About the Journal

Computational Linguistics is the official flagship journal of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), and the longest-running journal dedicated to the computational study of language.

Founded 1974
Publisher MIT Press, on behalf of the ACL
Frequency Quarterly
Access Open access, free to read
ISSN 0891-2017 (print) · 1530-9312 (online)
Editor-in-Chief Wei Lu (since 2024) · Full editorial team

Focus and Scope

Computational Linguistics publishes peer-reviewed research that advances our understanding of language through computation, including theoretical models, empirical methods, system design, and scalable approaches to representation, generation, and interpretation. As a central venue for the ACL community, Computational Linguistics welcomes contributions from both academic and industrial researchers who work on computational approaches to language.

A new vision since Volume 51 (March 2025). Computational Linguistics strongly encourages research that engages with emerging paradigms, with particular emphasis on contemporary language model technologies (e.g., Large Language Models, or LLMs) and other transformative developments reshaping computational language research. At the same time, the journal remains committed to insightful contributions grounded in theoretical, mathematical, algorithmic, linguistic, and interdisciplinary perspectives. We particularly welcome studies that bridge these foundational principles with the latest scientific advancements. Our mission is for Computational Linguistics to serve as a central forum where diverse perspectives converge and collaborate to drive the field forward. See the Editorial for more information.

Peer Review Process

Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis.

  1. The Editor-in-Chief assigns each paper to an action editor, taking expertise and workload into account.
  2. The action editor selects reviewers for the paper.
  3. On receiving the reviews, the action editor makes a recommendation for the paper.
  4. Where necessary, a resubmission goes back to the same reviewers for a second round of review.

Target reviewing times

3 weeksUp to 20 pages
4 weeksUp to 40 pages
5 weeksUp to 45 pages
6 weeksMore than 45 pages

We unfortunately cannot guarantee that these timelines will be met for every submission.

Article Types

Long PapersShort PapersSurvey ArticlesPosition PapersSquibs and DiscussionsLast WordsBook ReviewsAward Articles

Page limits and requirements for each type are on the submissions page.

Journal History

  • 1974 · Founded by David Hays as the American Journal of Computational Linguistics.
  • 1984 · Renamed Computational Linguistics.
  • 2009 · Moved to free online access, making all content freely available to readers worldwide.
  • 2025 · A new vision launched with Volume 51, at the journal's 50th anniversary.

Today the journal is published quarterly by MIT Press and features research articles, squibs and discussions, survey articles, position papers, opinion pieces and scholarly book reviews.