Computational Linguistics, established in 1974, is the flagship journal of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) and the leading venue for scholarly work in natural language processing and the computational study of language.

The journal publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed research that advances our understanding of language through computation. We welcome rigorous contributions across theoretical modeling, empirical investigation, system design, and scalable methods for language representation, generation, and understanding. Particular emphasis is placed on work that sheds light on challenging aspects of language modeling and interpretation, and that engages with emerging computational paradigms, including large-scale language models. We also welcome insightful research that bridges theoretical, empirical, linguistic, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

To support timely and high-quality dissemination, Computational Linguistics maintains a rigorous yet efficient editorial process. As of 2025, the average time to first decision is 16.5 days (including desk rejections) and 55.0 days (excluding desk rejections).

All published articles are freely available online. Final versions are published electronically by MIT Press (E-ISSN: 1530-9312) and made open access immediately upon acceptance. Print issues (ISSN: 0891-2017) are released quarterly and distributed globally to libraries and subscribers.

Articles published in Computational Linguistics may also be presented at major ACL-sponsored conferences such as ACL and EMNLP, with select papers highlighted during conference events to reach the broader community.

The current Editor-in-Chief is Wei Lu (since 2024). Meet the full editorial team here.

 

At a Glance

  • More information about the journal, including its focus and scope, review process, and categories of submissions, can be found here.
  • Detailed submission guidelines can be found here.
  • Guidelines and information for special issue proposals can be found here.

 

Highlights and Announcements

Current Issue

Vol. 51 No. 2 (2025): Computational Linguistics
Published: 2025-06-26

Long paper

Survey article

Last Words

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