About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Computational Linguistics is the longest running publication devoted exclusively to the design and analysis of natural language processing systems. From this highly-regarded quarterly, university and industry linguists, speech specialists, and philosophers get information about computational aspects of research on language, linguistics, and the psychology of language processing and performance.

Scope
Computational Linguistics is devoted exclusively to the design and analysis of natural language processing systems. Submissions to CL may be made in any of the following categories: Papers, Survey Articles, Squibs and Discussions, and Last Words. We also publish Book Reviews.

We have recently begun to receive an increasing number of submissions which fall outside the scope of the journal. Although the boundaries of what counts as appropriate for publication in Computational Linguistics do change over time, a general guideline is that we only carry material that makes a substantive contribution to the computational processing of language, generally from a natural language processing perspective.

Substantially extended versions of conference papers are acceptable as submissions; in such cases, the paper itself must state clearly how the work reported in the paper goes beyond the work reported in the earlier publication, so that both reviewers and readers can easily establish the novelty of the work reported.

Peer Review Process

There is a rolling acceptance for paper submissions. More precise information about deadline timings are given in the Author Guidelines.

The editors-in-chief assign each paper to an action editor, taking expertise and load-balancing issues into account
The action editor picks three reviewers for the paper.
There is a tiered reviewing time line for submissions:
- Survey Proposals, Short Papers and Squibs (anything less than 25 pages) - 3 weeks to review
- Long Papers:
  - Up to 40 pages: 4 weeks
  - Up to 45 pages: 5 weeks
  - Greater than 45 pages: 6 weeks
These page counts include appendices and data sets, so that you can advise the action editor of the reviewing timeline for any given paper.
On receiving the three reviews, the action editor makes 1 of 4 recommendations for the paper:
- Acceptance for publication as is, with encouragement to make minor revisions.
- Acceptance for publication subject to specified revisions.
- Revise and Resubmit with encouragement to revise and resubmit.
- Rejection with no possibility of resubmission within a moratorium period of one year.
Where necessary, the resubmission of a paper goes back to the same 3 reviewers for second round review.
We unfortunately cannot guarantee that the timeline guidance given in the items above will be met for every submission.

Types/Categories of Submissions to CL

CL may be made in any of the following categories: Short or Long Papers, Survey Articles, Squibs and Discussions, and Last Words. We also publish Book Reviews.

Long papers report significant new research results in computational linguistics; for example, describe the results of a large research project or dissertation. Each paper is reviewed by three experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality. Long Paper page lengths are typically 25+ up to ~40 pages.

Short Papers report significant new research results in computational linguistics and might contain a description of a single experiment, algorithm, or other technical result. Each paper is reviewed by three experts in the field; all submissions, regardless of length, will be held to the same standards of technical and presentation quality. Short paper page lengths are typically 15-20 pages.

Survey Articles should give a comprehensive overview of progress in a particular field of expertise, and a wider perspective than is possible in the 'related work' section of an article that reports on new research: either provide a state of the art in a subfield of computational linguistics or survey literature at the interfaces of the CL community, but not well represented in the CL journal, thus introducing relevant peripheral research to the journal's readership. Survey articles should first submit a summary proposal: see our Guidelines for Submission of Survey Articles for more details. Survey articles are the same size as standard journal papers: up to 40 pages (when submitting, select "survey article" at the "journal section" prompt. If the proposal is accepted, the full survey paper itself should be submitted as a new submission with a new paper ID.

Squibs and Discussions is reserved for very short articles that constitute more than programmatic versions of regular papers. Squibs should possess at least one of the following attributes:

unexpectedness, e.g., a demonstration that a commonly accepted idea or method is flawed;
genuine novelty, e.g., thus-far unnoticed language data that challenges current methods; and
being targeted to a large segment of our readership.
Papers about language resources may be acceptable provided the relevant resources are truly novel and of general interest.
Page length: Submissions must not exceed eight pages of content (with unlimited pages for references).

Last Words In each issue of the journal we reserve a small number of pages for a personal opinion or provocative perspective on some aspect of the field of computational linguistics. You can see all previous Last Words pieces here. Contact the Editor directly if you are interested in submitting such a piece. Page length: up to 10 pages in length.

Book Reviews - Anyone interested in reviewing a book, or in suggesting a book for review, should contact the Book Review Editor:
Aline Villavicencio, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield
Email: a.villavicencio@sheffield.ac.uk

About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Peer Review Process

Types/Categories of Submissions to CL

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Journal History

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