Category Archives: oa.linguistics

The ideal model, if you ask me | Openjournals.nl

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“We invited a number of (lead) editors to tell us about their journals and the reasons why they chose to work with Openjournals.nl. Sible Andringa, editor-in-chief of the Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, kicks off. He feels that the journal has become more attractive to authors since switching to Openjournals and he explains why his editors quit working with a traditional publisher.

Sible Andringa: ‘The journal Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics (DuJAL) has been around for a long time. It started as the Journal of Applied Linguistics in Articles. The first volume was published in-house in 1976. From the beginning, the journal was published by the Dutch Association of Applied Linguistics Anéla (see www.anela.nl). In 2012, it was decided to change its name. The journal was renamed Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics and it has since been published by  John Benjamins. In January 2021, the journal moved to Openjournals….

With Openjournals, you can choose to offer all that together: pre- and post-prints are not necessary, and all data and instruments can be co-published. The ideal model, if you ask me. We can now also think about all kinds of new forms of publishing, such as publishing conference posters and the like. Those conversations we can now have, because we know it is possible and allowed by the publisher. We find that we have become more attractive to authors now that we are open access and publish on an ongoing basis.  There are not huge numbers of submissions right away, but a steady stream of good quality.”

MetaArXiv Preprints | Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

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Abstract:  Scientific studies of language span across many disciplines and provide evidence for social, cultural, cognitive, technological, and biomedical studies of human nature and behavior. By becoming increasingly empirical and quantitative, linguistics has been facing challenges and limitations of the scientific practices that pose barriers to reproducibility and replicability. One of the proposed solutions to the widely acknowledged reproducibility and replicability crisis has been the implementation of transparency practices, e.g. open access publishing, preregistrations, sharing study materials, data, and analyses, performing study replications and declaring conflicts of interest. Here, we have assessed the prevalence of these practices in randomly sampled 600 journal articles from linguistics across two time points. In line with similar studies in other disciplines, we found a moderate amount of articles published open access, but overall low rates of sharing materials, data, and protocols, no preregistrations, very few replications and low rates of conflict of interest reports. These low rates have not increased noticeably between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019, pointing to remaining barriers and slow adoption of open and reproducible research practices in linguistics. As linguistics has not yet firmly established transparency and reproducibility as guiding principles in research, we provide recommendations and solutions for facilitating the adoption of these practices.

 

Sociolinguistic repositories as asset: challenges and difficulties in Brazil | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

This paper aims to provide a context for Brazilian Portuguese language documentation and its data collection to establish linguistic repositories from a sociolinguistic overview.

Design/methodology/approach

The main sociolinguistic projects that have generated collections of Brazilian Portuguese language data are presented.

Findings

The comparison with another situation of repositories (seed vaults) and with the accounting concept of assets is evocated to map the challenges to be overcome in proposing a standardized and professional language repository to host the collections of linguistic data arising from the reported projects and others, in the accordance with the principles of the open science movement.

Originality/value

Thinking about the sustainability of projects to build linguistic documentation repositories, partnerships with the information technology area, or even with private companies, could minimize problems of obsolescence and safeguarding of data, by promoting the circulation and automation of analysis through natural language processing algorithms. These planning actions may help to promote the longevity of the linguistic documentation repositories of Brazilian sociolinguistic research.

The Open Language Archives Community: a 20-year update | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

This paper reports on the first 20 years of the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC), comprehensive infrastructure for indexing and discovering language resources.

Design/methodology/approach

We begin with the original vision, assess progress relative to the original requirements, and identify ongoing challenges.

Findings

Based on the overview of OLAC history and recent developments and on the analysis of the situation in the language archives area as a whole, the authors propose an agenda for a more sustainable future for open language archiving.

Originality/value

This paper examines the progress of OLAC and discusses improvements in such areas as participation, access, and sustainability.

Dr. h.c. Johan Rooryck – an in-depth interview | Open Science Talk

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Abstract:  On 1 September 2022, professor of linguistics and director of cOAlition S Johan Rooryck was created a doctor honoris causa at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. In this in-depth interview, Rooryck reflects on his career so far and shares his vision of a future where scholar-led, fair and equitable open access prevails over commercial publishing structures.

Johan Rooryck starts out by explaining how he became the editor-in-chief of the high-ranking journal Lingua in 1999, how his relations with the publisher Elsevier became increasingly strained, and how he succeeded in bringing all his co-editors along in a sensational break with Elsevier. Instead, they launched the fully open access journal Glossa (now a high-ranking journal of general linguistics) at the platform Open Library of Humanities, in 2015. Rooryck in particular dwells on the non-commercial model known as Diamond Open Access, with no charges facing either readers or authors. Speaking on behalf of Plan S and the cOAlition S, whose executive director he became in 2019, Rooryck also broadens the view to all forms of open access, including open access to books and research data. At the end, he looks ahead to the future, when faced with the final, fundamental question: are you an optimist?

OPEN SCIENCE INITIATIVES: THE POSTPRINT PLEDGE

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“• Is it legal to post “postprints” online? • Depends on each publisher’s policies • We compiled a list of 60 Applied Linguistics journals (from Web of Science) • Examined their copyright policies from Sherpa Romeo (https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) • Publishers that permit postprints: • Cambridge, Elsevier, John Benjamins, SAGE, Emerald, De Gruyter, Akadémiai Kiadó • Publisher that permit postprints on personal websites only (embargo on repositories): • Springer, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis • Publishers that do NOT permit on postprints before an embargo period: • Wiley (usually 24-month embargo)…

What this Pledge is NOT asking you to do: • Does not ask you to break any laws. Sharing postprints is within your rights (see table next slide). • Does not ask you to share “preprints” but to share “postprints”. • Does not limit you to publishing in these journals. • Does not require you do anything else (like boycotting certain publishers or not reviewing for them)….” 

Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features | Scientific Data

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Abstract:  The past decades have seen substantial growth in digital data on the world’s languages. At the same time, the demand for cross-linguistic datasets has been increasing, as witnessed by numerous studies devoted to diverse questions on human prehistory, cultural evolution, and human cognition. Unfortunately, most published datasets lack standardization which makes their comparison difficult. Here, we present a new approach to increase the comparability of cross-linguistic lexical data. We have designed workflows for the computer-assisted lifting of datasets to Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, a collection of standards that make these datasets more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). We test the Lexibank workflow on 100 lexical datasets from which we derive an aggregated database of wordlists in unified phonetic transcriptions covering more than 2000 language varieties. We illustrate the benefits of our approach by showing how phonological and lexical features can be automatically inferred, complementing and expanding existing cross-linguistic datasets.

Shedding light on linguistic diversity and its evolution | Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

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“Scholars from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and the University of Auckland in New Zealand have created a new global repository of linguistic data. The project is designed to facilitate new insights into the evolution of words and sounds of the languages spoken across the world today. The Lexibank database contains standardized lexical data for more than 2000 languages. It is the most extensive publicly available collection compiled so far….”

Glossa: how a journal took matters into their own hands to make research available | Plan S

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“[Q]When did you first engage with open access and why is it important for you as an academic, also considering the different roles you have in the scholarly communication system (reader, editor(-in-chief), advisory board member)?

[A] I became actively interested in open access around 2011/2012, when Timothy Gowers launched the Elsevier boycott and the Cost of Knowledge protest against Elsevier’s expensive subscriptions and journal bundling. A number of very good reviewers informed me that they would no longer review for Lingua, the Elsevier journal I had been an editor for since 1999. This was worrisome, because without access to the right reviewers, a journal cannot maintain its peer review processes. So I started to think about alternatives. In 2011, I had also met Saskia de Vries, who at that time was director of Amsterdam University Press, and who provocatively asked me if I was not interested in flipping Lingua to open access, and what would be required to do so. That conversation led to many more contacts, including Natalia Grygierszyk, director of the Radboud University Library in Nijmegen, and we jointly decided to look into possibilities to make Lingua open access….”

Glossa: how a journal took matters into their own hands to make research available. – Background – Utrecht University

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“Another challenge was governance: what does it mean to have a journal owned and led by scholars How does that work? How do we imagine ownership in such a way that the journal cannot be bought by a commercial entity in the future? That is a process that we laid down in the Glossa Constitution, a document that specified that the Glossa title is in the hands of the community, and represents no monetary value. Recently, we were offered 300k to sell the journal title. We made that simply impossible via this Constitution, so there cannot even be a temptation. And you can easily understand why someone would want to offer 300k for a journal like ours: we publish between 120 and 150 articles a year. If a commercial publisher were to charge 2,000 euros per article, that could mean a gross income of 300k per year. Deduct costs of about 500 euros per article for production and manuscript handling, and you are left with a tidy profit of 225k. …”

UVA Library’s Aperio to begin publishing “Language Documentation and Description” | UVA Library News and Announcements

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“The journal “Language Documentation and Description” (LDD) and UVA Library are pleased to announce that LDD has joined Aperio, the UVA Library-led open access press….

Aperio, a service of UVA Library, publishes discipline-leading, high-quality open access journals. By removing price and permission barriers, Aperio increases the dissemination, visibility, accessibility, and impact of research and scholarship across disciplines, while providing its journals with a stable and committed institutional home….”

Glossa Psycholinguistics: Open access by scholars, for scholars

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“We are very pleased to publish our first articles for Glossa Psycholinguistics, a Fair Open Access journal for psycholinguistic research. These articles represent the culmination of nearly two years of behind-the-scenes work that rests upon a substantial outpouring of support for our project from the psycholinguistic community at large. We’re proud of the papers that the community has contributed to Glossa Psycholinguistics, and we’re happy to use this inaugural editorial to formally mark the publication of these first articles….

GG is a Fair Open Access journal, which means that all articles are open access. Moreover, authors pay a much lower APC than is typical in the world of scientific publishing (at the time of this writing, 500USD). In fact, at GG the default is that authors pay nothing to publish: Authors ‘opt-in’ to pay the APC when they have available institutional or research funds. The GG model has other key features: Authors retain copyright in their publications and are able to use the CC-BY-4.0 license to designate broad sharing and reuse provisions. Additionally, the management model is democratic, with the Editorial Team and Board forming a decision-making collective that also has full ownership of the journal title….

Fortunately, our expenses are lower than for most journals because we are not a for-profit operation. Moreover, no member of the editorial team receives any sort of financial compensation, and eScholarship provides its services free of charge. But we still have costs, including those associated with typesetting, protection of web domain names, brand name protection, and so on. To cover those costs, like GG, the funding model for Glossa Psycholinguistics relies on a combination of institutional funding and APCs. However, although open access publishing is now viewed by many in the scholarly community as an essential feature of fair and equitable scientific publishing, some have voiced the concern that APCs may introduce a financial incentive to publish lower quality work. To guard against this, both Glossa journals only request a modest APC from those who have earmarked funds to pay such charges….”

The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management | MIT Press

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Berez-Kroeker, McDonnell, Koller, and Collister (eds., 2022) The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management. The MIT Press.

A guide to principles and methods for the management, archiving, sharing, and citing of linguistic research data, especially digital data. “Doing language science” depends on collecting, transcribing, annotating, analyzing, storing, and sharing linguistic research data. This volume offers a guide to linguistic data management, engaging with current trends toward the transformation of linguistics into a more data-driven and reproducible scientific endeavor. It offers both principles and methods, presenting the conceptual foundations of linguistic data management and a series of case studies, each of which demonstrates a concrete application of abstract principles in a current practice.

John Benjamins Publishing Company Announces Read & Publish Agreement with Jisc

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“John Benjamins Publishing Company, a leading academic publisher in the field of linguistics, has reached a Read and Publish agreement with Jisc,the UK’s digital body for education and research. The agreement, which covers the period of 2022?2024, provides participating institutions with access to their selection of journals, while researchers at these institutions will be able to publish an uncapped number of articles immediately Open Access in John Benjamins’ hybrid journals without paying an article processing charge (APC)….”