us from whom do you want to
hear!
- Some functionalities for Interdisciplinary studies. These kinds of
submissions are all welcome but perhaps they are more difficult to
find. We invite your comments on how we can encourage and support
interdisciplinary collaborations.
- Academic events such as book launches (hello publishers! we want to
hear form you…), software launches, online free speeches/lectures.
Dear colleagues, we actually have a tool for local events, it’s
GeoLing… which has recently fallen out of grace – at least with our
programmers… we are working to restore all functions of GeoLing…
- Improving the job search and conference search. We will be happy to
hear more feedback from the readers.
- Collaboration opportunities. People want to connect to other
linguists! Of course. If you want to connect over a particular topic,
have a question to the community, Queries and Discussions are the
appropriate submission areas.
- Follow-ups on the studies that solicited participants.
- A button to create a pdf of the issues.
- Better filtering of the messages not only by the linguistic area (we
have this: https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.1259/) but also by the
geographic location: GeoLing was meant to take over this function, see
above…
- Openness to international students as a criterion in the linguistics
program database.
- A section for the teachers of linguistics (no, it was not me
responding under disguise…) I totally agree with you. It’s coming…
- More summaries of fresh PhDs… Yes, we do publish them, absolutely
free of charge. Tell your advisees… Fresh PhDs: create you account at
https://old.linguistlist.org/people/personal/ and then provide a
summary of your dissertation, which will be published to the whole
list. We want to read about it!
- Research article repository: but there is ResearchGate…
- Content/advice/databases for young scholars. Not surprising, but we
are not able to generate these contents without the support of the
community. So, community: provide the content, people want to read
this …
- There was an inquiry how to donate: you can donate via our host
institution, Indiana University Foundation
(https://give.myiu.org/iu-bloomington/I320011968.html), but also, if
it turns out problematic, you can always donate to eLinguistics
Foundation, which is a public charity registered in Michigan, US, with
a mission to support the LINGUIST List and which is independent from
the host university. eLinguistics foundation has no employees and no
impressive office; all donations are used to support the operations of
the LINGUIST List (the only exception is that eLinguistics Foundation
pays for the preparation of the tax declaration once per year; yes,
they need to declare the donations).
- You want entertainment from us. Well, we don’t employ content
creators. We publish the contents we receive from you! Send us
entertainment. For now, I can recommend Speculative Grammarian, if you
enjoy this kind of humor.
- You want more Discussions: Just submit to the Discussion section…

We keep working on improving the new website and we appreciate your
feedback. Please bear in mind that we do not outsource to
professionals –
 everything is done by our graduate students (otherwise it would cost
3 times more and you would still not be happy…)

How do people read us? Most of our respondents are mailing list
members, but also many readers interact with us by going directly to
the website. I can tell you that: you are missing a lot if you are not
subscribed to the mailing list…

Over 75% of our readers are satisfied, another 22% are fine with what
we offer. We sincerely apologize to the remaining 1.5% of the
respondents who are dissatisfied. We do want to improve, hence the
survey.

Our readers: you are most likely 25-34 years old (or a little older
but young at heart). Or you have just retired and finally you have
time to read us. We love you either way, and we want to accompany you
on your path. You live in America, or in Europe, or in Africa, Asia,
or South America. I bet there are readers of the LINGUIST List in
Australia, too, thought the proof does not come from the survey (but
rather from the website stats). Because, you see, linguists are
everywhere. Everywhere there are people who have this special
appreciation for language.

For all those who have entered your contact information, we will be in
touch soon…

I hope you enjoyed this little summary and please go and respond to
the survey (https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ebcFof6jA22c2hg)
if you haven’t done it yet. And please, support the LINGUIST List with
a donation (https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate).

With best wishes,
Malgosia Cavar

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LINGUIST List: Vol-34-1456
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